root/fwknop/tags/fwknop-1.8.2-pre4/fwknop.8

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.TH FWKNOP 8 "Jun, 2007" Linux
.SH NAME
.B fwknop
\- Firewall Knock Operator
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B fwknop -A <ports> -D <host> [options]
.SH DESCRIPTION

.B fwknop
implements an authorization scheme known as Single Packet Authorization (SPA)
that requires only a single encrypted
packet to communicate various pieces of information including desired access
through an iptables policy and/or specific commands to execute on the target
system.  The main application of this program is to protect services such as
.B SSH
with an additional layer of security in order to make the exploitation of
vulnerabilities (both 0-day and unpatched code) much more difficult.  An
authorization server
.B fwknopd
passively monitors authorization packets via
.B libpcap
and hence there is no "server" to which to connect in the traditional sense.
Any service protected by fwknop is inaccessible (by using iptables to intercept
packets within the Linux kernel) before authenticating; anyone scanning for
the service will not be able to detect that it is even listening.  Single Packet
Authorization offers many advantages over port knocking, including non-replayability
of SPA packets, ability to use asymmetric ciphers (such as Elgamal), and SPA cannot
be broken by simply spoofing packets to duplicate ports within the knock sequence
on the server to break port knocking authentication.  SPA packets can easily be
spoofed as well (this is a good thing in this context), and this makes it possible
to make it appear as though, say, www.yahoo.com is trying to authenticate to a
target system but in reality the actual connection will come from a seemingly
unrelated IP. Although the default data collection method in Single Packet
Authorization mode is to use libpcap to sniff packets off the wire, fwknop can also
read packets out of a file that is written by the iptables
. B ulogd
pcap writer (or a separate sniffer process that is writing packet data to a file).
.PP
Authorization packets are either encrypted with the Rijndael block cipher
or via GnuPG and associated asymmetric ciphers.  If the symmetric encryption
method is chosen, then the encryption key is shared between between the
client and server (see the
.I /etc/fwknop/access.conf
file).  If the GnuPG
method is chosen, then the encryption keys are derived from GnuPG key
rings.  SPA packets generated by fwknop running as a client adhere
to the following format (before they are encrypted):
.PP
    random number (16 bytes)
    username
    timestamp
    software version
    mode (command mode (0) or access mode (1))
    if command mode => command to execute
    else access mode  => IP,proto,port
    MD5 sum
.PP
Each of the above fields are separated by a ":" character due to the
variable length of several of the fields, and those that might contain
":" characters are base64 encoded.  The MD5 message sum allows the
server to check message integrity after decryption, and the 16 bytes
of random data ensures (with high probability) that no two messages are
identical.  For each packet coming from an
.B fwknop
client, the
.B fwknopd
server caches the MD5 sum calculated over the entire packet and compares against
previous MD5 sums in order to detect attempted replay attacks.  The MD5 sum
cache file is located at
.I /var/log/fwknop/md5sums
and is not rotated so that the detection of duplicate SPA messages is maximized.
Both syslog and email alerts are generated if a replay is detected (although
this can be tuned via the
.B ALERTING_METHODS
variable in the
.I /etc/fwknop/fwknop.conf
file).  By default, the
.B fwknop
client sends authorization packets over UDP
port 62201, but this can be altered with the
.B --Server-port
argument. The server must first be configured to acquire the SPA data on
the changed ptotocol-port.  See
.B fwknopd(8)
for further details.  See the
.B EXAMPLES
section for example invocations of the
.B fwknop
client.

.SH REQUIRED ARGUMENTS

.TP
.BR \-D "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-target\ \<IP-address>
Direct the
.B fwknop
client to authenticate with the
.B fwknopd
daemon/service at the destination address <IP> .  The connection mode is discovered by the
.B fwknopd
daemon/service when it decrypts and parses the authentication packet.
.TP
.BR \-A "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-Access\ \<port\ list>
Provide a list of ports and protocols to access on a remote computer running
.B fwknopd.
The format of this list is '<proto>/<port>...<proto>/<port>,
e.g. "tcp/22,udp/53".
.B NOTE:
The vast majority of usages for
.B fwknop
require the -A argument, but sending full commands with the --Server-cmd
argument via an SPA packet to be executed by
.B fwknopd
does not require this argument.

