I am looking for a solution to the standard ssh middleman tunneling with a twist.
I have four machines ABCD.
A is a the local device (embedded and no ssh available) that is not on the fire walled network
B is a server that is accessible from 'A' and can SSH to 'C'
C is a server on the fire walled network
D is a computer on the fire walled network that is running a service on a tcp port 9090 that a needs access to.
Is it possible to issue an SSH command from 'B that allow 'A' to connect to 9090 on 'D'?
B and C need an SSH server to forward B:9090 to D:9090. Then A can connect to B:9090.
On B:
ssh -g -L 9090:D:9090 -N C
-g allows remote hosts like A to connect to local forwarded ports.
Related
I would like to understand the concept of SSH tunneling in detail as I am learning a few things around this topic. I have gone through some details in public forum but still got a few questions.
An SFTP service is running in a remote server and I have been given credentials to connect to it. I am using GUI like WinScp to connect the remote server. What's the role of SSH tunneling here?
Remote SFTP Server admin asked me to generate RSA public key from my machine and its added to the remote server. Now, I can directly connect to the server from SSH terminal without password. What's the role of SSH tunneling here?
Is tunneling implicit or need to be called explicitly for certain circumstances?
Please clarify.
SSH tunneling, SSH console sessions and SFTP sessions are functionally unrelated things.
They can be used simultaneously during single session but usually it is not the case so do not try to find any relation or role of tunneling in ssh/sftp session.
It does not makes sense to mix ssh tunneling with multiple ssh/sftp sessions.
Basically you would use dedicated ssh session for tunneling and extra sessions for console and transfers.
What the heck SSH tunneling is?
Quite often both parties (you and server) reside in different networks where arbitrary network connections between such networks are impossible.
For example server can see on its network workstation nodes and service nodes which are not visible to outside network due to NAT.
The same is valid for the user who initiates connection to the remote server:
so you (ssh client) can see your local resources (worstation nodes and server nodes) but can't see nodes on network of remote server.
Here comes ssh tunneling.
SSH tunnel is NOT a tool to assist ssh related things like remote console ssh sessions and secure file transfers but quite other way around - it is ssh protocol who assists you with building transport to tunnel generic TCP connections the same way TCP proxy works. Once such pipe is built and in action it does not know what is getting transferred via such pipe/tunnel.
Its concept is similar to TCP proxy.
TCP proxy runs on single node so it serves as acceptor of connections and as iniciator of outgoing connections.
In case of SSH tunneling such concept of TCP proxy is split in two halves - one of the nodes (participating in ssh session) performs role of listener(acceptor of connections) and second node performs role of proxy (i.e. initiates outgoing connections).
When you establish the SSH session to the remote server you can configure two types of tunnels which are active while your ssh connection is active.
Multiple ssh clients use notations like
R [IP1 :] PORT1 : IP2 : PORT2
L [IP1 :] PORT1 : IP2 : PORT2
The most confusing/hard part to understand in this ssh tunneling thing are these L and R markers/switches(or whatever).
Those letter L and R can confuse beginners quite a lot because there are actually 6(!!!) parties in this game(each with its own point of view of what is local and what is remote):
you
ssh server
your neighbors who want to expose theirs ports to anyone who sees the server
your neighbors who want to connect to any service server sees
anyone who sees the server and want to connect to any service your
neighbor provides (opposite side/socket of case #3)
any service in a local network of server who wants to be exposed to
your LAN (opposite side/socket of case#4)
In terms of ssh client these tunnel types are:
"R" tunnel (server listens) - YOU expose network services from your LOCAL LAN to remote LAN (you instruct sshd server to start listening ports at remote side and route all incoming connections )
"L" tunnel (you listens) - Server exposes resources of its REMOTE LAN to your LAN (your ssh client starts listening ports on your workstation. your neighbors can access remote server network services by connecting to the ports of your workstation. server makes outgoing connections to local services on behalf of your ssh client)
So SSH tunneling is about providing access to the service which typically is inaccessible due to network restrictions or limitations.
And here is simple conter-intuitive rule to remember while creating tunnels:
to open access to Remote service you use -L switch
and
to open access to Local service you use -R switch
examples of "R" tunnels:
Jack is your coworker(backend developer) and he develops server-side code at his workstation with IP address 10.12.13.14. You are team lead (or sysadmin) who organizes working conditions. You are sitting in the same office with Jack and want to expose his web server to outside world through remote server.
