Establish a TCP socket tunnel over web socket connection, for circumventing strict firewalls.
npm install wstunnel
Run the websocket tunnel server at port 8080 on all interfaces:
wstunnel -s 0.0.0.0:8080
Run the websocket tunnel client:
wstunnel -t 33:2.2.2.2:33 ws://host:8080
In the above example, client picks the final tunnel destination, similar to ssh tunnel. Alternatively for security reason, you can lock tunnel destination on the server end, example:
Server:
wstunnel -s 0.0.0.0:8080 -t 2.2.2.2:33
Client:
wstunnel -t 33 ws://server:8080
In both examples, connection to localhost:33 on client will be tunneled to 2.2.2.2:33 on server via websocket connection in between.
To tell client to connect via http proxy, do:
wstunnel -t 33:2.2.2.2:33 -p http://[user:pass@]proxyhost:proxyport wss://server:443
When connecting to secure websocket server via "wss://", client might want to disable 'unauthorized' certificate rejection, via adding the '-c' option.
wstunnel -t 33:2.2.2.2:33 -c -p http://[user:pass@]proxyhost:proxyport wss://server:443
This also makes you vulnerable to MITM attack, so use with caution.
To get help, just run
wstunnel
For tunneling over strict firewalls: WebSocket is a part of the HTML5 standard, any reasonable firewall will unlikely be so strict as to break HTML5.
The tunnel server currently supports plain tcp socket only, for SSL support, use NGINX, shown below:
On server, listen on localhost:8080:
wstunnel -s 8080
On server, run nginx (>=1.3.13) with sample configuration:
server {
listen 443;
server_name mydomain.com;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /path/to/my.crt
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/my.key
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
}
}
Then on client:
wstunnel -t 99:targethost:targetport wss://mydomain.com
To use as a proxy for "ssh", run:
ssh -o ProxyCommand="wstunnel -c -t stdio:%h:%p https://wstserver" user@sshdestination
Above command will ssh to "user@sshdestination" via wstunnel server at "https://wstserver".
Suppose on the server you have OpenVpn installed on the default port 1194, then run wstunnel as such:
wstunnel -s 8888 -t 127.0.0.1:1194
Now on the server, you have a websocket server listening on localhost:8888, any connection to 8888 will be forwarded to
127.0.0.1:1194, the OpenVpn port.
Now on client, you run:
wstunnel -t 1194 ws://server:8888
Then launch the OpenVpn client, connect to localhost:1194 will be same as connect to server's 1194 port.
This setup won't work if you are behind a strict firewall because:
- Non 80/443 ports are usually blocked by firewall.
- Stateful packet inspection will be ablet detect the content of your websocket tunnel as OPENVPN traffic, then block it.
A more firewall proof setup would be to use wstunnel over SSL behind standard https port 443:
-
Run wstunnel server mode
wstunnel -s 8888 -t 127.0.0.1:1194 -
Run NGINX on server, listen on 443 for https connection, forward to wstunnel server localhost:8888
-
On client, run wstunnel client mode using "wss://"
wstunnel -t 1194 wss://server -
Now on client, launch OPENVPN connection to localhost:1194.
Let's say you want to use a Remote Desktop connection to a machine with IP 2.2.2.2
Run the wstunnel server on a different machine, tunnelling to the destination on the RDP port 3389:
wstunnel -s 0.0.0.0:8080 -t 2.2.2.2:3389
On the destination, you need to tweak some registry settings to relax the security policy for Remote Desktop.
Open RegEdit, and navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp
Change "SecurityLayer" to 0
Change "SelectNetworkDetect" to 0
Reboot
On the client, first start wstunnel:
wstunnel -t 3389 ws://server:8080
Now you can just open Remote Desktop Connection and connect to localhost