.SH OPTIONS

.TP
.BR \-a "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-allow-ip\ \<allow-IP>
Specify IP address that should be permitted through the destination
.B fwknopd
server firewall (this IP is encrypted within the SPA packet itself). This is
useful to prevent a Man-In-The-Middle (MTIM) attack where an SPA packet can be
intercepted en-route and sent from a different IP than the original. Hence, if
the
.B fwknopd
server trusts the source address on the SPA packet IP header then the attacker
gains access.  The -a option puts the source address within the encrypted
SPA packet, and so thwarts this attack.  The -a option is also useful to specify
the IP that will be granted access when SPA packet itself is spoofed with
the --Spoof-src option.  Another related option is -R (see below) which instructs
the
.B fwknop
client to automatically resolve the externally routable IP address the local
system is connected to by querying the
.B http://www.whatismyip.com
website.
.TP
.BR \-R "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-Resolve-external-IP
This is an important option, and instructs the
.B fwknop
client and the
.B fwknopd
daemon/service to query
.B http://www.whatismyip.com
to determine the IP address that should be allowed through the iptables policy
at the remote
.B fwknopd
server side.  This is useful if the
.B fwknop
client is being used on a system that is behind an obscure NAT address.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-agent
Instruct
.B fwknop
to acquire GnuPG key password from a running
.B gpg-agent
instance.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-agent-info\ \<connection\ \info>
Specify the value of the GPG_AGENT_INFO environment variable as returned
by the
.B gpg-agent --daemon
command. If the
.B fwknop --gpg-agent
command line argument is used instead of
.B --gpg-agent-info,
then fwknop assumes that the GPG_AGENT_INFO environment variable has already
been set in the current shell.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-default-key
Use the key that GnuPG defines as the default, i.e. the key that is specified
by the
.B default-key
variable in
.I ~/.gnupg/options.
If the
.B default-key
variable is not defined
within
.I ~/.gnupg/options
, then GnuPG tries to use the first suitable key on
its key ring.  If the user does not know the password for this key, then the
standard password error will be thrown by GnuPG and reported back to the
user.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-home-dir\ \<dir>
Specify the path to the GnuPG directory; normally this path is derived from the
home directory of the user that is running the
.B fwknop
client.  This is useful when a 'root' user wishes to log into a remote machine
whose
.B sshd
daemon/service does not permit 'root' login.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-recipient\ \<key\ \ID>
Specify the GnuPG key ID, e.g. "1234ABCD" (see the output of "gpg --list-keys")
of the recipient of the Single Packet Authorization message.  This key is imported
by the
.B fwknopd
server and the associated private key is used to decrypt the SPA packet.  The
recipient's key must first be imported into the client GnuPG key ring.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-signing-key\ \<key\ \ID>
Specify the GnuPG key ID, e.g. "ABCD1234" (see the output of "gpg --list-keys")
to use when signing the SPA message.  The user is prompted for
the associated GPG password to create the signature.  This
adds a cryptographically strong mechanism to allow the
.B fwknopd
daemon on the remote server to authenticate who created the SPA message.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-gpg-verbose
Instruct
.B fwknop
to allow all output from the
.B gpg
process that is used by fwknop in GPG mode.  This is primarily used for debugging
purposes if it appears that the GPG encrypt/decrypt is not performing correctly.
.TP
.BR \-l "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-last-cmd
Instruct
.B fwknop
client to run with the same command line arguments that were used in a previous execution.
This option is useful because the clients'
