Port forwarding with nginx from java - java

I'm trying to make a java application which uses redis as a backend. Since Redis is a really fast key-value store which I'd like to use, but redis is made to be used with 1 client so it doesn't have an option for user:pass authentication. I'd like to find a way to implement some kind of authentication, so I tried nginx with the redis2 extension. I did this because I could use client-side certficates and HTTPS. But it's making my application really slow.
I'm thinking about using some kind of tunnel which connects to redis via nginx proxy. For this redis would be listen on localhost and there would be an address which I'd like to use to reach redis, but with https authentication. So basically my current method
JAVA - Jedis - LAN - REDIS ,would be
JAVA - Jedis(with localhost as the tunnel entrance?)-
-SSL LAN - Nginx(tunnel exit) - Redis
Any tip for achieving this? I've been googled the web for the last days but i couldn't come up anything that adds only a little overhead to the native connection.

Redis is designed to work on a secure network, behind a backend application. Client applications are not supposed to connect directly to Redis. It makes Redis a poor choice for a 2-tier application.
Now if you still want to use Redis for this, you have several options. You can encapsulate the Redis server in a HTTP interface. This is what the nginx redis2 module provide. You might also want to have a look at webdis, which is similar (and does not depend on nginx). Webdis offers some access control mechanisms. See the documentation.
Another solution is to establish a tunnel, as you proposed. I would not use nginx for this, but just plain old SSH. Let's suppose Redis server runs on machine B (port 6379) and client runs on machine A.
On machine A, I can run:
ssh user#host_B -L 7008:host_B:6379 -N
It will open a tunnel from A to B from local port 7008 (arbitrary choice), and waits. The user should be declared on host B, and its password known. In another session, still on host A, we can now run:
redis-cli -p 7008 ping
Please note a standard Redis client is used. The tunnel handles authentication, encryption and optionally compression in a transparent way for the client.
Now, your client is a Java application, and you probably do not want to run SSH commands to setup the tunnel. Hopefully, you can use the Jsch package to open the tunnel directly from Java. Here is an example with Jedis:
import redis.clients.jedis.*;
import java.util.*;
import com.jcraft.jsch.*;
public class TestTunnel {
Jedis jedis;
Session session;
JSch jsch = new JSch();
int port;
// None of the following should be hardcoded
static String USER = "user"; // SSH user on the redis server host
static String PASSWD = "XXXXXXXX"; // SSH user password
static String HOST = "192.168.1.62"; // Redis server host
static int PORT = 6379; // Redis server port
public TestTunnel() {
try {
// Open the SSH session
session = jsch.getSession( USER, HOST, 22 );
session.setPassword( PASSWD );
java.util.Properties config = new java.util.Properties();
config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
config.put("Compression", "yes");
config.put("ConnectionAttempts","3");
session.setConfig(config);
session.connect();
// Setup port forwarding from localhost to the Redis server
// Local port is ephemeral (given by the OS)
// Jedis connects to localhost using the local port
port = session.setPortForwardingL( 0, HOST, PORT );
jedis = new Jedis( "127.0.0.1", port );
} catch ( JSchException e ) {
// Proper error handling omitted
System.out.println(e);
}
}
public void disconnect() {
jedis.disconnect();
try {
session.delPortForwardingL( port );
session.disconnect();
} catch ( JSchException e ) {
// Proper error handling omitted
System.out.println(e);
}
}
public void mytest( int n ) {
for ( int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
jedis.set("k" + k, "value"+k);
}
System.out.println("Read: "+jedis.get("k0") );
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
TestTunnel obj = new TestTunnel();
obj.mytest(10);
obj.disconnect();
}
}
It works fine, but please note there is an overhead due to the tunnel. The overhead is very low when the network is slow (the Internet for instance). On a fast LAN (1 GbE), it is much more noticeable: the latency can be multiplied by up to 3 when the tunnel is used. The maximum throughput the Redis server can sustain is also impacted. On server-side, the sshd daemon takes some CPU (more than Redis itself).
That said, I don't think raw performance matters much for a 2-tier application.

Note: There's an SSL version of redis called SSL-REDIS which can be found on github:
https://github.com/bbroerman30/ssl-redis 2.6ish
https://github.com/tritondigital/ssl-redis 2.4ish
With this and modifying the Jedis Java client, SSL authentication could be achieved.

