KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – VIII – VM and user specific restrictions for remote-viewer connections – iptables and sudo

The Spice console allows users to access the graphical desktop of a Qemu based virtual machines [VM]. The performance with both data encryption and data compression is excellent, audio is no problem and the required data transfer rates to client-applications as “remote-viewer” are within reasonable limits for a (switched) LAN. In virtualization scenarios where you can organize tasks according to a scheme “one user per VM” Spice is actually an attractive tool – and even professional virtualization environments a “Proxmoxx” and “oVirt” make use of it.

In this series we look at basic setups in self-administered Intranet environments. So far we had some ups and downs regarding the tool remote-viewer. If you want to use it in a desktop virtualization environment it is an almost perfect tool. We also found it to be a very convenient and efficient remote client-tool in an Intranet when we combined it with SSH and internal data compression of the Spice protocol. See:

KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – V – remote access via remote-viewer, a network port and a SSH-tunnel
KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – IV – remote access via SSH, remote-viewer and a Unix socket
KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – III – local access with remote-viewer via a Unix socket

SSH gave us all options we needed to take care of various security issues in remote access scenarios. The KVM/Qemu server could control the interaction of remote-users with VMs by applying user-specific SSH restrictions to port-forwarding. We could establish rules to bind the Spice access to a specific VM to a specific user.

Regarding the last point the combination of remote-viewer, TLS and SASL came as a solid disappointment. TLS worked perfectly. But we had problems with SASL; see:

KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – VII – remote-viewer, qemu and SASL authentication
KVM/Qemu VMs with a multi-screen Spice console – VI – remote access with remote-viewer and TLS encryption

We got SASL authentication working in two different ways. The frustrating result of our efforts, however, was that we could not confine the access to the Spice-console of a specific VM to exactly one user.

In the end we found that it might even be better to use TLS and a VM-specific Spice password set in the VM’s XML-domain file. The problem then still is that users could share the password for a specific VM. So, we still could not ensure a scenario “one VM – one UID, only”.

In this article we, therefore, look at measures on remote client-systems to allow a TLS connection to a specific VM on the KVM/Qemu host for exactly one user. We use two different Linux tools – namely iptables and sudo – to achieve this. The recipes given below are interesting in themselves and can be applied to other scenarios where the admin wants to restrict outgoing TCP-connection on a user specific level.

Why do we care about user-specific control for Spice at all?

Assume a situation
in a small Linux oriented office where you run a bunch of VMs for special purposes on a central KVM-server.
You provide e.g. a VM (VM1) with Windows 10 ( 🙁 ) for book-keeping with a program your tax advisor understands. A user “Charlie” with a defined UID should use the VM’s Spice console, but basically only he (and his boss in the evening hours).
You have a second VM (VM2) with a Web-server for development and test purposes. Only user “Maggie” shall have access to the Spice console of VM2 on Mondays and Tuesdays and a user “Anne” on Wednesdays and Thursdays and no one else.
And then there is yet another VM (VM3) which only user “Ralph” shall access via Spice to create documents of a confidential analysis for a governmental organization.
There are multiple Linux client PCs available in the office; any of the user can use and login to any free Linux workstations. None of the user has root rights on the clients and the server.

We have thus defined a scenario of the type

One VM + Spice console    < = >    one user or a group of selected users.

Can you cover such a situation with remote-viewer, TLS and server-based SASL, only?
The answer of my last article was: NO. At least not by simple means. (By the way: It is not the fault of SASL. Remote-viewer, simply and unfortunately, does not provide any system-based data for the realm or for the remote-system which SASL could evaluate. The user has too much freedom …)

Do we need measures on the client-systems?

It is interesting that even Opensuse’s “Virtualization Guide” writes about some required measures on the client (restricting access to specific client-certificates for selected users) when discussing the security for libvirt and vnc as tools to access the graphical desktop of a VM. We have not come to libvirt-based tools in this series, yet, but this is already some indication that restrictions of desktop access to KVM/Qemu based VMs may sometimes require measures on the client. So, let us turn to the client-systems … Of course, we assume that such clients have a Linux OS, in my case a Opensuse Leap 15.2.

Schematic drawing

The following schematic drawing reflects the situation we want to control:
We want to make it impossible user “mybro” to access the Spice console of a VM1. Only “myself” should be able to use VM1’s Spice console via a TLS connection. The other way round: Only user “mybro” shall be allowed to connect to the the Spice console of VM2 with remote-viewer. Cross-connections are forbidden; each user gets access to one defined VM only.

We use the same systems as in the last articles: A KVM/Qemu server host “MySRV” (IP: 192.168.2.2) with a Leap 15.2 OS on it, a test-VM1 “debianx” with a Kali-OS on it and a client-system “MyLAP” (a laptop with a Leap 15.2 OS; IP: 192.168.2.22). On MyLap we have a user “myself” and a user “mybro”. VM1 (“debianx”) gets the (TLS-) port 20002 on the server, and VM2 (“leaptest”) the (TLS-) port 20004.

We shall perform the experiments in this article with a Qemu set up without SASL, but each VM configured for an individual password. (As we already know it will only means a small difference in the form of the authentication dialog. We will not be asked for a username.) The scenario can easily be changed to SASL authentication.

Strategies to allow Spice access to a VM’s desktop only for a specific user

There are three major strategies we can follow:

Strategy 1: We could think about a specific TLS client certificate for a connection to a VM and to make it accessible only to the user in question. Such a
strategy would require that client certificates are supported by Qemu and Spice.

Strategy 2: We could use iptables and add user-specific rules for outgoing data to certain TLS-ports on the server. As user-related rules can only be set for the “output chain” we cannot set any such user-specific filters for our problem on the server.

Strategy 3: We take the choice of the target port on the server away from the user as well as any free access to the remote-viewer command namely by changing file permissions, setting up special sudo rules and/or enforcing him/her to run a shell script which starts remote-viewer with a pre-defined target port for him/her.

The strategies (if working) can be combined. Even if the firewall of strategy 2 failed the user would only get access to a specific VM by restrictions of strategy 3. But all these things are a bit complicated and they all depend on the user not being able to get root rights, the firewall being set up at every system-startup and the sudo rules being tight. This is crucial; our KVM/Qemu server with TLS and SASL could only block connections from certain IPs, but not really users.

We could extend strategy 3 to a network namespace – but it won’t help too much as we then would again need to apply routing and related firewall rules. Or to sudo rules. We could also think about using different networks for different VMs and thus a port-IP-VM-relation – but we would still depend on user-specific firewall rules on the clients.

Strategy 1: What about Spice and TLS client certificates?

Here I come with bad news:
If you activate the option “default_tls_x509_verify = 1” in “/etc/livirt/qemu.conf” it is simply ignored. One can guess it from a lack of required parameters in the qemu-command created by virt-manager. Even if and when you provide client certificates in the required directories on the server and the client. In contrast to VNC-settings there is no option like “spice_tls_x509_verify = 1” available. If you set it by yourself, it is silently ignored.

So, client-certificates will be of no help with Spice and remote-viewer. The situation my be different for the libvirt-dependent “virt-viewer” tool. But this is the topic of a future blog post.

Strategy 2: netfilter/iptables to the rescue

I assume that you have some tool in place on your Linux systems to configure your own iptables-rules. Professionals may write their own scripts. Independent of your interface to netfilter/iptables, it is obvious that working with firewall rules in a productive environment is a risky business. Therefore:

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility whatever for the consequences of the approach describes below and its application to your computers. The iptables-rules have to be tested carefully before making them productive and their setup on Linux hosts must be supervised by an expert.

In my network environments I still cling to the tool “fwbuilder” because it gives you a good graphical overview for most purposes and it allows for more complex configurations than e.g. frontends to firewalld or ufw. So, let me show you how to set up a basic set of user-specific iptables rules with fwbuilder and then have a closer look at the contents of the created statements of the firewall script.

fwbuilder allows you to set up “users” with a defined UID in the object catalog for “services”:

This may seem strange; but the meaning is the following:

  1. Using a “user” as a “service” will trigger the creation of a rule for the OUTPUT chain which matches the user of outgoing connection
    packets against an owner with a defined UID and then triggers a reaction.
  2. To cover the reaction in fwbuilder we “branch off” into a specific rule-set for the user. On the iptables level this corresponds to a user-defined rule-chain as a reaction target.
  3. The filter-rules for data packets in the user-defined chain themselves then lead to certain final reactions in the sense of “allow” or “deny”.

