#!/usr/bin/perl # nat-traverse -- Use of UDP to traverse NAT gateways # Copyright (C) 2005 Ingo Blechschmidt # # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or # modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License # as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 # of the License, or (at your option) any later version. # # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the # GNU General Public License for more details. # # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License # along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software # Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, # USA. use warnings; use strict; use v5.6.0; use IO::Socket::INET; use Getopt::Long; # More elegant use constant {...} not available in Perl 5.6.x. use constant GARBAGE_MAGIC => "nat-traverse-garbage"; use constant ACK_MAGIC => "nat-traverse-ack"; use constant PACKET_SIZE => 8 * 1024; sub debug($); # ARGV parsing. GetOptions( "window=i" => \(my $WINDOW = 10), "timeout=i" => \(my $TIMEOUT = 10), "quit-after-connect" => \my $QUIT_AFTER_CONNECT, "cmd=s" => \my $CMD, "version" => sub { print "nat-traverse 0.4\n" and exit }, "help" => \&usage, ) or usage(); usage() unless @ARGV == 1; my ($LPORT, $PEER, $RPORT) = split /:/, $ARGV[0]; usage() unless $LPORT =~ /^\d+/ and $RPORT =~ /^\d+/ and $PEER; # Helper sub to create our socket... sub sockgen { debug "Creating socket localhost:$LPORT <-> $PEER:$RPORT... "; my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new( PeerHost => $PEER, PeerPort => $RPORT, LocalPort => $LPORT, Proto => "udp", ReuseAddr => 1, ) or die "Couldn't create socket: $!\n"; debug "done.\n"; return $sock; } # Helper sub to wait for a given char. sub waitfor { my ($sock, $match) = @_; while(1) { debug "."; my $got; defined(sysread $sock, $got, length $match) or die "Couldn't read from socket: $!\n"; last if defined $got and $got eq $match; } } # Initial phase: Sending of initial packets to make the firewalls think the # packets are replies. my $sock = sockgen(); debug "Sending $WINDOW initial packets... "; for(1..$WINDOW) { debug "."; syswrite $sock, GARBAGE_MAGIC; sleep 1; } syswrite $sock, ACK_MAGIC; debug " done.\n"; # Waiting for ACK packet so we see the connection is established. debug "Waiting for ACK (timeout: $TIMEOUT\Es)... "; { local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die " timeout.\n" }; alarm $TIMEOUT; waitfor($sock, ACK_MAGIC); alarm 0; } debug " done.\n"; # :) debug "Connection established.\n"; debug "Exiting.\n" and exit 0 if $QUIT_AFTER_CONNECT; # Either exec() $CMD or relay STDIN and STDOUT appropriately. if(defined $CMD) { debug "Redirecting STDIN and STDOUT... "; open STDOUT, ">&", $sock or die "Couldn't redirect STDOUT: $!\n"; open STDIN, "<&", $sock or die "Couldn't redirect STDIN: $!\n"; debug "done.\n"; debug "exec()ing \"$CMD\"...\n"; exec $CMD or die "Couldn't exec() \"$CMD\": $!\n"; } else { debug "Type ahead.\n"; $SIG{CHLD} = "IGNORE"; my $pid = fork; die "Couldn't fork: $!\n" unless defined $pid; if($pid) { # Parent -- read chars from STDIN and send them to the socket. my $buf; while(1) { my $ret = sysread STDIN, $buf, PACKET_SIZE; defined $ret or die "Couldn't read from STDIN: $!\n"; $ret or last; syswrite $sock, $buf or die "Couldn't write to socket: $!\n"; } # Exit on ^D. debug "Exiting; sending SIGTERM to child process... "; kill 15 => $pid or die "Couldn't send SIGTERM to child process (PID $pid): $!\n"; debug "done.\n"; } else { # Child -- print what's "in the socket". print $_ while defined(sysread $sock, $_, PACKET_SIZE) or die "Couldn't read from socket: $!\n"; } # Clean up after ourselves. close $sock or die "Couldn't close socket: $!\n"; } # Nice debugging output. { my $fresh; sub debug($) { my $msg = shift; print STDERR "> " and $fresh++ unless $fresh; print STDERR $msg; $fresh = 0 if substr($msg, -1) eq "\n"; 1; } } # Display usage info. sub usage { print STDERR <<'USAGE'; exit } nat-traverse v0.4 -- Use of UDP to traverse NAT gateways Usage: user@left $ nat-traverse [options] port1:natgw-of-right:port2 user@right $ nat-traverse [options] port2:natgw-of-left:port1 where port1, port2: Two unused UDP ports left, right: The hosts behind NAT gateways you want to connect natgw-of-left, The addresses of the NAT gateways of left and right natgw-of-right: Available options: --window=10 The number of initial garbage packets to send. --timeout=10 The number of seconds to wait for an acknowledgement of the connection by the peer. --cmd="pppd..." The command to run with its STDIN and STDOUT bound to the socket. If no command is specified, everything you type is relayed to the other end of the socket, i.e. nat-traverse degrades to netcat. --quit-after-connect Quit nat-traverse after the tunnel was established successfully. --version Display version information. --help This help. Options may be abbreviated to uniqueness. Run "perldoc nat-traverse" for more information. USAGE =head1 NAME nat-traverse - Use of UDP to traverse NAT gateways =head1 SYNOPSIS user@left $ nat-traverse 40000:natgw-of-right:40001 user@right $ nat-traverse 40001:natgw-of-left:40000 =head1 VERSION This document describes nat-traverse v0.4. =head1 DESCRIPTION nat-traverse establishes connections between nodes which are behind NAT gateways, i.e. hosts which do I have public IP addresses. Additionally, you can setup a small VPN by using pppd on top of nat-traverse (see L). nat-traverse does I need an external server on the Internet, and