Related

Cannot Get DNS Requests via Java Code in Windows 10 and DLINK DIR-615 router

So I am working on a software that will monitor(and may alter by acting as a Forrowder) all the DNS requests made by my router.
What I did?
So for first I wrote a Java code that can listens to a specific port and prints all the requests to the console[For now I just want to test with the requests].
The code is:
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class PortLogger{
public static void main(String[] args) {
LoggerServer loggerServer = new LoggerServer(53);
loggerServer.start();
}
}
class LoggerServer extends Thread{
private int port;
public LoggerServer(int port){
this.port = port;
}
#Override
public void run(){
try{
int id = 1;
ServerSocket server = new ServerSocket(port);
System.out.println("Server Listening at port " + port);
Socket client;
while(true){
client = server.accept();
ClientHandler clientHandler = new ClientHandler(client, id++);
clientHandler.start();
}
}catch(Exception ex){
System.out.println("Exception at Server : 1 :: EX = " + ex);
}
}
}
class ClientHandler extends Thread{
private Socket client;
private int id;
public ClientHandler(Socket client, int id){
this.client = client;
this.id = id;
}
#Override
public void run(){
try {
String data = "";
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));
while(true){
data = reader.readLine();
if(data.length() > 0){
System.out.println("Client : " + id + " :: " + data);
}
}
}catch(Exception ex){
System.out.println("Exception at Client : " + id + " :: EX = " + ex);
}
}
}
The sole propose of this code for now is to Show me all the requests made to the server.
I know that I also have to change the DNS Server in my router for this.
So, for that I first tried by going to internet setup and put the local IP of my computer as DNS server.
But it was showing :
DNS IP and LAN IP must be on different networks!
But I found another way to do it.
It is as follows:
I went to the setup wizard of the router and the set the DNS Server to the same IP.
Surprisingly this worked!
[I have no idea whether this is a bug in the D-Link Firmware or not.
I have also added an exception to allow all request both inbound and outbound to port 53.
What is the problem?
So now the problem is that even after successfully changing the DNS to my servers. There seemed to be no requests at all to the console. I tried a lot but nothing.
I checked that the program was working fine by voluntarily sending request to it using telnet?
Now am I doing anything wrong or there is some bug with the router(its is a old one).
NOTE: The black lines on the images are just to hide my public IP address nothing special.
EDIT: I tried a few more times then found that websites were not opening when I changed the DNS in my router but still nothing in the console!
While it is difficult to give you a complete answer why your application doesn't work I can suggest some ways to investigate:
Port 53 is a privileged port. This means on Linux binding to that port requires root privileges and the application will throw an exception due to 'permission denied' if executed as a 'normal' user. As you are using Windows I don't know what it does if you try to bind as a 'normal' user, or you might be executing as an Admin user (or whatever the equivalent of 'root' is in Windows) and you don't know it. It might even just silently fail i.e. appear to bind when in fact it hasn't and no data is passed through you your application. As an aside, defaulting to 'root' as the default execution user in Linux is not the norm because it's insecure and most Linux distributions if not all do not allow this by default i.e. you can have this but you have to tell the distribution this is what you intend during installation. I'll let you come to your own conclusions what stance Windows takes for making users 'admin'...
In a scenario such as this if it were me I would immediately go to some networking tools to see what is happening. On Linux this is tcpdump or Wireshark. You can also get Wireshark for Windows as it's a GUI application. This will let you monitor and filter network traffic and so will be independent of your application. You can filter by source or destination address and/or port number.
I would leave the DNS setting alone in the router and change the DNS settings in one machine first, call it the test client, and set its DNS address to the machine where your application is running. Using tcpdump or Wireshark you can then make requests on your test_client e.g. browser requests and see the resulting network traffic.
You never mentioned if after changing your router's DNS settings all browser requests from clients fail. This is what I would expect to see if your router can no longer get a name resolution. However there maybe some DNS caching going on in your clients so you may appear to get successful DNS requests on your test_client. Again look at network traffic or use a Linux client which will provide you with much better networking tools.