In pseudo-code: IF a user matches an UID THEN apply a set of filter rules with their own final reactions.

In Fwbuilder a set of filter-rules is usually put into an object called “policy”. The following image shows some rules of the main “policy” on “MyLap”:

You see that rules 4 and 5 include users “myself” and “mybro”; the rules branch off to policies “Spice_VM_1” and “Spice_VM_2”, respectively.

Rule 6 blocks a whole bunch of TCP-ports used for VMs on the KVM/Qemu server for any other user than “myself” and “mybro”.

Policy “Spice_VM_1” contains one rule, only:

This rule specifies a certain interface and the IP of the target host “mysrv”. We allow access to port 20002 – corresponding to the TLS port defined for our test VM “debianx” (VM1). Something analogous holds for our second user “mybro”. He gets access to another virtual machine “VM2” which we have bound to port 20004 on the KVM-server for external TLS connections.

Now, let us look at the iptables statements generated by fwbuilder:


    # ================ Table 'filter', automatic rules
    # accept established sessions
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT   -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT  -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT 
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT 
    # backup ssh access from a admin host 
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT  -p tcp -m tcp  -s 192.168.44.12/255.255.255.255  --dport 22  -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED -j  ACCEPT 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT  -p tcp -m tcp  -d 192.168.44.12/255.255.255.255  --sport 22  -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT


    # ================ Table 'filter', rule set Spice_VM_1
    # 
    # Rule Spice_VM_1 0 (eth0)
    # 
    echo "Rule Spice_VM_1 0 (eth0)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Spice_VM_1
    $IPTABLES -N Cid40091X30615.0
    $IPTABLES -A Spice_VM_1 -o eth0  -p tcp -m tcp  -d 192.168.2.2   --dport 20002  -m state --state NEW  -j Cid40091X30615.0
    $IPTABLES -A Cid40091X30615.0  -s 192.168.2.22   -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A Cid40091X30615.0  -s 192.168.2.22   -j ACCEPT
    
    # ================ Table 'filter', rule set Spice_VM_2
    # 
    # Rule Spice_VM_2 0 (eth0)
    # 
    echo "Rule Spice_VM_2 0 (eth0)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Spice_VM_2
    $IPTABLES -N Cid40661X30615.0
    $IPTABLES -A Spice_VM_2 -o eth0  -p tcp -m tcp  -d 192.168.2.2   --dport 20004  -m state --state NEW  -j Cid40661X30615.0
    $IPTABLES -A Cid40661X30615.0  -s 192.168.2.22   -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A Cid40661X30615.0  -s 192.168.2.22 
  -j ACCEPT
    
    # ================ Table 'filter', rule set Main_Policy
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 0 (eth0)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 0 (eth0)"
    # 
    # Antispoofing
    $IPTABLES -N In_Main_Policy_0
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -i eth0   -s 192.168.2.22   -j In_Main_Policy_0
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -i eth0   -s 192.168.4.22   -j In_Main_Policy_0
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i eth0   -s 192.168.2.22   -j In_Main_Policy_0
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i eth0   -s 192.168.4.22   -j In_Main_Policy_0
    $IPTABLES -A In_Main_Policy_0  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 0 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A In_Main_Policy_0  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 1 (lo)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 1 (lo)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -i lo   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -o lo   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 2 (global)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 2 (global)"
    # 
    #  ICMP, DNS, DHCP 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p icmp  -m icmp  --icmp-type 3  -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p icmp  -m icmp  --icmp-type 0/0   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p icmp  -m icmp  --icmp-type 8/0   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p icmp  -m icmp  --icmp-type 11/0   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p icmp  -m icmp  --icmp-type 11/1   -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m tcp  --dport 53  -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p udp -m udp  -m multiport  --dports 68,67,53  -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 3 (global)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 3 (global)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p udp -m udp  --dport 123  -m state --state NEW  -j ACCEPT
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 4 (global)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 4 (global)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -m owner --uid-owner 1021  -j Spice_VM_1
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 5 (global)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 5 (global)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -m owner --uid-owner 1022  -j Spice_VM_2
    # 
    # Rule Main_Policy 6 (global)
    # 
    echo "Rule Main_Policy 6 (global)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_Main_Policy_6
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m tcp  --dport 20001:20010  -j Out_Main_Policy_6
    $IPTABLES -A Out_Main_Policy_6  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 6 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_Main_Policy_6  -j DROP
    # 
...
...

 
These are simple rules which the experienced reader will have no difficulty to interpret. (The reader also sees that I have multiple IPs on eth0, but this does not affect our present topic).

I leave the test to you. You should see that user “myself” can access VM1 (debianx) whilst user “mybro” and any other users cannot. User “mybro” instead can access VM2 on the server.

Important note:

Do not forget to write a small systemd service which starts your firewall automatically during the startup of your client-system.

I have written about his topic somewhere else in this blog already. believe me its easy.

Strategy 3: Using sudo

Working with “sudo” and manipulating the file “/etc/sudoers” is somewhat risky. Therefore:

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility whatever for the consequences of the sudo approach describe below and its application to your computers. The sudoer rules have to be tested carefully before the are used in a production environment and their setup must be supervised by an expert.

The settings below work for an Opensuse Leap system – partially due to the default settings there.

A standard problem with sudoer rules for graphical applications is the handling of the access to the X11
display if you need to start programs as another user (e.g. root). (Things may be even worse with Wayland; but I have no experience with it). To keep things simple it is a worthwhile investment to think a bit about the precise nature of your sudo-objective.

In our case we want enforce a user-specific usage of the command remote-viewer. More precisely:

  1. We want to disallow the usage of remote-viewer for most users. And even selected users shall not be able to call or invoke remote-viewer directly and freely.
  2. We want to enforce user-specific arguments to the command “remote-viewer”, if executed by certain selected users.
  3. If possible we do not want to run any remote-tool with root-rights at all.
  4. We want to keep our user-specific firewall rules in place and not to create new ones.
  5. X11-display access shall be possible.

The answer to this challenge is a bit tricky. It first looks like you need to write a separate script (accessible to root) which evaluates UIDs or SUD_UIDs and then calls remote-viewer with appropriate arguments.

But you will then be confronted with problems to access the X11-display of the user issuing the script. In addition rule 3 above forces you to start the required remote-viewer command in the end as a specific user via “sudo -u USER” or “su -c ‘…’ USER”. This in turn forces you to allow “USER” to execute the remote-viewer command anyway according to a specific sudo (!) rule for USER. Therefore, he/she must be able to read and execute the remote-viewer command. But then he/she could execute it outside freely without sudo – and again use any arguments he/she likes. It took me a while to find a way out.

The right approach is to find a rule working for the user in question, first, before you turn to a script as a mediator. On the other side: The user must NOT be allowed to use “remote-viewer” freely – neither by user or group access rights. This seeming contradiction is solved by the following steps on our client-system; we describe the rules below for user “myself”. You must execute most of the commands as root:

  • Step 1: Create a special group, e.g. named “spicegrp”. Do NOT make user “myself” a member of this group!
  • Step 2: Change the ownership and access rights of “/usr/bin/remote-viewer” according to
    • chown root.spicegrp /usr/bin/remote-viewer
    • chmod 750 /usr/bin/remote-viewer
  • Step 3: Check that remote-viewer can no longer be executed by user “myself”.
  • Step 4: Start editing the file “/etc/sudoers” with visudo.
  • Step 5: Add the following lines and turn some existing lines into comments:
     
    ....
    Defaults env_reset
    Defaults env_keep = "LANG LC_ADDRESS LC_CTYPE LC_COLLATE LC_IDENTIFICATION LC_MEASUREMENT LC_MESSAGES LC_MONETARY LC_NAME LC_NUMERIC LC_PAPER LC_TELEPHONE LC_ATIME LC_ALL LANGUAGE LINGUAS XDG_SESSION_COOKIE"
    
    Defaults:myself env_keep += "DISPLAY"
    
    #Defaults targetpw   # ask for the password of the target user i.e. root
    #ALL   ALL=(ALL) ALL
    
    myself ALL=(myself:spicegrp) /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice\://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002
    # myself ALL=(myself:spicegrp) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice\://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002
    # mybro ALL=(mybro:spicegrp) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice\://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20004
    
    

This is all we basically need for the user myself. An extension to
user “mybro” should be clear. See the commented line for mybro.