.B fwknop
command line can be complex and difficult to recall.
.TP
.BR \-L "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-Last-host\ \<host>
Instruct
.B fwknop
to use the same command line arguments that were used to authenticate to
.B host.
.TP
.BR \-q "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-quiet
This option instructs the
.B fwknop
to be as quiet as possible and only print absolutely necessary information to
the terminal.
.TP
.BR \-s "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-source-ip
Instruct the
.B fwknop
client to form an SPA packet that contains the special-case IP
address "0.0.0.0" which will inform the destination
.B fwknopd
SPA server to use the source IP address from which the SPA packet originates as
the IP that will be allowed through upon modification of the firewall ruleset.
This option is useful if the fwknop client is deployed on a machine that is
behind a NAT device. The permit-address options
.B s
(default),
.B R
and
.B a
are mutually exclusive.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Server-port\ \<port>
Specify the port number where
.B fwknop
accepts packets via libpcap or ulogd pcap writer.  By default fwknop looks for
authorization packets over UDP port 62201.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Spoof-cmd\ \<cmd>
Specify the path to the command
.B knopspoof
which is used by the
.B fwknop
client in
.B --Spoof-src
mode.  This command is install by default at
.I /usr/sbin/knopspoof.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Spoof-file\ \<file>
Specify the path to the cache file that
.B knopspoof
reads in order to correctly generate the authorization packet.
This file defaults to
.I /tmp/spoof.cache
, and contains source and destination
IP addresses, protocol and port numbers, and the encrypted authorization
message.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Spoof-src\ \<IP>
Spoof the source address from which the
.B fwknop
client sends SPA packets.  This requires root on the client side access since a raw socket
is required to accomplish this.  Note that the
.B --Spoof-user
argument can be given in this mode in order to pass any
.B REQUIRE_USERNAME
keyword that might
be specified in
.I /etc/fwknop/access.conf.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Spoof-user\ \<user>
Specify the username that is included within SPA packet.  This allows
the
.B fwknop
client to satisfy any non-root
.B REQUIRE_USERNAME
keyword on the
.B fwknopd
server (
.B --Spoof-src
mode requires that the
.B fwknop
client is executed as root).
.TP
.BR \-T "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-TCP-sock
Have the
.B fwknop
client send an SPA packet over an established TCP connection.  This is not normally
done, but is useful for compatibility with the Tor for strong anonymity; see
.B http://tor.eff.org/.
.TP
.BR \-h "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-help
Display usage information and exit.
.TP
.BR \-V "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-Version
Display version information and exit.
.TP
.BR \-v "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-verbose
Run the
.B fwknop
client in verbose mode.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Server-cmd\ \<cmd>
.B NOTE:
This is for command mode only (i.e. when you want to send a command across
to a system running
.B fwknopd
and have it execute the command). This option is not needed when trying to
gain access to a service via the SPA mechanism.  To use this feature, please
ensure that ENABLE_CMD_EXEC; is set in the file
.I /etc/fwknop/access.conf
on the
.B fwknopd
server you are sending the command to.
The --Server-cmd argument allows a complete command (e.g. "ping -c 1 www.yahoo.com",
or "iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -s 65.x.x.x --dport 443 -i eth0 -j DNAT --to 192.168.10.20:443")
to be send to an
.B fwknop
server, which will execute the command as root.  Command execution is enabled only
if the
.B ENABLE_CMD_EXEC keyword is given in
.I /etc/fwknop/access.conf
(note that commands can easily be restricted with the
.B CMD_REGEX
keyword as well).
.TP