So you connect to ssh server with following command:
ssh me#server1 -g -R 80:ip-address-of-jack-workstation:80
in such case anyone on the Internet can access Jack's current version of website by visiting http://server1/
Suppose there are many IoT Linux devices (like raspberry pi) in the world sitting in multiple home networks and thus not accessible from outside.
They could connect to the home server and expose theirs own port 22 to the server for admin to be able to connect to all those servers.
So RPi devices could connect to the server in a such way:
RPi device #1
ssh rpi1#server -R 10122:localhost:22
RPi device #2
ssh rpi1#server -R 10222:localhost:22
RPi device #3
ssh rpi1#server -R 10322:localhost:22
and sysadmin while being at server could connect to any of them:
ssh localhost -p 10122 # to connecto first device
ssh localhost -p 10222 # to connecto second device
ssh localhost -p 10322 # to connecto third device
admin on remote premises blocked ssh outgoing connections and you want production server to contact bitbucket through your connection...
#TODO: add example
Typical pitfalls in ssh tunneling:
mapping remote service to local priviledged port
ssh me#server -L 123:hidden-smtp-server:25 # fails
#bind fails due to priviledged ports
#we try to use sudo ssh to allow ssh client to bind to local port switches
sudo ssh me#server -L 123:hidden-smtp-server:25 # fails
#this usually results to rejected public keys because ssh looks for the key in /root/.ssh/id_rsa
#so you need to coerce ssh to use your key while running under root account
sudo ssh me#server -i /home/me/.ssh/id_rsa -L 123:hidden-smtp-server:25
exposing some service from local network to anyone through the public server:
typical command would be
ssh me#server -R 8888:my-home-server:80
#quite often noone can't connect to server:8888 because sshd binds to localhost.
#To make in work you need to edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config file to enable GatewayPorts (the line in file needs to be GatewayPorts yes).
my tunnel works great on my computer for me only but I would like my coworkers to access my tunnel as well
typical working command you start with would be
ssh me#server -L 1234:hidden-smtp-server:25
#by default ssh binds to loopback(127.0.0.1) and that is the reason why noone can use such tunnel.
#you need to use switch -g and probably manually specify bind interface:
ssh me#server -g -L 0.0.0.0:1234:hidden-smtp-server:25
I have three hosts: A, B, C. B can connect to C through ssh, via port 221. A cannot connect to C because it's behind a router, but can connect to B through ssh. What I need, is to connect from A to C.
The situation is summarized below:
A -- p22 ---> B OK
B -- p221---> C OK
A -- p???---> C not working
I have tried many variations of ssh tunneling but looks like I don't get how tunneling works. Also, I have no root privileges on any of the hosts, therefore I cannot do port forwarding on port 22. I am therefore not sure this tunneling can be done at all. If it can, however, I would appreciate the exact commands to run on each host so that I can finally ssh from A to C.
While you could set up an explicit tunnel in this situation, it's much more convenient to use the -J option
ssh -J B -p 221 C
or the ProxyJump option explicitly
ssh -o ProxyJump=B -p 221 C
ssh will first connect to B for you (prompting for a password if necessary), then connect to C from B. From your point of view, you will have connected directly to C.
The idea of ssh -L local_port:another_host:destination_port user#host is to say a/ start listening locally on local_port b/ connect to remote host (as usual), and once you're there, connect to that another_host and c/ forward everything you will receive locally to that another host's destination_port
so, I would try the following (from host A)
ssh -C -N -L 2222:C:221 user#B
then from another terminal
ssh -p 2222 user#localhost
I did not test the above. Happy to dig deeper if required.
Here is the human readable explanation (hopefully) :
starting from host A
ssh, connect as user on host B (no port specified as 22 is the default)
-C compress all content in transit in the tunnel
-N says to not open a tty (interactive) session on host B
-L says "once you're on B, start listening on this host (A) on port 2222 (as you are not root) and forward everything to C, port 221"
If you're using password authentication, it should work. Certificate authentication would require a bit of additional configuration on B to correctly forward your certificate to C (which exact syntax I don't remember right now)
Setup:
My computer (linux / unix) has an arbitrary IP address
I can connect to a central linux server which has a static ip
Remote linux systems are set up so they only respond to central server IP address on port 22
I want to port forward through the central server so I can use MySQLWorkbench and make python scripting connections on port 3306 to the remote systems.