The sudoer statements – also the commented ones – deserve some short explanation:
We reset the environment, but we keep some language settings for sudoer users. More important: We keep the “DISPLAY” variable of the environment of sudoer user “myself”. Meaning, it will be available when commands are executed with his/her UID. Hereby, we avoid major X11 trouble. The two commented lines in the middle correspond to the the objective that sudoer users should provide their own passwords instead of the root password to execute the commands in the prescribed form.

And then comes some sudo vodoo:

We only define a rule for the user “myself”: We allow him/her to execute the command remote-viewer with his own UID, but with a different group. This gives him access to “/usr/bin/remote-viewer” under “sudo” conditions ( only !). But, in no way else on a shell’s command line, as he/her no longer has access rights to “/usr/bin/remote-viewer” and is no member of “spicegrp”!

The other part of the magic is that the sudoer-mechanism checks the precise form by which the user in question (here: myself) executes the command. It compares the command exactly to the form given in the rule line including the command’s arguments!

myself ALL=(myself:spicegrp) /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice\://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002

The command and the arguments to it are together handled as one string for comparison!
Thus we have a user “myself” who can only use remote-viewer with “sudo” and he/she is forced to provide a specific argument. And when he issues the command the firewall rules defined in the first part of this post should open doors to the VM as the execution is done with his/her UID!

What will the required sudo command for a successful access to the VM1 (debianx) at TLS-port 20002 on server MySRV look like:

sudo -u myself -g spicegrp remote-viewer — spice://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002

You took notice of the argument for the group?

Test for a sudoer user

Let us test our theory (sorry for the German system messages, tried to translate them):

myself@mylap:~> remote-viewer -- spice://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002
-bash: /usr/bin/remote-viewer: Keine Berechtigung
myself@mylap:~> # Keine Berechtigung = No access right
myself@mylap:~> # Now with sudo - but wrong port 20004
myself@mylap:~> sudo -u myself -g spicegrp remote-viewer -- spice://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20004
[sudo] Passwort für myself: 
Leider darf der Benutzer myself »/usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20004« als myself:spicegrp auf mylap.anraconc.de nicht ausführen.
myself@mylap:~> # Translation: Sorry, but user myself is not allowed to execute »/usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice://beta.rux.anraconb.de?tls-port=20004« as myself:spicegrp on mylap.anraconc.de.
myself@mylap:~> # Now with sudo - but the right port 20002
myself@mylap:~> sudo -u myself -g spicegrp remote-viewer -- spice://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002

And now we get the familiar dialog to authenticate :

Our firewall obviously has let us through. And – after filling in the VM-specific password (we work without SASL here; see above), we get:

Good!
I leave
it to the reader extend the whole thing to two users and to test all combinations out.

Making things a bit easier for the users

An authorized user has to type a lot of things to make the sudo command work. One thing, you can think about, is to not require a password for the sudo command. (Personally, I would not do this; a password is a last security barrier in case of configuration mistakes. But, in principle it is possible to work without a password in this specific case – after you have checked out and tested all security implications). The entry in the “/etc/sudoers” file then would look like

....
myself ALL=(myself:spicegrp) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice\://mysrv.anraconc.de?tls-port=20002
...

Another reduction of typing work comes through a script which readers can read and execute, but not change. The script could make all the relevant decisions for a user. A very simplified version would in my test scenario contain statements like:

#!/bin/bash
host="myserv.anraconc.de"
myself_port="20002"
mybro_port="20004"
Myself_UID="1021"
Mybro_UID="1022"
if  test $SUDO_UID
then
        if test  $UID -ne $SUDO_UID
        then
                echo "error - you are not allowed to run this command as another user"
                exit
        fi
fi
if  test $UID -eq $Myself_UID
then
        echo "Hello Ralph"
        msg="You are entering the Spice console of VM \"debianx\" - happy working"
        echo $msg
        sudo -u "#$UID" -g spicegrp /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice://$host?tls-port=$myself_port
elif  test $UID -eq $Mybro_UID
then
        echo "Hello Brother"
        msg4="You are entering the Spice console of VM \"leaptest\" - happy working"
        echo $msg4
        sudo -u "#$UID" -g spicegrp /usr/bin/remote-viewer -- spice://$host?tls-port=$mybro_port
else
        echo "Sorry, you are not allowed to access VMs"
fi

Note that the script would ask for a password before executing the sudo statement enclosed – if you had defined a password request in the sudoer file.
If you absolutely wanted to obfuscate the information contained in this script you could again use the trick with sudo and the special group spicegrp. You would the add lines

myself ALL=(myself:spicegrp) /usr/bin/rviewer
myself ALL=(mybro:spicegrp) /usr/bin/rviewer

to the “/etc/sudoers”-file

Important note:

You must not forget to check the fie permission of the file “/usr/bin/remote-viewer” after SW-updates or upgrades of your system.

I would recommend to start a small scheduled job or a service to check the rights settings frequently.

Conclusion

Remote-viewer connections to VMs cannot be controlled on a user level by the KVM/Qemu server if we just used TLS and SASL. We can set up a VM specific password. But external connections to a VM specific TLS port can only be blocked for external systems and IPs on the server.
However, on Linux client-systems iptables helps us to allow access to the Spice console of a specific VM for a selected user, only. This can be achieved by setting up user specific iptables rules on client-systems. This post has shown you how to create such rules for the OUTPUT chain with fwbuilder. We must set up a systemd service to implement these rules automatically at system (and network) startup.

To restrict users on Linux client systems even more we applied the sudo mechanism in a very specific way: we enforced the usage of certain arguments to the remote-viewer command for specific users. I think the method I discussed is safe; if you find a caveat please send me a mail.

Both strategies can and should be applied in Intranets where we want to provide remote-viewer and the Spice consoles of Qemu VMs as real working instruments.

Linux bridges – can iptables be used against MiM attacks based on ARP spoofing ? – II

In the last post
Linux bridges – can iptables be used against MiM attacks based on ARP spoofing ? – I
of this series we saw that iptables rules with options like

-m physdev –physdev-in/out device

may help in addition to other netfilter tools (for lower layers) to block redirected traffic to a “man in the middle system” on a Linux bridge.

Tools like FWbuilder support the creation of such “physdev”-related rules as soon as bridge devices are marked as bridged in the interface definition process for the firewall host. However, we have also seen that we need to bind IP addresses to certain bridge ports. This in turn requires knowledge about a predictable IP-to-port-configuration.

Such a requirement may be an obstacle for using iptables in scenarios with many virtual guests on one or several Linux bridges of a virtualization host as it reduces flexibility for automated IP address assignment.

Before we discuss administrative aspects in a further post, let us expand our iptables rules to a more complex situation:

In this post we discuss a scenario with 2 linked Linux bridges “virbr4” and “virbr6” plus the host attached to “virbr4”. This provides us with a virtual infrastructure for which we need to construct a more complex, but more general set of rules in comparison to what we discussed in the last article. We will look at the required rules and their order. Testing of the rules will be done in a forthcoming post.

Two coupled bridges and the host attached via veth devices

You see my virtual bridge setup in the following drawing.

(Note for those who read the article before: I have exchanged the picture a bit to make it consistent with a forthcoming post. The port for kali2 has been renamed to “vk42”).

bridge3

The small blue rectangles inside the bridges symbolize standard Linux tap devices – whereas the RJ45 like rectangles symbolize veth devices. veth pairs deliver a convenient way on a Linux system to link bridges and to attach the host to them in a controllable way. As a side effect one can avoid to assign the bridge itself an IP address. See:
Fun with veth devices, Linux virtual bridges, KVM, VMware – attach the host and connect bridges via veth

In the drawing you recognize our bridge “virbr6” and its guests from the 1st post of this series. The new bridge “virbr4” is only equipped with one guest (kali2); this is sufficient for our test case purposes. Of course, you could have many more guests there in more realistic scenarios. Note that attaching certain groups of guests to distinct bridges also occurs in physical reality for a variety of reasons.

Two types of ports

For the rest of this post we call ports as vethb2 on virbr6 as well as vethb1 and vmh1 on virbr4 “border ports” of their respective bridges. Such border ports

  • connect a bridge to another bridge,
  • connect a bridge to the virtualization host
  • or connect the bridge to hosts on external, physically real Ethernet segments.