.B Legacy Port-knock mode only

All of the following options in this section are for the traditional port knocking
mode mode.  This is a legacy mode and is
.B not
the preferred or recommended mode next to Single Packet Authorization ( see
.B http://www.cipherdyne.org/fwknop/docs/SPA.html
for details on why).
.RS
.TP
.BR \-\^\-offset\ \<port>
Specify a port offset to use when running
.B fwknop
in encrypted knock mode.  The default is 61000.
.TP
.BR \-r "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-rotate-proto
Rotate the protocol across tcp and udp for
encrypted sequences.  This just adds one more additional layer of obfuscation
to an encrypted sequence.
.TP
.BR \-\^\-Server-mode\ \<mode>
This command line switch provides an interface to
the old port knocking method if
the mode argument is "knock".  If the
.B --Server-mode
argument is not given then the
.B fwknop
client defaults to using the SPA method which provides much better
security characteristics than port knocking (encrypted or not).
.TP
.BR \-t "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-time-delay\ \<seconds>
Specify a time delay to introduce between successive
connection attempts.  This option is used by the
.B fwknop
client.  On the server side,
.B fwknopd
uses the variables MIN_TIME_DIFF
and MAX_TIME_DIFF to control whether the time delay actually means
something (i.e. if the MIN_TIME_DIFF is 2 seconds for a SOURCE block,
then the argument to the --time-delay option must be at least 2 at the
client side).
.TP
.BR \-u "\fR,\fP " \-\^\-user-rc\ \<rc-file>
The default connection rc file the
.B fwknop
client uses to know what shared port knocking sequence to send to a destination machine
is defined in the file
.I ~/.fwknoprc.
The path to this file can be changed with the
.B --user-rc
command line option.
.RE

.SH FILES
.TP
.B ~/.fwknop.run
Contains the last command line arguments that the
.B fwknop
client was invoked with.

.TP
.B ~/.fwknop.hosts
Contains the last command line arguments for individual hosts that the
.B fwknop
client has been used to gain access to.  By using the
.B --Last-host
switch, these arguments can be recalled and used.

.SH ENVIRONMENT:

.B GPG_AGENT_INFO
(only used in --gpg-agent mode).

.SH EXAMPLES:
The following examples illustrate the command line arguments that could
be supplied to the
.B fwknop
client in a few situations:

.B Access mode examples
.RS
Packet contents printed to stdout at the
.B fwknop
client when creating a 'access mode' SPA packet:
.PP
        Random data: 7457916043504181
        Username:    user_name
        Timestamp:   1185272057
        Version:     1.8.1
        Action:      1 (access mode)
        Access:      NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN,tcp/22
        MD5 sum:     35rdd5f8tZTavUy0MuEdqw
.PP

Use the Single Packet Authorization mode to gain access to tcp/22 (ssh)
and udp/53 running on the system 10.0.0.123 from the IP 192.168.10.4:
.PP
.B $ fwknop -A 'tcp/22,udp/53' -a 192.168.10.4 -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Same as above example, but gain access from whatever source IP is seen
by the fwknop server (useful if the fwknop client is behind a NAT device):
.PP
.B $ fwknop -A 'tcp/22,udp/53' -s -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Same as above example, but use the IP identification website http://www.whatismyip.com/
to derive the client IP address.  This is a safer method of acquiring the client IP
address than using the "-s" option because the source IP is put within the encrypted
packet instead of having the
.B fwknopd
daemon grant the requested access from whatever IP address the SPA packet originates:
.PP
.B $ fwknop -A 'tcp/22,udp/53' -R -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Use the Single Packet Authorization mode to gain access to tcp/22 (ssh)
and udp/53 running on the system 10.0.0.123, and use GnuPG keys to encrypt
and decrypt:
.PP
.B $ fwknop -A 'tcp/22,udp/53' --gpg-sign ABCD1234 --gpg--recipient 1234ABCD -R -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Instruct the fwknop server running at 10.0.0.123 to allow 172.16.5.4 to
connect to TCP/22, but spoof the authorization packet from an IP associated
with www.yahoo.com:
.PP
.B # fwknop --Spoof-src 'www.yahoo.com' -A tcp/22 -a 172.16.5.4 -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
.RE

