Mistborn

A platform for easily managing your cloud server and Wireguard access

What is Mistborn

The term Mistborn comes from a type of powerful Allomancer in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere.

Mistborn started as a passion project for a husband and father protecting his family. Certain family members insisted on connecting their devices to free WiFi networks. We needed a way to secure all family devices with a solid VPN (Wireguard). Once we had that we wanted to control DNS to block ads to all devices and block malicious and pornographic websites across all family devices. Then we wanted chat, file-sharing, and webchat services that we could use for ourselves without entrusting our data to some big tech company. And then... home automation. I know I'll be adding services as I go so I made that easy to do.

Mistborn depends on these open source technologies:

• Docker: containerization
• Wireguard: secure VPN access
• SSH: secure password-less remote management

These tools are not vital to Mistborn itself but are integrated to enhance security, ease, and features:

• iptables: The powerful Linux netfilter firewall tool
• cockpit: A Graphical User Interface for system management, including container management
• Pi-hole: A DNS server for network-wide ad blocking, etc
• DNScrypt: prevents DNS spoofing via cryptographic signatures to verify that responses originate from the chosen DNS resolver and haven't been tampered
• Traefik: A modern, efficient reverse-proxy

Within Mistborn is a panel to enable and manage these free extra services, locally hosted in Docker containers:

• Home Assistant: Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first
• Nextcloud: Nextcloud offers the industry-leading, on-premises content collaboration platform. It combines the convenience and ease of use of consumer-grade solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive with the security, privacy and control business needs.
• BitWarden: Password manager. The easiest and safest way for individuals, teams, and business organizations to store, share, and sync sensitive data.
• Syncthing: Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes.
• OnlyOffice: Cloud office suite. ONLYOFFICE provides you with the most secure way to create, edit and collaborate on business documents online.
• Rocket.Chat: Free, Open Source, Enterprise Team Chat.
• Jellyfin: The Free Media Software System.
• Tor: The Onion Router. One tool in the arsenal of online security and privacy.

Installation

Mistborn is regularly tested on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. It has also been successfully used on Debian and Raspbian systems (though not regularly tested).

Clone the git repository and run the install script:

git clone https://gitlab.com/cyber5k/mistborn.git
sudo bash ./mistborn/scripts/install.sh

Running install.sh will do the following:

• create a mistborn system user
• clone the mistborn repo to /opt/mistborn
• setup iptables and ip6tables rules
• install iptables-persistent
• install Docker
• install OpenSSH
• install Wireguard
• install Cockpit
• create a cockpit system user
• configure unattended-upgrades
• create /opt/mistborn_volumes and setup folders for services that will be mounted within
• backup original contents of /opt/mistborn_volumes in /opt/mistborn_backup
• Pull docker images for base.yml
• Build docker images for base.yml
• Disable competing DNS services (systemd-resolved and dnsmasq)
• copy Mistborn systemd service files to /etc/systemd/system
• start and enable Mistborn-base

Post-Installation

When Mistborn-base starts up it will create volumes, initialize the PostgreSQL database, start pihole, run Django migrations and then check to see if a Mistborn superuser named admin exists yet. If not, it will create the superuser along with an accompanying Wireguard configuration file and start the Wireguard service. You can watch all of this happen with:

journalctl -xfu Mistborn-base

The client Wireguard configuration file may be obtained via:

docker-compose -f /opt/mistborn/base.yml run --rm django python manage.py getconf admin default

Please notice that the following lines are NOT part of the Wireguard config:

Starting mistborn_production_postgres ... done
Starting mistborn_production_redis    ... done
PostgreSQL is available

The Wireguard config will look like this:

# "10.15.91.2" - WireGuard Client Profile
[Interface]
Address = 10.15.91.2/32
# The use of DNS below effectively expands to:
#   PostUp = echo nameserver 10.15.91.1 | resolvconf -a tun.%i -m 0 -x
#   PostDown = resolvconf -d tun.%i
# If the use of resolvconf is not desirable, simply remove the DNS line
# and use a variant of the PostUp/PostDown lines above.
# The IP address of the DNS server that is available via the encrypted
# WireGuard interface is 10.15.91.1.
DNS = 10.15.91.1
PrivateKey = cPPflVGsxVFw2/lMmhiFTXMmH345bGqoqArD/NgjiXU=

[Peer]
PublicKey = DfIV1urYZXqXKiU4rOSfO0Iu589pEO+59dHV5w5N0mU=
PresharedKey = Z1SO5NuAnZ7JhzVCuUnYOQLWOQYmMoqG0pG1SNXUlh0=
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0,::/0
Endpoint = <Mistborn public IP address>:39207

Login via Wireguard

Install wireguard on your computer.

• Copy the admin Wireguard config to /etc/wireguard/wg_admin.conf
• Run sudo systemctl start wg-quick@wg_admin
• Run sudo systemctl enable wg-quick@wg_admin
• Open your browser and go to "http://home.mistborn"
• Browse your Mistborn system!

Wireguard Management

Mistborn users can be added (non-privileged or superuser) and removed by superusers. Multiple Wireguard profiles can be created for each user. A non-privileged user can create profiles for themselves. Wireguard Management in Mistborn

Extra Services

Mistborn makes extra services available. Mistborn Extra Services Available

Mistborn Firewall Metrics

Mistborn functions as a network firewall and provides metrics on blocked probes from the internet. Mistborn Firewall Metrics

Troubleshooting

Once you're connected to Wireguard you should see .mistborn domains and the internet should work as expected. Be sure to use http (http://home.mistborn). Wireguard is the encrypted channel so we're not bothering with TLS certs. Here are some things to check if you have issues:

See if any docker containers are stopped:

docker container ls -a

Check the running log for Mistborn-base:

journalctl -xfu Mistborn-base

Mistborn-base is a systemd process and at any time restarting it should get you to a working state:

systemctl restart Mistborn-base

The Wireguard processes run independently of Mistborn and will still be up if Mistborn is down. You can check running Wireguard interfaces with:

wg show

Note the Mistborn naming convention for Wireguard interfaces on the server is wg. So if the particular Wireguard process is listening on UDP port 56392 then the interface will be named wg56392 and the config will be in /etc/wireguard/wg56392.conf

Contact

Contact me at steven@cyber5k.com

Support

Please consider supporting the project via:

• Patreon