it isn't necessary to reconfigure the involved NAT gateways, either. I See L for how this is achieved. =head1 OPTIONS =over =item C:I:I> (required) Sets the local port to use and the remote address to connect to. Note that you have to give the IP address or hostname of the I of the host you want to connect to, as the target host doesn't have a public IP address. =item C<--cmd="I"> Runs the specified command after establishing the connection. The command will be run with its STDIN and STDOUT bound to the socket, i.e. everything the command writes to STDOUT will be forwarded to the peer. If no command is specified, nat-traverse will relay input from STDIN to the peer and vice versa, i.e. nat-traverse degrades to netcat. =item C<--window=I<10>> Sets the number of initial garbage packets to send. The default, 10, should work with most firewalls. =item C<--timeout=I<10>> Sets the maximum number of seconds to wait for an acknowledgement by the peer. =item C<--quit-after-connect> Quits nat-traverse after the tunnel has been established successfully. nat-traverse returns a non-C<0> statuscode to indicate that it wasn't able to establish the tunnel. C<--quit-after-connect> is useful if you want another program to use the tunnel. For example, you could configure OpenVPN to use the the same ports as nat-traverse -- thus OpenVPN would be able to cross NAT gateways. =item C<--version>, C<--help> =back =head1 TECHNIQUE nat-traverse establishes connections between hosts behind NAT gateways, without need for reconfiguration of the involved NAT gateways. =over =item 1. Firstly, nat-traverse on host C sends garbage UDP packets to the NAT gateway of C. These packets are, of course, discarded by the firewall. =item 2. Then C's nat-traverse sends garbage UDP packets to the NAT gateway of C. These packets are I discarded, as C's NAT gateway thinks these packets are replies to the packets sent in step 1! =item 3. C's nat-traverse continues to send garbage packets to C's NAT gateway. These packets are now not dropped either, as the NAT gateway thinks the packets are replies to the packets sent in step 2. =item 4. Finally, both hosts send an acknowledgement packet to signal readiness. When these packets are received, the connection is established and nat-traverse can either relay STDIN to the socket or execute a program. =back =head1 EXAMPLES =head2 Setup of a small VPN with PPP It's easy to setup a VPN (Virtual Private Network) by using the Point-to-Point Protocol Daemon, C: root@left # nat-traverse \ --cmd="pppd updetach noauth passive notty \ ipparam vpn 10.0.0.1:10.0.0.2" 40000:natgw-of-right:40001 root@right # nat-traverse \ --cmd="pppd nodetach notty noauth" 40001:natgw-of-left:40000 C creates a new interface, typically C. Using this interface, you can ping C<10.0.0.1> or C<10.0.0.2>. As you can see, C upgrades the data-only tunnel nat-traverse provides to a full IP tunnel. Thus you can establish reliable TCP connections over the tunnel, even though the tunnel uses UDP! Furthermore, you could even add IPv6 addresses to C by running C! Note though that although this VPN I a private network, it is I secured in any way. You may want to use SSH to encrypt the connection. =head2 Port Forwarding with netcat You can use C to forward one of your local UDP or TCP ports to an arbitrary UDP or TCP port of the remote host, similar to C or C: user@left $ nat-traverse 10001:natgw-of-right:10002 \ --cmd="nc -vlp 20000" user@right $ nat-traverse 10002:natgw-of-left:10001 \ --cmd="nc -vlp 22" As soon as the tunnel is established (using UDP ports C<10001> and C<10002>), C's TCP port C<20000> is forwarded to C's SSH Daemon (TCP port C<22>): user@some-other-host $ ssh -p 20000 user@left # Will connect to right's SSH daemon! But do note that you lose the reliability of TCP in this example, as the actual data is transported via UDP. If you want reliable streams, use PPP on top of nat-traverse, as described above. =head1 LIMITATIONS Only IPv4 is supported, nat-traverse won't work with IPv6 addresses. Even though it would be relatively trivial to add IPv6 support, I refrained from doing that, as there's no need to use NAT with IPv6 (the address space IPv6 provides is sufficient). If you do need IPv6 support, drop me a note and I'll patch nat-traverse. =head1 SEE ALSO =over =item L The IP Network Address Translator (NAT). K. Egevang, P. Francis. May 1994. (Obsoleted by RFC3022) (Status: INFORMATIONAL) =item L Traditional IP Network Address Translator (Traditional NAT). P. Srisuresh, K. Egevang. January 2001. (Obsoletes RFC1631) (Status: INFORMATIONAL) =item L The Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). W. Simpson, Ed.. July 1994. (Obsoletes RFC1548) (Updated by RFC2153) (Also STD0051) (Status: STANDARD) =item L Website of Paul's PPP Package (open source implementation of the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) on Linux and Solaris) =item L Dieser Vortrag zeigt, wie man einen Tunnel zwischen zwei Computern, die beide hinter NAT-Gateways sitzen, hinbekommt. Dazu wird ein neues Programm vorgestellt, welches sowohl einfache Tastendrücke an die Gegenseite weiterleiten, als auch beliebige Programme mit Verbindungen zur Gegenseite starten kann. Damit ist ein einfaches VPN schnell aufgebaut. =back =head1 AUTHOR Copyright (C) 2005 Ingo Blechschmidt, Eiblech@web.deE. You may want to visit nat-traverse's Freshmeat project page, L, for new releases. =head1 LICENSE This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.