how to get remote IP addresses from reverse ssh tunnel - ssh

I have an Apache webserver running on a local machine through reverse ssh tunnel, i.e.:
ssh -R *:80:local_machine:8080 username#gateway_machine
In other words, all traffic from port 80 on gateway_machine
is sent to port 8080 on local_machine.
For monitoring purposes, I wish to know IP addresses of the remote clients
connected to gateway_machine. However my local Apache server sees
all traffic coming from the IP address of gateway_machine.
My question: Is there any way to setup ssh server running on gateway_machine such that
it sends all traffic to local_machine with actual remote IP addresses ?

The SSH protocol uses a channel type called "direct-tcpip" for forwarding a TCP connection. The protocol message for opening one of these channels includes the address and port of the client whose connection is being forwarded. So the information that you want is available to the ssh client (which in your case is opening the connection to the target of the forward).
The OpenSSH ssh client logs the originator address and port in a debug level message, so you can see it if you run ssh with the -v option:
$ ssh -v -R 2000:localhost:1000 localhost
...
debug1: client_request_forwarded_tcpip: listen localhost port 2000, originator ::1 port 51101
Here the originator address was ::1 (IPv6 localhost) and port 51101. The ssh utility doesn't do anything else with the information.
So, depending on your needs, you have three approaches to collect this information:
Invoke the ssh process which creates these forwards with the -v option, and arrange to collect and parse the relevant debug information.
Make source code changes to ssh to make it do what you want it to do with the information.
Write your own ssh client which does what you want. SSH client libraries are available for most modern programming languages.

Related

Ubuntu Jump Host in Open Telekom Cloud not working as expected

Currently, I have built a small datacenter environment in OTC with Terraform. based on Ubuntu 20.04 images.
The idea is to have a jump host in the setup phase and for operational purposes that allows spontaneous access to service frontends via ssh proxy jumps without permanently routing them to the public net.
Basic setup works fine so far - I can access the jump host with ssh, and can access the internal machines from there with ssh when I put the private key onto the jump host. So, cloudwise the security seems to be fine. Key pair is generated with ed25519, I use the same key for jump host and internal servers (for now).
What I cannot achieve is the proxy jump as a chained command from my outside machine.
On the jump host, I set AllowTcpForwarding to "yes" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restarted ssh and sshd services.
My current local ssh config looks like this:
Host otc
User ubuntu
Hostname <FloatingIP-Address>
Port 22
StrictHostKeyChecking=no
UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
IdentityFile= ~/.ssh/ssh_access
ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm-%r#%h:%p
ControlMaster auto
ControlPersist 10m
Host 10.*
User ubuntu
Port 22
IdentityFile=~/.ssh/ssh_access
ProxyJump otc
StrictHostKeyChecking=no
UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
I can use this to ssh otc to the jump host.
What I would expect is that I could use e.g. ssh 10.0.0.56 to reach an internal host without further ado. As well I should be able to use commands like ssh -L 8080:10.0.0.56:8080 10.0.0.56 -N to map an internal server's port to a localhost port on my external machine. This is how I managed that successfully on other hosting scenarios in the public cloud.
All I get is:
Stdio forwarding request failed: Session open refused by peer
kex_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
Journal on the Jump host says:
Jul 30 07:19:04 dev-nc-o-bastion sshd[2176]: refused local port forward: originator 127.0.0.1 port 65535, target 10.0.0.56 port 22
What I checked as well:
ufw is off on the Jump Host.
replaced ProxyJump configuration with ProxyCommand
So I am at the end of my knowledge. Has anyone a hint what else could be the reason? Any help welcome!
Ok, cause is found (but not yet fully explained).
My local ssh setting was allowing multiplexed forwards (ControlMaster auto ) which caused the creation of a unix socket file for the Controlpath in ~/.ssh.
I had to login to the jump host to AllowTcpForwarding in the first place.
After rebooting the sshd, I returned to the local machine and the failure occured when trying to forward to the remote internal machine.
After deleting the socket file in ~/.ssh, the connection can now be established as needed. Obviously, the persistent tunnel was not impacted by the restarted daemon on the jump host and simply refused to follow the new directive.
This cost me two days. On the bright side, I learned a lot about ssh :o