Java - connect to webpage using SSH tunneling

fellow Java coders. I have recently been faced with an interesting task - to create software that would use an SSH tunnel as a proxy for browsing webpages (over HTTPS). After reading some docs on JSCH (http://www.jcraft.com/jsch/, a Java SSH tunneling library), which all gave database connections as an example, I decided to try it myself. Here is the connection code I copied from http://kahimyang.info/kauswagan/code-blogs/1337/ssh-tunneling-with-java-a-database-connection-example
int assigned_port;
int local_port=3309;
// Remote host and port
int remote_port=3306;
String remote_host = "<SSH host goes here>";
String login = "<SSH login goes here>";
String password = "<SSH password goes here>";
try {
JSch jsch = new JSch();
// Create SSH session. Port 22 is your SSH port which
// is open in your firewall setup.
Session session = jsch.getSession(login, remote_host, 22);
session.setPassword(password);
// Additional SSH options. See your ssh_config manual for
// more options. Set options according to your requirements.
java.util.Properties config = new java.util.Properties();
config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
config.put("Compression", "yes");
config.put("ConnectionAttempts","2");
session.setConfig(config);
// Connect
session.connect();
// Create the tunnel through port forwarding.
// This is basically instructing jsch session to send
// data received from local_port in the local machine to
// remote_port of the remote_host
// assigned_port is the port assigned by jsch for use,
// it may not always be the same as
// local_port.
assigned_port = session.setPortForwardingL(local_port,
remote_host, remote_port);
} catch (JSchException e) {
System.out.println("JSch:" + e.getMessage());
return;
}
if (assigned_port == 0) {
System.out.println("Port forwarding failed!");
return;
}
Now, I am not exactly experienced with all the port forwarding stuff, but, if I understand it correctly, the code is supposed to forward all connections incoming to 127.0.0.1:3309 (or whatever the assigned_port is) through the SSH server. Now I'm stuck. How am I supposed to send a HttpsURLConnection through 127.0.0.1:3309? I tried defining it as an HTTP or HTTPS or SOCKS proxy, but neither works. Can anybody help me?
The code you have posted will forward all traffic from 127.0.0.1:3309 to port 3306 on the SSH server you have connected to.
When using port forwarding you treat the listening address:port as if it were the actual destination. So if you need to use a HttpsURLConnection you would construct it with a URL of
https://127.0.0.1:3309/
Obviously you also need to append a path to the URL depending on what you are trying to achieve. I would suggest modifying your code to use more standard HTTP ports, try with HTTP first and once that is working move to HTTPS
int local_port=8080;
// Remote host and port
int remote_port=80;
The URL for above will be
http://127.0.0.1:8080
You can always test the URL by pasting it into a browser.
One of the problems you may encounter using HTTPS is certificate validation so this is why I suggest testing plain HTTP first to prove your code is working.

Restrict java-websocket access to localhost

I'm writing a java-websocket server as a cryptocurrency client.
For security reasons, I'd like to restrict access to the local machine.
Is there a way to restrict access to a java-websocket server by IP or hostname?
If so, how?
You should specify your listening ip to 127.0.0.1 thus it wont be possible to connect from the outside.
Edit
Looking at the example ChatServer.java the binding happens with
ChatServer s = new ChatServer( port );
The class implements two constructors:
public ChatServer( int port ) throws UnknownHostException {
super( new InetSocketAddress( port ) );
}
public ChatServer( InetSocketAddress address ) {
super( address );
}
So you could also call the server with an inetSocketAddress. Create one thats binds to localhost:
new ServerSocket(9090, 0, InetAddress.getByName(null));
and then call the server with that instead of just the port.
So replace
ChatServer s = new ChatServer( port );
with
InetSocketAddress myLocalSocket = new ServerSocket(9090, 0, InetAddress.getByName(null));
ChatServer s = new ChatServer( myLocalSocket );
in your example and it should work.
The accepted answer by Max will prevent connections to your socket from outside, but there is another attack vector that you should consider.
A connection to your localhost WebSocket can be made by JavaScript hosted on any outside website. If your local user is tricked into visiting a remote site, the HTML/JavaScript hosted by that site will be able to communicate with your local web socket.
You may be able to mitigate this by restrict connections based Origin header value, which will indicates the script origin address generating the WebSocket connection request. Keep in mind that the Origin header is optional and you are relying on the browser to set it appropriately to where the script came from.

How do I connect to the localhost using UnboundID LDAP SDK?

How do I connect to the localhost using UnboundID LDAP SDK? I would think it is pretty straight forward, but maybe not. I connect just fine using the following code, but I would like to have the option to just use the locahost connection and not have to authenticate.
With the connection, I perform a series of add/remove/modify, which works fine with the below connection.
public LDAPConnection connect(LdapConnectionModel connectionModel)
{
this.connectionModel = connectionModel;
try
{
// Determine is SSL port was specified
int port = connectionModel.isSslEnabled() ? SSL_PORT : PORT;
// Determined bind DN
String bindDN = connectionModel.getUsername() + "#" + connectionModel.getDomain();
// Connect
connection = new LDAPConnection(connectionModel.getHost(), port, bindDN, String.valueOf(connectionModel.getPassword()));
// Clear out our password
connectionModel.setPassword(new char[] {});
}
catch (LDAPException e)
{
LOG.warning("CONNECTION FAILED: " + e.getMessage());
LOG.warning(e.getMessage());
}
return connection;
}
For example, getting a connection like this is fine, but then I get this error:
"In order to perform this operation a successful bing must be completed on the connection."
// Connect
connection = new LDAPConnection("localhost",389);
It makes no difference where, or on which host, the directory server is running. When an LDAP client connects to a server, that connection is unauthenticated. LDAP clients must use the BIND request to request the server change the authorization state of the connection to a state that permits the operations that the LDAP client desires.
see also
LDAP: Authentication Best Practices
LDAP: Programming Practices