We remind the reader that it always is the perspective of the bridge that decides about the INcoming or OUTgoing direction of an Ethernet packet via a specific port when we define respective IN/OUT iptables rules.

Therefore, packets crossing a border port in the IN direction always come from outside the bridge. Packets leaving the port OUTwards may however come from guests of the bridge itself AND from guests outside other border ports of the very same bridge.

In contrast to border ports we shall call a port of a bridge with just one defined guest behind it a “guest port”. [In our test case the bridge connection of guests is realized with tap devices because this is convenient with KVM. In the case of LXC and docker containers we would rather see veth-pairs.]

Multiple bridges on one host – how are the iptables rules probed by the kernel?

Just from looking at the sketch above we see a logical conundrum, which has a significant impact on the setup of iptables rules on a host with multiple bridges in place:

A packet created at one of the ports may leave the bridge where it has been created and travel into a neighboring bridge via border ports. But when and how are port-related iptables-rules tested by the kernel as the packet travels – lets e.g. say from kali5 to the guest at “vnet0” or to the host at “vmh2”?

  • Bridge for bridge – IN-Port-rules, then OUT-port-rules on the same first bridge => afterwards IN-port-rules/OUT-port-rules again – but this time for the ports of the next entered bridge?
  • Or: iptables rules are checked only once, but globally and for all bridges – with some knowledge of port-MAC-relations of the different bridges included?

If the latter were true just one passed ACCEPT rule on a single bridge port would lead to an overall acceptance of a packet despite the fact that the packet possibly will cross further bridges afterward. Such a behavior would be unreasonable – but who knows …

So the basic question is:

After having been checked on a first bridge, having been accepted for leaving one border port of this first bridge and then having entered a second linked bridge via a corresponding border port – will the packet be checked again against all denial and acceptance rules of the second bridge? Will the packet with its transportation attributes be injected again into the whole set of iptables rules?

It is obvious that the answer would have an impact of how we need to define our rules. Especially during port flooding, which we already observed in the tests described in our first article.

Tests of the order of iptables rules probing for ports of multiple bridges on a packet’s path

As a first test we do something very simple: we define some iptables rules for ICMP pings formally in the following logical order: We first deny a passage through vethb1 on virbr4 before we allow the packet to pass vethb2 on virbr6:

bridge vibr4 rule 15:  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - ICMP IN vethb1 => DENY   
bridge vibr6 rule 16:  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - ICMP OUT vethb2 => ALLOW    

and then we test the order of how these rules are passed by logging them.

To avoid any wrong or missing ARP information on the involved guest/host systems and missing MAC-port-relations in the “forward databases” [FWB] of the bridges we first clear any iptables rules and try some pings. Then we activate the rules and get the following results for ping packets sent from kali4 to the host:

2016-02-27T12:09:33.295145+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 
5127.067043] RULE 16 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=22031 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1711 SEQ=1     
2016-02-27T12:09:33.295158+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 5127.067062] RULE 15 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=22031 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1711 SEQ=1    
2016-02-27T12:09:34.302140+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 5128.075040] RULE 16 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=22131 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1711 SEQ=2 
2016-02-27T12:09:34.302153+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 5128.075056] RULE 15 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=22131 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1711 SEQ=2   
 

Now we do a reverse test: We allow the incoming direction over port vk64 of virbr6 before we deny the incoming package over vethb1 on virbr4:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - IN vk64 => ALLOW   
bridge vibr4 rule :  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - IN vethb1 => DENY     
 

We get

2016-02-27T14:02:32.821286+01:00 mytux kernel: [11913.962828] RULE 15 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=21400 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2104 SEQ=1     
2016-02-27T14:02:32.821307+01:00 mytux kernel: [11913.962869] RULE 16 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=21400 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2104 SEQ=1 
2016-02-27T14:02:33.820257+01:00 mytux kernel: [11914.962965] RULE 15 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=21494 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2104 SEQ=2    
2016-02-27T14:02:33.820275+01:00 mytux kernel: [11914.962987] RULE 16 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=21494 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2104 SEQ=2   
  

So to our last test:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - IN vk64 => ALLOW    
bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - IN vethb2 => DENY   
bridge vibr4 rule :  src 192.168.50.14, dest 192.168.50.1 - IN vethb1 => DENY  
  

We get:

2016-02-27T14:26:08.964616+01:00 mytux kernel: [13331.634200] RULE 15 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=27122 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2218 SEQ=1   
2016-02-27T14:26:08.964633+01:00 mytux kernel: [13331.634232] RULE 17 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=27122 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2218 SEQ=1  
2016-02-27T14:26:09.972621+01:00 mytux kernel: [13332.643587] RULE 15 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk64 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=27347 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2218 SEQ=2 
2016-02-27T14:26:09.972637+01:00 mytux kernel: [13332.643605] RULE 17 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=96:b0:a9:7c:73:7d:52:54:00:74:60:4a:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.14 DST=192.168.50.1 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=27347 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2218 SEQ=2   
 

Intermediate conclusions

We can conclude the following points:

  • A packet is probed per bridge – in the order of how multiple bridges of the host are passed by the packet.
  • An ALLOW rule for a port on one bridge does not overrule a DENY rule for a port on a second bridge which the package may pass on its way.
  • A packet is tested both for IN/OUT conditions of a FORWARD rule for each bridge it passes.
  • If we split IN and OUT rules on a bridge (as we need to do within some tools as FWbuilder) than we must probe the OUT rules first to guarantee the prevention of illegal packet transport.

For the rest of the post we shall follow the same rule we already used as a guide line in the previous post:
Our general iptables policy is that a packet will be denied if it is not explicitly accepted by one of the tested rule.

Blocking of border ports in port flooding situations

During our tests in the last post we have seen that port flooding situations may occur – depending among other things on the “setaging” parameter of the bridge and the resulting deletion of stale entries in the “Forward Database” [FWD] of a bridge. Flooding of veth based border ports may be critical for packet transmission and may have to be blocked in some cases.

E.g., it would be unreasonable to transfer packets logically meant for hosts beyond port vmh1 of virbr4 over vethb1/2 to virbr6. We would stop such packets already via OUT DENY rules for vethb1:

bridge vibr4 rule :  src "guest of virbr4", dest "no guest of virbr6" - OUT vethb1 => DENY  

Rules regarding packets just crossing and passing a bridge

Think about a bridge “virbrx” linked on its both sides to two other bridges “virbr_left” and “virbr_right”. In such a scenario packets could arrive at virbrx from bridge virbr_right, enter the intermediate bridge virbrx and leave it at once again for the third bridge virbr_left – because it never was destined to any guest of bridge virbrx.

For such packets we need at least one ACCEPT rule om virbrx – either on the IN direction of the border port of virbrx against virbr_right or on the OUT direction at the border port to virbr_left.

Again, we cling to our policy of the last article:
We define DENY rules for outgoing packets at all ports – also for border ports – and put these DENY rules to the top of the iptables list; then we define DENY rules for ports which are passed in IN direction; only after that we define ACCEPT rules for incoming packets for all ports of a bridge – including border ports – and set these rules below/after the DENIAL rules. This should provide us with a consistent handling also of packets crossing and passing bridges.

Grouping of guests/hosts

From looking at the drawing above we also understand the following point:
In order to handle packets at border ports connecting two bridges we have the choice to block packets at either border port – i.e. before the OUTgoing port passage on the first bridge OR before the INcoming port passage on the second. We shall do the blocking at the port in the packets OUTgoing direction. Actually, there would be no harm in setting up reasonable DENY rules for both ports. Then we would safely cover all types of situations.

Anyway – we also find that the rules for border ports require a certain grouping of the guests and hosts:

  • Group 1: Guests attached to the bridge that has a border port.
  • Group 2: Guests on the IN side of the border port of a bridge – i.e. the internal side of the bridge. This group includes Group 1 plus external guests of further bridges beyond other border ports of the very same bridge.
  • Group 3:Guests on the outgoing side of a border port – i.e. the side to the next connected bridge. This group contains hosts of Group 1 for the next connected bridge and/or groups of external hosts on the OUT side of all other border ports of the connected bridge.

These groups can easily be formed per bridge by tools like FWbuilder. Without going into details: Note that FWbuilder handles the overall logical OR/AND switching during a negation of multiple groups of hosts correctly when compiling iptables rules.