SFTP, SSH & SSH Tunneling

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

Can not connect to tensorboard on my google compute engine

I am trying to connect to tensorboard on my google compute engine instance but it is not working.
I have an anacondo distribution and use:
tensorboard --logdir=/logs
to create my tensorboard at default port 6006.
I also allowed HTTP/HTTPS traffic at my instance and also edited my firewall rules to allow traffic at:
IP ranges: 0.0.0.0/0
tcp:6006
udp:6006
But, when I try to acess my tensorboard at
http://EXTERNAL_IP:6006
I get a timeout loading.
Can anybody help me?
Normally this type of configuration is related to port communication issues. Go ahead and get all the available ports with nmap, and you should see something as following:
$ nmap -Pn [YOUR IP ADDRESS]
PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
80/tcp closed http
443/tcp closed https
3389/tcp closed ms-wbt-server
Once, you confirm if the port "6006" is open, check if it can connect to your server with a telnet:
$ telnet [YOUR IP ADDRESS] [YOUR PORT]
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
If you get "connection refused" make sure not only that this port is "open" but that it's "listening" as well (remember this needs to be configured on your application in your web server). You can check that with a netstat as following:
$ netstat -an | egrep -w “6006”
And you should see something like this (example for port 22):
$ netstat -an | grep 22
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
If it says 127.0.0.1 on the Local Address column, it means that port is ONLY listening for connections from your PC itself, not from the Internet or network. If it says 0.0.0.0, it means that port is listening on all 'network interfaces' (i.e. your computer, your modem(s) and your network card(s)).
Thus, the IP you need is the one as the example (0.0.0.0), since this means all IPs can reach that specific port. Plus, you must see the “Listen” status.
In addition, make sure to set up properly the Firewall rules in GCP and your software running on the instance itself to allow traffic to/from this port “6006” in specific, either to any instance or to a specific one using network tags.

SSH Socks Server

I'm trying to run a ssh SOCKS server on Windows 7 (listening on port 12345).
Here's the output I get on Cygwin:
$ ssh -v -D 12345 localhost
OpenSSH_6.8p1, OpenSSL 1.0.2c 12 Jun 2015
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: Connecting to localhost [::1] port 22.
debug1: connect to address ::1 port 22: Connection refused
debug1: Connecting to localhost [127.0.0.1] port 22.
debug1: connect to address 127.0.0.1 port 22: Connection refused
ssh: connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused
Why is it trying to connect to localhost:22?
Looks like it's trying to reach sshd running on localhost.
I thought the ssh client was enough to set up a local SOCKS server. If it isn't, why do I need sshd running?
From https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/PortForwarding:
"Dynamic port forwarding turns your SSH client into a SOCKS proxy server"
To explain why you need a (remote) ssh server, ssh can do three (or four) kinds of forwarding; quoting the man page:
-L Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be
forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side. This
works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local side,
optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a con-
nection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and a connection is made to host port
hostport from the remote machine. [...]
-R Specifies that the given port on the remote (server) host is to
be forwarded to the given host and port on the local side. This
works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the remote
side, and whenever a connection is made to this port, the connec-
tion is forwarded over the secure channel, and a connection is
made to host port hostport from the local machine. [...]
-D Specifies a local ``dynamic'' application-level port forwarding.
This works by allocating a socket to listen to port on the local
side, optionally bound to the specified bind_address. Whenever a
connection is made to this port, the connection is forwarded over
the secure channel, and the application protocol is then used to
determine where to connect to from the remote machine. Currently
the SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 protocols are supported, and ssh will act
as a SOCKS server. [...]
-X and -Y enable forwarding for X11. This is a small but convenient variation of -R.
Note that in all cases the data is forwarded over the ssh tunnel, from the local machine to the ssh server or the reverse, and (therefore) the ssh tunnel must exist for the data to be forwarded over. The only difference between -L and -D is that -D uses SOCKS4/5 on the local end to specify where the remote end connects to.
If you want a SOCKS proxy that connects directly from the proxy to the destination, not over an ssh tunnel, you need a plain SOCKS proxy, not ssh+sshd.
Your trying to connect without a port. So port 22 is used. Once that connection is open then SSH will set up the socks proxy on the port you specified (12345)
You need to connect to a valid SSH server. You specify the port with the -p flag

Connecting MySQL to server through another server by SSH

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/