How to SSH to a server behind another SSH server using JSch?

I need to be able to ssh from a Java program into a remote server, and from there SSH to another server. I have credentials for both servers on my client.
The commands will be passed automatically from within the app as regular strings (no user input). I need to be able to run those custom commands on the second server and be able to decide what commands to issue during runtime, based on the output and some simple logic.
Can I use JSch to do that and if yes, where should I start look into? (Examples, info)
=============================================================
ADDED:
Exception in thread "main" com.jcraft.jsch.JSchException:
UnknownHostKey: host.net. RSA key fingerprint is 'blahblahblah'
as till now, I am solving this problem by modifying the known_hosts file and adding host manually in there.
Can I bypass this little problem by settings an option somewhere telling the JSch to press YES automatically when this YES-NO question is asked?
To connect to a second server behind a firewall, there are in principle two options.
The naive one would be to call ssh on the first server (from an exec channel), indicating the right server. This would need agent forwarding with JSch, and also doesn't provide the JSch API to access the second server, only the ssh command line.
The better one would be to use the connection to the first server to build up a TCP Tunnel, and use this tunnel to connect to the second server. The JSch Wiki contains a ProxySSH class (together with some example code) which allows to use a JSch session as a tunnel for a second JSch session. (Disclaimer: This class was written mainly by me, with some support from the JSch author.)
When you have your connection to the second server, use either a shell channel or a series of exec channels to execute your commands. (See Shell, Exec or Subsystem Channel in the JSch Wiki for an overview, and the Javadocs for details.)
For your unknown-host-key problem:
The secure version would be to collect all host keys (in a secure way) before and put them in the known_hosts file. (If you simply trust the key which is presented to you, you are vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. If these are of no concern in your network, since it is physically secured, good for you.)
The convenient version is setting the configuration option StrictHostKeyChecking to no - this will add unknown host keys to the host keys file:
JSch.setConfig("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
(You can also set it individually on the sessions, if you only want to set it for the proxied sessions and not for the tunnel session. Or override it for the tunnel session with yesor ask - there the MITM danger might be greater.)
A middle way would be to enable actually asking the user (which then should compare the fingerprints to some list) - for this, implement the UserInfo interface and provide the object to the session. (The JSch Wiki contains an example implementation using Swing JOptionPanes, which you can simply use if your client program runs on a system with GUI.)
For the saving of accepted host keys to work, you must use the JSch.setKnownHosts method with a file name argument, not the one with an InputStream argument - else your accepting will have to be repeated for each restart of your client.
Use an SSH tunnel, aka local port forwarding, to open an SSH/SFTP connection to B via A.
Session sessionA = jsch.getSession("usernameA", "hostA");
// ...
sessionA.connect();
int forwardedPort = sessionA.setPortForwardingL(0, "hostB", 22);
Session sessionB = jsch.getSession("usernameB", "localhost", forwardedPort);
// ...
sessionB.connect();
// Use sessionB here for shell/exec/sftp
You may need to deal with UnknownHostKey exception.
This can help anyone. Works fine:
public static void sesionA(){
try {
Session sessionA = jSch.getSession(username, hostA);
Properties config = new Properties();
config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
sessionA.setConfig(config);
sessionA.setPassword(passwordA);
sessionA.connect();
if(sessionA.isConnected()) {
System.out.println("Connected host A!");
forwardedPort = 2222;
sessionA.setPortForwardingL(forwardedPort, hostB, 22);
}
} catch (JSchException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void sesionB(){
try {
Session sessionB = jSch.getSession(username, "localhost", forwardedPort);
Properties config = new Properties();
config.put("StrictHostKeyChecking", "no");
sessionB.setConfig(config);
sessionB.setPassword(passwordB);
sessionB.connect();
if(sessionB.isConnected()) {
System.out.println("Connected host B!");
}
}
}

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