Overall rules order in case of multiple and connected bridges

Taking into account the results of the first post in this series I suggest the following order of iptables rules:

  • We first define OUT DENY rules for all guest ports of all bridges – with ports grouped by bridges just to keep the overview. These rules are the most important ones to prevent ARP spoofing and a resulting packet redirection.
  • We then define all OUT DENY rules for border ports of all bridges – first grouped by bridges and then per bridge and ports grouped by hosts for the OUTgoing direction. These rules cover also port flooding situations with respect to neighboring linked bridges.
  • We then define IN DENY rules for incoming packets over border ports. These rules may in addition to the previous rules prevent implausible packet transport.
  • Now we apply OUT DENY and IN DENY rules for Ethernet devices on the virtualization host. Such rules must must not be forgotten and can be placed here in the rules’ sequence.
  • We then define IN ACCEPT rules on individual guest ports – ports again grouped by bridges.
  • We eventually define IN ACCEPT rules on bridge border ports – note that such rules are required for packets just passing an intermediate bridge without being destined to a guest of the bridge.
  • IN ACCEPT rules for the virtualization hosts’s Ethernet interfaces must not be forgotten and can be placed at the end.

How does that look like in FWbuilder?

Before looking at the pics note that we have defined the host groups

  • br6_grp to contain kali3, kali4, kali5,
  • br4_grp to contain only kali2,
  • ext_grp to contain the host and some external web server “lamp“.

With this we get the following 7 groups of rules:

full_1

full_2

full_3

full_4

full_5

full_6

full_7

Despite the host grouping : this makes quite a bunch of rules! But not uncontrollable …

Enough for today. I hope that tests being performed in a third post of this series will not proof me wrong. I am confident …. See
Linux bridges – can iptables be used against MiM attacks based on ARP spoofing ? – III

 

Linux bridges – can iptables be used against MiM attacks based on ARP spoofing ? – I

This post and two following ones are about some simple iptables exercises concerning Linux virtual bridges. Linux bridges are typically used in virtualization environments. However, guest systems or even the host attached to a Linux bridge may become targets of “man in the middle” attacks. During such attacks the guests and the bridge may be manipulated to send packets to the “man in the middle” system and not directly to the intended communication partners. My objective is to get a clearer picture of iptables’ contributions to defense measures against such attacks.

Some “Howtos” on the Internet warn explicitly against using iptables at all on Linux bridges – especially not with active connection tracking. An example is the “libvirt wiki”: http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/Networking. Some of the warnings refer to an original discussion published here: http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/ patch/ 29319/
See also: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/ show_bug.cgi?id=512206

I think these concerns justify a closer look at iptables rules with respect to bridge ports. Comments are welcome.

Scenarios, limitations and objectives

In our test case we work with a KVM host with one bridge and later on also with two linked Linux bridges. In this first article we use one of the Linux guests on one of the bridges to initiate a “man in the middle attack” [MiM] against other guests of the very same bridge. The attacks are based on ARP spoofing and packet redirection. We then define some reasonable iptables rules with the intention to block the redirected traffic (to the MiM) and analyze the impact of these rules.

In a 2nd and 3rd article we extend the game to 2 bridges and the host attached to a port of one of the bridges.

Limitations and restrictions
It is obvious that we cannot prevent ARP-spoofing itself with iptables. iptables works on network layers 3/4, but not on layer 2 (Ethernet). iptables, therefore, does not allow for direct restrictions regarding the ARP protocol. So, the prevention of ARP packets with false MAC addresses, which typically initiate a MiM attack is not the objective of this article. It requires ebtables and/or arptables to block ARP spoofing at its roots. So, do not misunderstand me:

I do not and would not recommend to base any packet filter security across a Linux bridge on iptables alone. If you must use netfilter on bridges always combine iptables with basic ebtables/arptables rules – and test thoroughly against different kinds of attacks which try to break guest isolation. Always be aware of the fact that a bridge creates a global context in which packets must be inspected and followed precisely in their changing role as outgoing or incoming with respect to the bridge itself and its virtual interface ports. Global connection tracking on the TCP/IP level may be dangerous. If you give the bridge itself an IP – a situation which I do not at all like from a security perspective – take extra care. Things get even more complicated with multiple bridges on one and the same host.

Objectives
Nevertheless I think that one can learn something even from academic and unusual test configurations with iptables alone in place:

If we cannot prevent ARP spoofing itself by iptables – can we at least use iptables rules to deal with some consequences of ARP spoofing? More precisely:
Can we block the redirection of packets between ARP poisoned guests over the MiM system by means of IPtables alone? What relations of IP addresses and port devices have to be defined? And would a tool like FWbuilder support us reasonably enough with this task?

If so: How would we extend IPtables rules to situations

  • where two Linux bridges are linked (by veth devices)
  • or when segregated network parts with all guests belonging to the same logical IP segment are coupled via STP and border Ethernet interfaces of a central Linux bridge?

In both cases the spoofed communication may pass border NICs of a Linux bridge.

In this first article on the topic we look at one bridge alone with three guests. In the following posts we shall consider linked bridges.

One bridge – 3 guests

Let us assume that we have 3 guests “kali3, kali4 and kali5” on a Linux bridge “virbr6”. The bridge device itself has no IP. The guest systems are attached to the bridge via standard tap device ports (vk63, vk64 and vk65, respectively). The virtual network can be created e.g. with the help of libvirt’s virt-manager. See article KVM/qemu, libvirt, virt-manager – persistent names for virtual network bridge ports of guest systems about how to set persistent names for the bridge sided end of “tap”-devices.

The corresponding Ethernet interfaces (eth0) of the guest operative systems – i.e. the guest side of the tap devices – are given the following IP addresses: 192.168.50.13 (eth0), 192.168.50.14 (eth0) and 192.168.50.15 (eth0), respectively.

bridge

How does the host see the bridge-ports?

mytux:~ # brctl showmacs virbr6
port no mac addr                is local?       ageing timer
  1     52:54:00:8e:f2:d7       yes                0.00
  2     5e:f4:32:30:f1:3a       yes                0.00
  2     aa:bf:ba:dc:52:31       no                 1.35
  3     fe:54:00:9f:5d:c1       yes                0.00
  4     fe:54:00:74:60:4a       yes                0.00
  5     fe:54:00:0f:34:4f       yes                0.00

5 ports instead of 3 ? Yeah, actually my virbr6 bridge is connected to another bridge (virbr4) by a veth pair. But we will ignore this connection most of the time ignore in this post. If you are interested in Linux bridge linking via “veth” devices see
Fun with veth devices, Linux virtual bridges, KVM, VMware – attach the host and connect bridges via veth

The veth pair explains the 2 MACs on port Nr. 2 of the bridge. A parallel look at the outcome of “ifconfig” or “ip link show” would show that port 3 actually corresponds to tap device “vk63”, port 4 corresponds to “vk64” and port 5 to “vk65”. And what about port 1? The Linux bridge itself could also work as an Ethernet device which could get an IP address on the host. We do not use this property here – nevertheless, there is an Ethernet port associated with the bridge itself.

How does the host see the (regular) IP-MAC relations so far? After pinging our 3 guests from the host we get:

mytux:~ # brctl showmacs virbr6
port no mac addr                is local?       ageing timer
  1     52:54:00:8e:f2:d7       yes                0.00
  2     5e:f4:32:30:f1:3a       yes                0.00
  2     aa:bf:ba:dc:52:31       no                 1.35
  3     fe:54:00:9f:5d:c1       yes                0.00
  4     fe:54:00:74:60:4a       yes                0.00
  5     fe:54:00:0f:34:4f       yes                0.00

mytux:~ # arp -n
Address                  HWtype  HWaddress           Flags Mask            Iface
192.168.50.15            ether   52:54:00:0f:34:4f   C                     vmh2
....
192.168.50.13            ether   52:54:00:9f:5d:c1   C                     vmh2
192.168.50.14            ether   52:54:00:74:60:4a   C                     vmh2

We recognize our tap devices attached to the bridge. [By the way: vmh2 is a device that connects the host to one of the bridges (virbr4).]

Addendum 24.02.2016: Note a small, but decisive difference in the HW/MAC addresses
The first digit pair in the Ethernet address of the port device (i.e. the bridge sided end of the tap device) has a “fe“, whereas the Ethernet device of the Linux guest (i.e. the guest sided end of the tap device) has a “52“. The rest of the digits being the same. Logically, and also from the perspective of the bridge, these are 2 different (!) devices (though incorporated in one virtual tap). From the point of view of the bridge multiple MACs or even a new bridge may be located at the Ethernet segment behind a port.

