OH7LZB VPN

AMPRNet VPN is an experimental method to access the AMPRNet using a VPN from anywhere on the Internet. The VPN is openly available to any amateur radio operators who have successfully applied for an X.509 certificate from one of the following Certificate Authorities:

• ARRL Logbook of the World (LoTW)

The CA validates using a relatively strong method that the operator is actually licensed, and gives the operator a certificate to prove that. Other services, such as the AMPRNet VPN can then check that the operator possesses a valid amateur radio operator certificate (and the accompanying private key), without any manual work being performed by the operators of those services.

If and when other organisations start to give out X.509 certificates, after sufficient amateur radio license validation, the AMPRNet VPN can be configured to accept those in addition to the LoTW. If you're not willing to obtain a LoTW certificate, please set up a CA for your local club or association, document the method of license validation you're using, and I'll be happy to trust your certificates.

The VPN operator does not have time to run a CA and validate licenses manually, so please don't ask for a certificate from anywhere else than the CAs listed above. Thanks!

Extracting the certificate from LoTW

LoTW uses a custom file format (.TQ*) to exchange certificates, but after the LoTW certificate process is done and TrustedQSL has your certificates, they can be easily copied from TrustedQSL's directories. You'll need three files:

Linux and Mac:

• ~/.tqsl/certs/user contains the user certificate
• ~/.tqsl/certs/authorities contains an intermediate certificate
• ~/.tqsl/keys/YOURCALL contains, within some XML, your private key

The user and intermediate certificates need to be concatenated to a single file named client.crt. That can be done by a single command:

cat ~/.tqsl/certs/user ~/.tqsl/certs/authorities > client.crt

The private key needs to be extracted from the YOURCALL file. The file is a regular ASCII text file, and contains a block which looks something like this (just longer):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Proc-Type: 4,ENCRYPTED
DEK-Info: DES-EDE3-CBC,0C7B5495F6A91F31

0xmWfliK/v9U88MFyYtUbteRoAkfVMK6BllcdID3pZzmdykHaPLZUjXOCUh3vFUX
1bjnYwXpLX/CxgZ6NIxQIk7jMjL3iaP5SkWzCswqi9mCO+zHxuS6PWq7YwbWNFgo
7smNcko1yTp7f/VbS4CZ5kgIF9kCgNaiqdxq+v0IcphQHRR4xjfLpBQ4ckYOi4nC
jqFR1BitwBL4K2JeE9PGUkkUBwvU4oOi9PGChuoxMXs8PwKi/dZTmSWM7kOfMiBw
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

Copy-paste that block to a separate file named client.key. If you're going to open up the original private key file in a text editor, it's a good idea to make a backup copy of that file first in case of an accidental corruption of its contents.