.B Command mode examples
.RS
.B NOTE:
Please ensure that ENABLE_CMD_EXEC; is set in the file
.I /etc/fwknop/access.conf
on the
.B fwknopd
server you are attempting to connect to.
Packet contents printed to stdout at the
.B fwknop
client when creating a 'command mode' SPA packet:
.PP
        Random data: 1387393943305159
        Username:    user_name
        Timestamp:   1185349703
        Version:     1.8.1
        Action:      0 (command mode)
        Cmd:         echo "The commands sent - minus quote charaters around the command" & sleep 10; echo "The End"
        MD5 sum:     fJtQkAcK1A1XMRAHEG1UcA
.PP
Instruct the fwknop server running at 10.0.0.123 to send a single ICMP
echo request to www.yahoo.com:
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-cmd 'ping -c 1 www.yahoo.com' -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
.RE

.B Port-knock mode (legacy) examples
.RS
This connection mode is a legacy mode and is
.B not
the preferred or recommended mode.

Packet contents printed to stdout at the
.B fwknop
client when in 'port-knock mode':
<TODO>

Send an encrypted knock sequence to the IP "10.0.0.123" instructing the
fwknop daemon running there to open tcp port 22 to source address
192.168.10.4:
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-mode 'knock' -A tcp/22 -a 192.168.10.4 -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Same as above, but this time instruct the remote fwknop daemon to open
tcp port 22 to whatever source address the encrypted sequence originates
from (useful if the fwknop client is behind a NAT device):
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-mode 'knock' -A tcp/22 -s -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Same as above, but rotate the knock sequence through the tcp and udp
protocols (remember that iptables must be configured to log both tcp and
udp packets to the default port range of 61000-61255):
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-mode 'knock' -A tcp/22 -s -r -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Same as above, but change the base port for the encrypted sequence to
55000 (the default is 61000):
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-mode 'knock' -A tcp/22 -s -r --offset 55000 -D 10.0.0.123
.PP
Send a shared knock sequence to the IP 10.11.11.123.  The fwknop client
will read the sequence out of the file
.B ~/.fwknoprc
and the server will read the sequence out of
.B /etc/fwknop/access.conf:
.PP
.B $ fwknop --Server-mode 'knock' -D 10.11.11.123
.RE

.SH DEPENDENCIES
.B fwknop
requires perl.  To take advantage of all of the authentication and access management features of the
.B fwknopd
daemon/service a functioning iptables firewall is required on the underlying
operating system.  If fwknop is being run in the legacy port knocking mode,
then iptables must log packets via syslog, and ideally the
.B --log-tcp-options
argument will be specified in the iptables logging rule so that the
.B fwknopd
daemon/service will
be able to use a strategy similar to
.B p0f
to passively fingerprint operating systems.

.SH DIAGNOSTICS
.B fwknop
can be run in debug mode with the --debug command line option.  This will
disable daemon mode execution, and print verbose information to the screen
on STDERR as packets are received.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR fwknopd (8),
.BR iptables (8),
.BR gpg (1),
.BR gpg-agent (1),
.BR knopmd (8),
.BR knopwatchd (8)
.BR p0f (1),
More information on the
differences between port knocking and Single Packet Authorization can be found
in the paper "Single Packet Authorization with fwknop" available here:
.B http://www.cipherdyne.org/fwknop/docs/SPA.html

.SH AUTHOR
Michael Rash <mbr@cipherdyne.org>

.SH CREDITS
The phrase "Single Packet Authorization" was coined by MadHat, see:
.B http://www.nmrc.org/
The term "port knocking" was coined by Martin Krzywinski, see:
.B http://www.portknocking.org/
 The original p0f passive OS fingerprinter was written by Michal Zalewski, and is
available here:
.B http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/p0f.shtml

.SH BUGS
Send bug reports to mbr@cipherdyne.org.  Suggestions and/or comments are
always welcome as well.

.SH DISTRIBUTION
.B fwknop
is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the latest
version may be downloaded from
.B http://www.cipherdyne.org/