Ideally, I would like the syntax for ssh command to make the port forwarding work;
Suppose I want to forward local port 3307 to 3306 on the remote system. Assume my ip is x.x.x.x, the central server IP is y.y.y.y, and the remote system IP is z.z.z.z;
I think it has something to do with ssh -L but I can only forward to the central server so far. Maybe I need to connect to the central server, set up forwarding there, then set up forwarding on my machine? I think functionality exists to do it with a single command using ssh.
If this is a duplicate, it should not be marked as such because without knowing what magic keyword to search for, you can't find the duplicate;
Clarification: port 3306 is NOT open on the remote server. Only 22
ssh -L :3307:z.z.z.z:3306 user#y.y.y.y -Nf
Works fine
or
ssh -L 3307:z.z.z.z:3306 user#y.y.y.y -Nf
To only bind to x.x.x.x's localhost
The first example binds to all interfaces
edit...
Just seen that z.z.z.z only has port 22 open.
on y.y.y.y you will also need to have a local port open
run on y.y.y.y
ssh -L 3307:localhost:3306 user#z.z.z.z -Nf
then on x.x.x.x
ssh -L 3307:localhost:3307 user#y.y.y.y -Nf
run these commands in a screen for best results
You can actually condense these 2 commands together
ssh -L 3307:localhost:3307 user#y.y.y.y -f 'ssh -L 3307:localhost:3306 user#z.z.z.z -Nf'
ssh -L <local-port-to-listen>:<remote-host>:<remote-port>
The ‘L’ switch indicates that a local port forward is need to be created
Best method is to create the tunnel using putty (ssh client). so you can start the shell, and it will create the ssh tunnel for you. this is a good reference
https://howto.ccs.neu.edu/howto/windows/ssh-port-tunneling-with-putty/
There is one computer (A) in one local network and the other (B) in the other one. None of them have public ip addresses. Both LAN gateways are out of my control. But I have a VPS server with public IP address and both A and B are able to connect to this VPS. How can I establish an ssh tunnel from A to B using intermediary VPS?
Connect from B to vps forwarding remote port to local side (seem -R ssh option):
B# ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 vpsuser#vpshost
this will connect you to VPS host making port 2222 on server connected to B host port 22 (ssh)
Only thing left to do is to connect from A to VPS server and from it to B via 2222:
A# ssh vpsuser#vpshost
VPS# ssh -p2222 buser#localhost
B#
Suppose the network is like:
A(192.68.0.1)--------------------B(192.68.0.2)------------------C(192.68.0.3)
A is my ssh server, C is a target ssh server, and I can telnet from A to B(my account is not root).
B is a server not allow ssh login from others, but B can login to C via ssh.
Is it possible to connect C from A through B via ssh?
If you can run programs on B, you can use something like simpleproxy to forward the TCP connection to C.
Then you SSH from A to some port on B (not 22), which will forward your connection to C. Everything will still be encrypted since the SSH session is A<->C.
ok telnet to b
you can actually ssh to yourself on b, but the following command may not work but try it first
ssh -L0.0.0.0:2200:192.68.0.3:22 127.0.0.1 ...
if sshd is not running on b... then ssh to c
ssh -L0.0.0.0:2200:192.68.0.3:22 192.68.0.3
do a
netstat -an | grep 2200 -- Do this on b (192.68.0.2)
if the netstat has 127.0.0.1 listening on 2200 and not 0.0.0.0 this trick wont work... but if it does... you can then connect to ssh on port 2200 to b and it will hit c
ssh 192.68.0.2:2200
i have you ssh to localhost on b because i cant remember the command to not spawn a shell and im too lazy to look it up... but if the solution above does not work you wont be able to redirect ports with ssh without root, you would have to change the config file on b
you would have to add
GatewayPorts yes to the sshd config file in /etc/sshd/conf/sshd_config
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networking_2ndEd/ssh/ch09_02.htm -- this talks all about port forwarding with ssh