Be aware of the fact that the so called “forward database” of a bridge [FDB], which relates MACs to ports, keeps track of the relation of our Linux guest MACs to their specific ports. Whereas the port MAC (with the leading “fe”) is permanently associated with the bridge, the MAC of the guest may disappear from the FDB after a timeout period, if no packets are received at the bridge from this guest MAC address.

In addition we make the following settings:

mytux:~ # brctl setageing virbr6 30
mytux:~ # brctl setageing virbr4 30

to be sure that the bridge works in a switch like mode and not as a hub.

Note that this defines a timeout period for the bridge’s FDB – i.e. after this period “stale” entries in the FDB of the bridge may be deleted. So the bridge may no longer know at which port the deleted MAC is located – and therefore temporarily flood all ports with packets. Therefore, bridge flooding is a situation we may need to cover with iptables-rules later on.

If you want to monitor changes of the bridges’ FDB or monitor general changes over all bridge links use the following commands:

bridge monitor all

and

bridge -statistics fdb show

The continuous output of the first command will show you directly when a stale MAC entry in the FDB is deleted. If you issue the second command twice with a reasonable time period in between you may search the output for missing or new MAC entries of guests.

Note further that we did not give the bridge itself any IP address! The bridge may therefore be called “transparent”. As “virbr6” has no IP address the guests (kali3 to 5) can not directly communicate with the host through the bridge itself as an Ethernet device. Just for information: In our scenario the host can only be reached indirectly over a transparently linked second bridge (virbr4) and a further veth pair there which leads to an external Ethernet device with address 192.168.50.1.

ICMP packages and regular pinging – what do we allow?

First we shall have a look at ICMP packages, only. Our basic policy with iptables is that we deny everything that is not explicitly allowed. Regarding further rules we should be aware of the following:

When setting up iptables rules on bridges we must be precise and specific with respect to the packet direction across the involved bridge port interfaces.
Note: It is the perspective of the bridge and NOT the perspective of the guest that counts.
I always use a 3D picture to be sure: Assume the bridge and its ports to be located above the guests. Then a packet going up is incoming, a packet moving downwards is outgoing.

Let us assume you want to ping from kali3 to kali5. From the point of view of the bridge there are 2 packet directions involved: We first get an incoming ICMP (type 8) packet via bridge interface “vk63”, which then is directed (or “forwarded”) outwards through “vk65”. To allow for the pinging we would need rules of the logical form

bridge vibr6 rule : src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15 – ICMP in via vk31, out
via vk65 => ALLOW

and analogously for the other guests and interfaces. Actually this rule may be split up into 2 subsequent rules:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15 - ICMP in via vk31 => ALLOW  
bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15 - ICMP out via vk65 => ALLOW  

which are to be considered in the basic chains of iptables. This leads us to the next question: Which of the iptables chains is relevant here?

In our example it is the FORWARD chain. For the interaction of netfilter components (ebtables/iptables) in kernels with activated netfilter see the following link: http://ebtables.netfilter.org/ br_fw_ia/ br_fw_ia.html

That we need to set up FORWARD rules is also logical as the bridge does nothing else than forwarding packets between its ports and thus transfers the packets to attached destination guests or into segregated network parts behind some of the ports (with the “spanning tree protocol” STP set to ON).

ARP spoofing and the bridge

Consider a situation in which guest “kali4” acts as a “man in the middle”, who wants to sniff or even manipulate the traffic (e.g. for “secrets”) between kali3 and kali5. A user with root rights on kali4 would use a ARP spoofing tool like “dsniff” to (arp-) poison its neighbouring guests via the following command sequence:

root@kali4: ~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
root@kali4: ~# iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type redirect -j REJECT
root@kali4: ~# arpspoof -i eth0 -t 192.168.50.13 192.168.50.15 & 2> /dev/null    
root@kali4: ~# arpspoof -i eth0 -t 192.168.50.15 192.168.50.13 & 2> /dev/null   

The first command guarantees that redirected and sniffed packets are forwarded (routed) via the MiM system (kali4) to their original targets. The second command on the MiM-system avoids sporadic ICMP “redirect” answers to the poisoned and pinging guests – such answers would/could indicate to these guests that something is wrong. The 3rd and the 4th command eventually poison the internal ARP caching tables of the guests. I.e., these commands spoil the cached information on IP-MAC relations after some time.

Let us look at kali3 – before the attack:

kali3_arp

And during the attack:

kali3_arp2

In a previous post of this blog we saw that a Linux bridge learns about the relation of MAC addresses and bridge ports – and thus pins a specific communication down to just the 2 involved ports of a specific communication (basic guest isolation). The bridge normally does not spread communication packets over all ports (at least with a setageing parameter > 0).

Note that this does not help to prevent MiM attacks. As the bridge itself works on layer 2 it ignores IP-MAC relations during packet forwarding. (It may learn about IP-MAC relations only through the ARP protocol.) The bridge furthermore does not know whether routing may occur somewhere. And the guests themselves cannot ignore that situations where several IP addresses may be associated with one and the same MAC are possible. Because of all these reasons Ethernet packets are inevitably sent and forwarded across the bridge were the guests think they should be sent to – according to their own internal ARP tables, which are poisoned during the attack.

Therefore after ARP spoofing the bridge would receive 2 subsequent ping request packets from kali3 and from kali4 with the logical route

src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15 - ICMP ping request in via vk63, out via vk64   
src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15 - ICMP ping request in via vk64, out via vk65   

And the ping answers back via

src 192.168.50.15, dest 192.168.50.13 - ICMP ping answer in via vk65, out via vk64  
src 192.168.50.15, dest 192.168.50.13 - ICMP ping answer in via vk64, out via vk63  

A small side aspect: I should mention that despite the switch-like operational mode of the Linux bridge, I sometimes – very rarely – saw that even the KVM host reacted towards the ARP poisoning and showed some wrong entries in its internal ARP cache table – some time after the attack started. I have not clarified, yet, what the reason for this change of the hosts ARP table actually is. If some reader knows the reason please write me a mail. I suspect gratuitous packets, or (more likely) some rare hub like flooding situation on the bridge, but …

E.g. after a restart of all virtual machines, the begin of the ARP poisoning and after pinging the host continuously from the MiM system for a while, you may eventually find the following ARP table change on the KVM host:

mytux:~ # arp
Address                  HWtype  HWaddress           Flags Mask            Iface   
192.168.50.15            ether   52:54:00:0f:34:4f   C                     vmh2
192.168.50.13            ether   52:54:00:9f:5d:c1   C                     vmh2
192.168.50.14            ether   52:54:00:74:60:4a   C                     vmh2
mytux::~ # arp
Address                  HWtype  HWaddress           Flags Mask            Iface  
192.168.50.15            ether   52:54:00:74:60:4a   C                     vmh2
192.168.50.13            ether   52:54:00:74:60:4a   C                     vmh2
192.168.50.14            ether   52:54:00:74:60:4a   C                     vmh2

And the port-MAC-association? It remains as it was:

mytux:~ # brctl showmacs virbr6
port no mac addr                is local?       ageing timer   
  ...
  5     fe:54:00:0f:34:4f       yes                0.00
  4     fe:54:00:74:60:4a       yes                0.00
  3     fe:54:00:9f:5d:c1       yes                0.00

Be aware, however, of the fact that this information tells us nothing about the present state of the FDB table of the bridge! Actually, due to our “setageing” parameter certain MAC addresses of guests may drop out of the forward list of the bridge, if the guests are inactive with respect to network communication, and this in turn may result in a subsequent (temporary) bridge port flooding.

So, if you stop the ARP poisoning, reset the ARP tables and start the spoofing again, an ARP poisoning of the host itself it may not happen directly. It may, however, happen after some time. (By the way: Any direct pinging from the host to the guests will correct the ARP table to the real values again – at least for some time.)

