I just re-installed Ubuntu server 10.04 and decided to change all of my default ports to get a little extra security. Everything works fine, except when I decided to change the FTP (ProFTPd) port from the standard 21 to 3521. No problems with firewalls or port forwarding. ProFTPd was restarted but when I am trying to connect to it,even though it does respond, it throws the client (FileZilla) into a "passive mode" and then never goes into listing a directory.
I don't really want to use the "passive mode" and I have it disabled in proftpd.conf, but nevertheless I can't seem to change the default port otherwise and make it working. It does seem to work fine on port 21. FYI, the proftpd was installed as a standalone daemon, if that matters somehow?
Ok, I think I figured this out after reading this page: link . It appears that most FTP connections are indeed "passive" and the problem with "active" connections comes from the use of firewalls on the client side since FTP server is initiating an outgoing "data" connection to the client on some random port. In passive mode the client initiates both "command" and "data" connections to the server and hence the firewall isn't a problem, but you should specify which "passive" ports to use on the server. I enabled 3520 and 3521 PassivePorts and it's now working
FTP Active Mode by definition requires the server to initiate its outgoing connections from port L-1. Does your firewall allow outgoing connections from port 3520 as well?
From the FTP RFC:
3.2. ESTABLISHING DATA CONNECTIONS
The mechanics of transferring data consists of setting up the data
connection to the appropriate ports and choosing the parameters
for transfer. Both the user and the server-DTPs have a default
data port. The user-process default data port is the same as the
control connection port (i.e., U). The server-process default
data port is the port adjacent to the control connection port
(i.e., L-1).
...
3.3. DATA CONNECTION MANAGEMENT
Default Data Connection Ports: All FTP implementations must
support use of the default data connection ports, and only the
User-PI may initiate the use of non-default ports.
Negotiating Non-Default Data Ports: The User-PI may specify a
non-default user side data port with the PORT command. The
User-PI may request the server side to identify a non-default
server side data port with the PASV command. Since a connection
is defined by the pair of addresses, either of these actions is
enough to get a different data connection, still it is permitted
to do both commands to use new ports on both ends of the data
connection.
You might wish to take the opportunity to change your users to SFTP, a much nicer protocol.
Related
Why does Apache-Commons-Net's FTPClient sometimes make the wrong computation for the port number in the PORT command? This is in active mode. For example FTPClient it could send out
PORT <some>,<ip>,<address>,<here>,235,181 when in fact the port number used is 60340. What's the cause for this wrong computation?
This could happen on version 3.3.
I know ftpClient.enterLocalPassiveMode(); could solve this, but I want to know the part where the active mode doesn't work as expected.
From your comments, I assume you mistake an FTP control connection with a data connection.
I assume that the 60340 is local port of the FTP control connection. When opening data connection, 60341 is assigned (hence the PORT ...,235,181).
Reasoning: In an FTP active mode, the client opens listening port for the expected data connection, which it then reports to the server via PORT command over an existing control connection. If the server cannot connect to the port, no TCP/IP packet can ever come to that port. As you claim that the "two machines still communicate at port 60340", it must be the control connection. There cannot be any communication on port, if the connection failed ("Can't open data connection").
The actual cause of the "Can't open data connection" error is likely that you are behind a firewall, so the server cannot connect back to the client. What is a common nowadays. That's what passive mode is good for.
I want to add support for the PORT command to my FTP server. I'm reading RFC 959, but I can't figure out when it's safe to connect to the FTP client. For example, consider this sequence:
PORT 127,0,0,1,34,34
LIST
Does the FTP client start listening before issuing the PORT command, or after issuing the LIST command? Because if the server attempts to connect to the client immediately after receiving PORT, it might fail because the client might not have started listening yet.
What does the specification say? Can the server connect immediately, or should it wait until after it receives the command that will make use of the data connection?
The server shouldn't connect to the client until it gets a command that requests a data transfer, such as LIST or RETR. See section 7 of RFC 959, which shows a typical sequence of operations (RFC's didn't have the formal MUST/MAY/SHOULD specifications in those early days).
However, since the port used in the PORT command is typically an ephemeral port, the client needs to open a socket to get the OS to assign a port number. This implies that by the time the PORT command is sent, the port would have to be open. However, it's possible that it might not yet have called listen().
Most proxy servers perform the job of forwarding data to an appropriate "real" server. However, I am in the process of designing a distributed system in which when the "proxy" receives a TCP/IP socket connection, the remote system actually connects with a real server which the proxy nominates. All subsequent data flows from remote to the real server.
So is it possible to "forward" the socket connection request so that the remote system connects with the real server?
(I am assuming for the moment that nothing further can be done with the remote system. Ie the proxy can't respond to the connection by sending the IP address of the actual server and the remote connections with that. )
This will be under vanilla Windows (not Server), so can't use cunning stuff like TCPCP.
I assume your "remote system" is the one that initiates connection attempts, i.e. client of the proxy.
If I get this right: when the "remote system" wants to connect somewhere, you want the "proxy server" to decide where the connection will really go ("real server"). When the decision is made, you don't want to involve the proxy server any further - the data of the connection should not pass the proxy, but go directly between the "remote system" and the "real server".
