Category: SSH

Proxy Firefox through SSH tunnel

Have you ever wanted to visit sites from a location that denied access to those sites? What you need is the ability to create a secure and encrypted ssh connection to tunnel your browser traffic through.
If you have access to a remote machine by ssh you can set up Firefox, or any other SOCKS v5 enabled application, to tunnel its connection through ssh.

Making ssh tunnel:

ssh -C2qTnN -D 8080 username@remote_machine.org

Configure Firefox for the proxy

Manual proxy configuration:
SOCKS Host 127.0.0.1 Port 8080
check the box for "SOCKS v5"

SSH – PermitRootLogin

PermitRootLogin
Specifies whether root can log in using ssh(1). The argument must be “yes”, “without-password”, “forced-commands-only”, or “no”.
The default is “yes”.
If this option is set to “without-password”, password authentication is disabled for root.
If this option is set to “forced-commands-only”, root login with public key authentication will be allowed, but only if the command option has been specified. Useful for backups 😉 All other authentication methods are disabled for root.
If this option is set to “no”, root is not allowed to log in.
Thus without-password allows root login only with public key authentication.

Copy files/folders accross a network in Linux using ssh, tar, scp and rsync.

SCP or secure copy is probably the easiest of all the methods, its is designed as a replacement for rcp, which was a quick copy of cp with network funcationability. Before scp does any copying it first connects via ssh. SCP encrypts data over your network connection, but by using the -C switch you can compress the data before it goes over the network. This can significantly decrease the time it takes to copy large files.

scp -r directory user@server:~/

or default port

scp "-P 7787" -r directory user@server:~/

TAR is usually used for achiving applications, but what we are going to do in this case is tar it then pipe it over an ssh connection. TAR handles large file trees quite well and preserves all file permissions, and works quite well with symlinks.

tar -czf - directory | ssh -p 7787 user@server tar -xzf - -C .

or default port

tar -czf - directory | ssh user@server tar -xzf - -C .

or

tar -xzf - directory | ssh user@server "cat > /directory/tarball.tar.gz"

or

dpkg -l | ssh user@server "cat > /directory/dpkg-list.txt"

RSYNC speciality lies in its ability to analyse files and only copy the changes made to files rather than all files. This can lead to enormous improvements when copying a directory tree a second time.

rsync -avze "ssh -p 7787" directory user@server:~/

or default port

rsync -avze ssh directory user@server:~/

SSH backdoor.

SSH from hades to earth.server.com with the -R flag. I’ll assume that you’re the root user on hades and that tech will need the root user ID to help you with the system. With the -R flag, you’ll forward instructions of port 2222 on earth.server.com to port 22 on hades. This is how you set up an SSH tunnel. Note that only SSH traffic can come into hades: You’re not putting hades out on the Internet naked.

You can do this with the following syntax:

# ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 username@hades.server.com

Once you are into hades.server.com, you just need to stay logged in and enter a command like:

username@hades.server.com:~$ while [ 1 ]; do date; sleep 300; done

to keep the machine busy and minimize the window.
Now instruct your friends to SSH as “username” into earth.server.com without using any special SSH flags. You’ll have to give them your password:

root@hades:~# ssh username@earth.server.com .
BTW no need

Once user is on the hades.server.com, they can SSH to earth using the following command:

username@hades.server.com:~$: ssh -p 2222 root@localhost

Short form:

from earth: ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 username@hades.somedomain.com
then: while [ 1 ]; do date; sleep 300; done
from hades: ssh -p 2222 root@localhost
and we can log in into earth.somedomain.com :))

SSH login without password.

If you need to login from a serverA to a serverB using no password.

First what you have to do is login to a serverA as a user to generate a pair of authentication keys.
Do not enter a passphrase!

user@serverA:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/home/user/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
90:48:02:a5:3a:55:28:91:e2:29:7d:f8:e6:93:a1:e4 user@serverA
user@serverA:~>

Now use the ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as a user “user” on a serverB. The directory may already exist there, in this case do not create that directory:

user@serverA:~> ssh user@serverB mkdir -p .ssh
user@serverB password:

Finally copy a new public key to user@serverB .ssh/authorized_keys and enter the userB password the last time:

user@serverA:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@serverB 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
user@serverB password:

From now, you can login to a serverB as a user “user” from a serverA without typing a password.