Anyway and whatever the precise reason – it is interesting that there obviously are circumstances under which the local poisoning of bridge guests may impact even the ARP table on the bridge’s host itself. On the defense side this may give us a secondary chance (besides monitoring the violation of iptables and ebtables rules) to detect ARP spoofing attacks: by monitoring the host’s internal ARP table and analyzing its contents for implausible changes.

iptables rules to prevent misguided packets

To avoid part of the redirected packet transport across the Linux bridge we would require a rule of the logical form

bridge vibr6 rule :  src any, dest 192.168.50.15 - in any, out via vk64 => DENY  

We can reformulate the rule with a negation (!) in a more general way:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src any, !dest 192.168.50.14 - in any, out via vk64 => DENY  

In addition it is reasonable to forbid packets which (seem to) come from kali3 and are “outbound” to kali3:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.13, dest any - in any, out via vk63 => DENY  

Also incoming packets via vk63 from sources not being kali3 make no sense:

bridge vibr6 rule :  ! src 192.168.50.13, dest any - in vk63, out any => DENY  

Actually, on our bridge we would have to cover analogous variants of all of the above DENY rules for all other guest ports and protocols.

Note that all these rules define fixed relations between each of the defined bridge ports, an associated IP and certain packet directions across the port: with iptables alone we are restricted to such types of relations.

Graphical help – FWbuilder

A problem with the relations above is that they are potentially many – depending at least quadratically on the number of guests on a bridge. An efficient administration requires either a tool or good scripting experience or both. A tool like FWbuilder at least supports us graphically:

fwb_4

The rules created for the shown conditions look like:

    # 
    # Rule 2 (vk63)
    # 
    echo "Rule 2 (vk63)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_2
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk63 !  -d 192.168.50.13   -j Out_RULE_2    
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_2  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 2 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_2  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 3 (vk64)
    # 
    echo "Rule 3 (vk64)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_3
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk64 !  -d 192.168.50.14   -j Out_RULE_3    
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_3  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 3 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_3  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 4 (vk65)
    # 
    echo "Rule 4 (vk65)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_4
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk65 !  -d 192.168.50.15   -j Out_RULE_4
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_4  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 4 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_4  -j DROP
    # 
    .....
    .....
    # Rule 6 (vk63)
    # 
    echo "Rule 6 (vk63)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_6
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk63  -s 192.168.50.13   -j Out_RULE_6
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_6  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 6 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_6  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 7 (vk64)
    # 
    echo "Rule 7 (vk64)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_7
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk64  -s 192.168.50.14   -j Out_RULE_7
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_7  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 7 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_7  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 8 (vk65)
    # 
    echo "Rule 8 (vk65)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N Out_RULE_8
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-is-bridged --physdev-out vk65  -s 192.168.50.15   -j Out_RULE_8
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_8  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 8 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A Out_RULE_8  -j DROP
    # 
    ....
    ....
    # 
    # Rule 11 (vk63)
    # 
    echo "Rule 11 (vk63)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N In_RULE_11
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m physdev --physdev-in vk63 !  -s 192.168.50.13   -j In_RULE_11
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-in vk63 !  -s 192.168.50.13   -j In_RULE_11
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_11  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 11 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_11  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 12 (vk64)
    # 
    echo "Rule 12 (vk64)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N In_RULE_12
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m physdev --physdev-in vk64 !  -s 192.168.50.14   -j In_RULE_12
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-in vk64 !  -s 192.168.50.14   -j In_RULE_12
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_12  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 12 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_12  -j DROP
    # 
    # Rule 13 (vk65)
    # 
    echo "Rule 13 (vk65)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N In_RULE_13
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m physdev --physdev-in vk65 !  -s 192.168.50.15   -j In_RULE_13
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-in vk65 !  -s 192.168.50.15   -j In_RULE_13
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_13  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 13 -- DENY "
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_13  -j DROP

Ignoring some optimization potential, this is actually what we need. You see the clue:
FWbuilder knows about the bridge situation (see below) and creates rules with options

-m physdev –physdev-in/out device

The documentation from http://www.fwbuilder.org/ 4.0/docs/ users_guide5/ host-interface.shtml says accordingly:

Bridge port: This option is used for a port of a bridged firewall. The compilers skip bridge ports when they pick interfaces to attach policy and NAT rules to. For target firewall platforms that support bridging and require special configuration parameters to match bridged packets, compilers use this attribute to generate a proper configuration. For example, in case of iptables, the compiler uses -m physdev –physdev-in or -m physdev –physdev-out for bridge port interfaces. (This object applies to firewall objects only.)

It requires, however, a special configuration of FWbuilder with respect to the defined interfaces and the bridges on the firewall system – i.e. the virtualization host in our test situation:

fwb_4

The same of course for bridge “virbr6”.

Note that our rules (produced by FWbuilder above) for the bridge ports vk63, vk64, vk65 would also work in case of a port flooding situation – if they are not circumvented by other leading rules. The latter being a point we shall come back to.

What packets do we allow?

On a firewall with a basic drop policies we need, of course, to define acceptance conditions for packets, too. Without going into details we need logical rules like:

bridge vibr6 rule :  src 192.168.50.13, dest 192.168.50.15, 192.168.50.14, any ICMP - in via vk31   => ALLOW  

An example is shown here:

fwb_5

# Rule 21 (vk63)
    # 
    echo "Rule 21 (vk63)"
    # 
    $IPTABLES -N In_RULE_21
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-in vk63 -p icmp  -m icmp  -s 192.168.50.13   -d 192.168.50.1   --icmp-type any  -m state --state NEW  -j In_RULE_21   
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT -m physdev --physdev-in vk63 -p icmp  -m icmp  -s 192.168.50.13   -d 192.168.50.1   --icmp-type any  -m state --state NEW  -j In_RULE_21   
    $IPTABLES -N Cid8093X19506.0
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m physdev --physdev-in vk63 -p icmp  -m icmp  -s 192.168.50.13   --icmp-type any  -m state --state NEW  -j Cid8093X19506.0
    $IPTABLES -A Cid8093X19506.0  -d 192.168.50.12   -j In_RULE_21
    $IPTABLES -A Cid8093X19506.0  -d 192.168.50.14   -j In_RULE_21
    $IPTABLES -A Cid8093X19506.0  -d 192.168.50.15   -j In_RULE_21
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_21  -j LOG  --log-level info --log-prefix "RULE 21 -- ACCEPT "
    $IPTABLES -A In_RULE_21  -j ACCEPT

We need of course all variants for all the other bridge interfaces. To make life simpler you could define groups of recipients in a tool like FWbuilder.

Order of our rules

We eventually come to a trivial but important point: In which order must we arrange the discussed iptables DENY and ACCEPT commands? A little thinking shows:

We need the “DENY”-rules first before we allow anything else – i.e. we need the basic DENY rules discussed above as the leading rules in all affected chains!

If a packet is first allowed – e.g. due to some reasonable IN rule – then it definitely is allowed. To be on the safe side we, therefore, must probe the critical FORWARD rules for unacceptable outgoing and incoming packets over certain bridge ports, first.

A really critical aspect in the context is a potentially applied overall acceptance of packets for established connections (connection tracking). For most stateful inspection packet filters the general acceptance of incoming packets for established connections is a default.

E.g., in FWbuilder you have to turn this policy off explicitly, if you do not want to have it. Otherwise, FWbuilder will create general acceptance rules for all 3 basic chains ahead of all other rules:

    # ================ Table 'filter', automatic rules
    # accept established sessions
    $IPTABLES -A INPUT   -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT   
    $IPTABLES -A OUTPUT  -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT 
    $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT   

Note, that these rules would cover ALL bridges and ALL related interfaces/ports on a virtualization host (global context of acceptance)! This makes such leading rules potentially dangerous on hosts with bridges! Both during ARP spoofing attacks, but also in port flooding situations – as the ports work in a promiscuous mode. Be aware of the fact that the attack pattern discussed above could in principle be extended to guests on other bridges on the host, if the attacker knew the relevant IP addresses.

On the other side acceptance rules for established connections actually can really be convenient. My conclusion is: Either you use a set of very general iptables rules that require no connection tracking on the bridge at all – and then your guest systems must establish their own firewalls. Or :

Whatever your FW-Tool generates: Edit the resulting script and move the acceptance rule for established connections after/below the set of critical “DENY” rules on the bridge interfaces discussed above. Check in addition that the DENY rules themselves really are set as stateless rules.

Testing

Let us say kali3 pings kali5 after ARP poisoning. What can the MiM on “kali4” really see then – if no firewall rules are implemented on the host? As expected all and everything:

kali4_wshark_1

You see the poisoning packets and the redirected (duplicated) messages between kali3 and kali5. The same would of course be true for any kind of real TCP/IP communication. So without any measures the MiM can follow all communication after spoofing.