Problem is, if you want the connection to be truly direct, the "remote system" must know the IP address of of the "real server", and vice versa.
(I am assuming for the moment that nothing further can be done with
the remote system. Ie the proxy can't respond to the connection by
sending the IP address of the actual server and the remote connections
with that. )
Like I said, not possible. Why is it a problem to have the "proxy" send back the actual IP address?
Is it security - you want to make sure the connection really goes where the proxy wanted? If that's the case, you don't have an option - you have to compromise. Either the proxy forwards all the data, and it knows where the data is going, or let the client connect itself, but you don't have control where it connects.
Most networking problems can be solved as long as you have complete control over the entire network. Here, for instance, you could involve routers on the path between the "remote system" and the "real client", to make sure the connection is direct and that it goes where the proxy wanted. But this is complex, and probably not an option in practice (since you may not have control over those routers).
A compromise may be to have several "relay servers" distributed around the network that will forward the connections instead of having the actual proxy server forward them. When a proxy makes a decision, it finds the best (closest) relay server, tells it about the connection, then orders the client to connect to the relay server, which makes sure the connection goes where the proxy intended it to go.
There might be a way of doing this but you need to use a Windows driver to achieve it. I've not tried this when the connection comes from an IP other than localhost, but it might work.
Take a look at NetFilter SDK. There's a trial version which is fully functional up to 100000 TCP and UDP connections. The other possibility is to write a Windows driver yourself, but this is non-trivial.
http://www.netfiltersdk.com
Basically it works as follows:
1) You create a class which inherits from NF_EventHandler. In there you can provide your own implementation of methods like tcpConnectRequest to allow you to redirect TCP connections somewhere else.
2) You initialize the library with a call to nf_init. This provides the link between the driver and your proxy, as you provide an instance of your NF_EventHandler implementation to it.
There are also some example programs for you to see the redirection happening. For example, to redirect a connection on port 80 from process id 214 to 127.0.0.0:8081, you can run:
TcpRedirector.exe -p 80 -pid 214 -r 127.0.0.1:8081
For your proxy, this would be used as follows:
1) Connect from your client application to the proxy.
2) The connection request is intercepted by NetFilterSDK (tcpConnectRequest) and the connection endpoint is modified to connect to the server the proxy chooses. This is the crucial bit because your connection is coming from outside and this is the part that may not work.
Sounds like routing problem, one layer lower than TCP/IP;
You're actually looking for ARP like proxy:
I'd say you need to manage ARP packets, chekcing the ARP requests:
CLIENT -> WHOIS PROXY.MAC
PROXY -> PROXY.IP is SERVER.IP
Then normal socket connection via TCP/IP from client to server.
If I create a c++ server/client application, the port I used to communicate does it need to be open on the router of the server and client machine
Or what other approach could I take? the client computer needs to receive information from the server but I am not able to have any ports opened because it is on a school network....
[edit]
Hmm My setup is a php page running on a server say when I press hello, the server makes a ssh connection through php and sends shell commands to the machine. The server is running off of a school server which I do have ssh access to and run all my things from there. The client computer will be my pc running off of the school wifi which is not connected to the server. The server will try to make a ssh connection to the public ip of my computer running off of the school wifi(no ports open/can ssh out but no ssh in). Will these methods you mention make this possible, in particular the connect.c since I can't run putty off of the server, and the connect.c I could call from the php.
The choice of language is highly irrelevant here.
There don't need to be ports 'open' on any router, unless your traffic must pass through it. On normal peer hosts in the same network (or subnet) there would hardly be any firewall policy, not even in schools.
Technically it is possible for the switch to block peer-2-peer traffic (meaning traffic not destined to the outgoing gateway), but that is not very usual.
Of course, if the school doesn't allow outbound (WAN) traffic on most ports, tough luck, and they're absolutely right :)
You can look at
ssh (with tunnels -L, -D and -R options, perhaps -o GatewayPorts on)
stunnel
connect.c
http-tunnel
All very readily googled
To establish a TCP/IP connection, only the server port needs to be accessible by the client. The connection is full-duplex, therefore data can flow from the client to the server and vice-versa.
If you are using UDP for your application, which is a connection-less protocol, what happens depends heavily on the firewall or router and whether it performs connection tracking for your service or not.
Unless you provide some additional information on your service and the network setup on both the client and the server side, we cannot provide more concrete information.
I'm the part time FTP server administrator (with no real full-time admin). We currently only allow ACTV mode connections. Some of our clients have had issues with this but for the most part they've been ok using ACTV. For the few who aren't, we've been able to push the data over to their servers from ours.
there is one client in particular however who is currently having trouble. He is using file-zilla and issuing a PORT command.
First, does using the PORT command imply that you are in ACTV mode?
Second is there a way in FileZilla to explicitly change to ACTV mode?
Thanks for the help,
_Ramy
Active mode requires the PORT command. PORT is what tells the server where to connect to on the client in order to open the data channel.
Active FTP breaks when the client is behind NAT, hence Passive is the preferred default in most situations where FTP is used. It is strongly preferable to not use FTP and switch to SFTP.