Scripts for automatic connection to free VPNs
The essence of the autovpn app is as follows: it downloads a list of free VPN servers, searches them for VPN servers from the country you specified, and connects to it. As a result, all your traffic starts going through a VPN-this is a very fast and automatic way to change your IP address and bypass the blockages.
Thanks to the features of a VPN, all traffic (not just web browser requests) goes through the VPN network, so if you use network tools, they will also change their IP address.
The author
of autovpn deleted the source code, and as a result
, Rupert Edwards (author
of TorIptables2) rewrote the autovpn code and named the program
autovpn2. The program does all the same things.
In this article, we will introduce you to
autovpn2.
Looking at how autovpn2 works, I've always wondered:
- do I really need to re-download the file with the list of VPN servers every time?
- why is it necessary to specify the country, why can't the program just choose any VPN from the list?
- why there is no support for connecting to a VPN through a proxy (as well as downloading a list of VPNs through a proxy) - this is even better for anonymity
- why does autovpn2 use Python 2? Yes, due to the lack of dependencies, autovpn2 works smoothly even on Python 2 without modules (as it is present in Kali Linux). But there may come a time when Python 2 will still be completely removed from distributions.
In General, I took all these comments into account and once again rewrote
autovpn (this time in Bash) and called it
autovpn3. I will also share the script in this article.
Automatically connect to free VPNs using autovpn2
autovpn2 is a VPN Gate client (based on OpenVPN) for Linux, connects you to a random free VPN in the country of your choice, which is indicated by a two-letter country code.
The program can help you hide your real IP address from visited sites, as well as open sites that are blocked in your country.
Key features of the program:
- redirects all traffic in the system through the VPN (not just web browser traffic, as some plugins do).)
- uses free VPNs
- the received VPN settings are not tied to anything - you don't need to register, enter your email address, or perform any similar actions
- everything is done automatically: search for free VPN servers, get settings, launch the OpenVPN client with the received settings.
The autovpn2 program is very easy to use, it allows you to quickly connect to a VPN without manually configuring the OpenVPN client and hide your IP address from the sites you visit, as well as bypass blockages.
Since OpenVPN redirects all traffic through the VPN server, any tools you use will access the Internet through the VPN server.
You can run the program without any options:
In this case, you will search for free VPN servers from the US (USA).
You can specify a two-letter country code (
ISO 3166-2). in this case, a VPN from the specified country will be selected.
Example of finding a VPN server from Japan and automatically connecting to it:
To check your IP address and what country it belongs to, you can use
this online service or any other one.
If the program quickly shuts down immediately after starting without connecting to a VPN, this may mean:
- you entered the country code incorrectly
- no VPNs from the selected country
You can find a list of free VPN servers on this page:
https://www.vpngate.net/en/
If the program output ended with a string containing "
Initialization Sequence Completed", it means that the connection was successfully established and now you are accessing the network via VPN:
To stop the VPN, press
CTRL+cand a message will be displayed:
Code:
[autovpn2] try another VPN? (y/n)
The autovpn2 script asks whether to try another VPN?
If you want to try another VPN, then press "
y", if you want to exit, then press "
n".
How to change the default country in autovpn2
If you do not specify a country, then by default VPN servers in the USA will be searched. You can change this by opening the file
autovpn2.py. If you moved the script to $PATH, then open it as follows:
Code:
sudo gedit /usr/local/bin/autovpn2
You need to change line 21 and 45 by specifying the two-letter code of the desired country (in large letters) instead of "US".
autovpn3-additional features for managing free VPN connections
As I have already written, in my opinion, autovpn could have more features.
Additional features in autovpn3 compared to autovpn2:
- the VPN list is cached and downloaded again only when it is really needed, so reconnecting to a new server is much faster;
- you can specify a country to search for VPN servers in it, or use a VPN from a randomly selected country
- added support for connecting to a VPN via a proxy (as well as downloading a list of VPNs via a proxy) - this is even better for anonymity
- written in Bash, you will have no problems with Python 2, does not require compilation
- you can save the list of VPN servers and use it without downloading it again
- quick change of the VPN server
The installation instructions and the script itself are on this page:
https://kali.tools/?p=6362
The program has already been optimally configured for most users, so you can just start working with the script:
Let's look at the settings (they are right at the beginning of the script):
The first setting is to select the country from which the VPN server should be located, for example,
JP,
KR,
US,
TH. That is, a two-letter code, the letters must be large. If you leave it blank, a VPN server from any country will be selected. In other words, the script doesn't accept the country code as an option. You need to specify the country in the code.
If you don't like the selected VPN server, then press
Ctrl+c and the program will prompt you to try again with another VPN. In this case, the list of servers is not downloaded again - the same one is used. But if you close the program and run it again, the list of VPN servers will be downloaded again. If you are satisfied with this, then set the value to
0. If you want the old list to be used when the program is restarted, set the value to
1. If the list is missing, it will be downloaded again regardless of the settings. When you restart your computer, the list is deleted in any case:
We'll look at all the proxy settings in another article, where we'll connect to free VPNs via proxies, including the Tor network:
Code:
proxy=0
proxyIP=''
proxyPort=8080
proxyType='socks' # socks or http
The script selects a random VPN server from the entire list (if no country is specified) or from the list for the specified country. If you are satisfied with this, then set the value to
0. if you want the first server to always be used, then set the value to
1. It's possible that the first server's performance is higher (better speed, less pings, etc. - I didn't actually check it):
Path to the file where the downloaded list of VPN servers is saved. By default, it is stored in
the /tmp / folder, which is cleared every time the computer is restarted. You can choose a more stable location if you want (makes sense with "
useSavedVPNlist=1»):
In the next article, we will connect to a VPN through a proxy and through the Tor network. In particular, we will use
autovpn3 to connect via proxy and Tor to free VPN servers.