Now let us implement the iptables rules discussed above. In our test case we expect our “rule 3” to block the redirected (misguided) traffic to kali4. And really:

kali3_ping1

And at the same time on the host:

mytux:~/bin # tail -f /var/log/firewall
...
...
2016-02-23T14:41:17.783163+01:00 mytux kernel: [33572.296587] RULE 3 -- DENY IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk64 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=837 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2401 SEQ=1    
2016-02-23T14:41:18.790152+01:00 mytux kernel: [33573.304717] RULE 3 -- DENY IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk64 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=869 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2401 SEQ=2   
2016-02-23T14:41:19.798127+01:00 mytux kernel: [33574.313685] RULE 3 -- DENY IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk64 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=977 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=2401 SEQ=3    
 

Good! Defense is obviously possible – even on the IP-level – as soon as we relate bridge ports to IP information!

Stopping ARP spoofing – with potential port flooding on the bridge as an aftermath

At some point in time the MiM attacker may stop his spoofing by

root@kali4:~# killall arpspoof
root@kali4:~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Before the poisoning jobs terminate themselves they send some packets which try to correct the corrupted ARP information on the attacked guests. However, depending on the load of the guests and the host this correction may go wrong – on one or both poisoned guests – and the old spoofed information may remain in the guests’ ARP tables:

kali3_ping2

And even some seconds later:

kali3_ping3

kali3 still thinks that 192.168.50.15 is located at the MAC address of kali4! How long this wrong information is kept depends on the relevant timeout parameter for local ARP table cache entries – see the output of:

$ cd /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/
$ cat default/gc_stale_time

For our Debian guests this parameter typically has a value of 60 secs.

The picture above shows that on kali3 first 9 ICMP request packets were sent which got no answer. Later on a second series of pinging requests work normally again. In this specific test case – with a remaining wrong ARP information on kali3 – actually 2 interesting things happened in parallel:

mytux:~/bin # tail -f /var/log/firewall
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972806+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777744] RULE 21 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk65 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1 
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972820+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777774] RULE 3 -- DENY IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk64 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1 
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972822+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777785] RULE 21 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1     
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972823+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777806] RULE 5 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vnet0 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1 
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972824+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777818] RULE 35 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmw1 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1 
2016-02-23T16:18:32.972825+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1909.777827] RULE 35 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=19648 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=1 
....
.....
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972821+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786358] RULE 21 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk65 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9 
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972847+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786378] RULE 3 -- DENY IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk64 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9 
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972850+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786385] RULE 21 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vethb2 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9      
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972852+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786397] RULE 5 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vnet0 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9 
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972854+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786404] RULE 35 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmw1 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9 
2016-02-23T16:18:40.972856+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1917.786410] RULE 35 -- DENY IN=virbr4 OUT=virbr4 PHYSIN=vethb1 PHYSOUT=vmh1 MAC=52:54:00:74:60:4a:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=20666 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1373 SEQ=9 
.....
2016-02-23T16:19:07.924844+01:00 mytux kernel: [ 1944.768264] RULE 21 -- ACCEPT IN=virbr6 OUT=virbr6 PHYSIN=vk63 PHYSOUT=vk65 MAC=52:54:00:0f:34:4f:52:54:00:9f:5d:c1:08:00 SRC=192.168.50.13 DST=192.168.50.15 LEN=84 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=25179 DF PROTO=ICMP TYPE=8 CODE=0 ID=1376 SEQ=1 
  

Where do the reactions at other ports than vk64 come from? The first part of the explanation is that the bridge temporarily flooded all its ports (vk64, vk65, vethb1) with the ping requests of kali3! This in turn lead to local denial reactions on virbr6 and also on our second bridge (vribr4). For the reason of the flooding see below.

The second strange thing is that during each of the nine ping trials a successful packet submission occurs through port vk65 – but there is no log entry for an answer packet. Why is this?

Port flooding means copying of packets for the submission over all bridge ports other than the port of the incoming packet. The, in our case, wrong destination MAC addresses of the packets included. The bridge “hopes” for an answer of the addressed MAC at one of the ports. But is this going to happen in our test situation – in which kali3 sends requests out still to the wrong MAC of kali 4?

No – because despite flooding and acceptance for transport over port vk65, kali5 rightfully ignores the copied packets due to their wrong destination MAC. On the other side kali4 will not receive anything due to the iptables rules and cannot react either. So, we end up in a situation where ICMP request packets are sent by kali3 – but no answer will return from any bridge port. This in turn leads to the fact that the bridge is not learning what it needs to learn to stop the flooding. This situation will at least remain until the ARP cache table on kali3 is corrected/updated.

So only with a subsequent new ping series – and after the ARP table of kali3 has been updated – everything will work again as expected.

Addendum, 24.02.2016:

Some reader asked me via mail to explain why flooding occurred at all. This is a good question – and I have therefore added relevant remarks into the text above. Due to our limited “setageing” parameter some “guest MAC – port” relation may be deleted from the bridges forward database (FDB) after some time. (In addition we may have impacts of the STP protocol.) With our setaging parameter and the active iptables rules kali5 will drop out of the FDB pretty soon (after 30 secs): the original pinging during the attack situation will not reach kali5, and kali5 otherwise remains passive. However, also kali4 drops out 30 secs after stopping the spoofing attack from the FDB. So, we may reach a situation where kali3 still has the wrong ARP information, but kali4’s MAC is no longer in the FDB. We ended up in a kind of race condition between timeouts of the bridge’s FDB and ARP table cache renewal on the guests.

Due to the fact that either of the spoofed guests may still have wrong ARP information after the spoofing was stopped by the attacker various strange situations may occur. kali3 may have the right ARP information, but kali5 not yet. Then answering packets may be created which try to reach kali4 instead of kali3. Such packets must not be allowed by any acceptance rules (including established relation rules) – hence again: we need the DENY rules first.

What have we learned from all this?

  1. The stop of the ARP spoofing can leave the bridge and some of the guests in a unconsolidated mode for some time – despite a few final packets from the attacker system to restore ARP information on the attacked systems. One or two of the attacked guests and the host may still keep wrong entries in its/their ARP table(s). The duration of such a situation depends on the local timeout parameter for the ARP caching table entries on the guest systems.
  2. With a limited “setageing” parameter of the bridge, port flooding is not improbable during a period after the end of a ARP spoofing attack. As a consequence, the firewall rules must prevent the consequences of port flooding, too. Therefore, we need to take care not only of guest ports, but also of border ports which lead to segregated parts of the net or to other bridges.
  3. In the course of port flooding, response packets may be directed to wrong recipients. This status will remain until the ARP tables of the guests are updated. During such phase the defined DENY rules must be probed first before any kind of acceptance rules.
  4. Regarding the competition of the different timeouts on ARP caching tables and bridge FDBs: A conclusion in case of relatively stable guest-port relations might be to set the FDB timeout (setaging parameter of the bridge) to reasonably large values (in the range of a few minutes) to avoid flooding situations. On the other side the timeout for local ARP caching could be reduced as long as this does not create unreasonable ARP traffic.

What about TCP/IP packets?

If we think a bit about the general rules discussed above, we may understand that they would work also for standard TCP/IP packets of general TCP protocols. Actually, we have defined the leading denial rules for wrong “IP/port/direction”-associations without any reference to a specific protocol. So, our rules should hold in the general case, too. The reader may test this by configuring one of the guests as a web server or by using “netcat” to set up a simple server on one of the bridge guests.

We shall investigate a related full TCP scenario in one of the next posts – where we shall follow packets across 2 bridges and to the host. So, be patient, if you do not want to perform experiments, yourself.

Summary

Obviously netfilter iptables rules can not prevent ARP spoofing and resulting “man in the middle attack” trials on virtual guest systems attached to Linux bridges of a virtualization host. However, properly designed iptables rules can intercept and interrupt the redirected traffic which a MiM system attached to the bridge wants to provoke.

Appropriate iptables rules testing predefined IP-port relations on bridges may therefore supplement and accompany additional measures on the ebtables/arptables level of netfilter. However, such rules should not be undermined by leading acceptance rules related to connection tracking.

Even an already stopped ARP spoofing attack may leave the bridge and its guests in an unconsolidated status for a while. In addition flooding of packets to all bridge ports may occur. Appropriate denial rules for guest ports and Ethernet border ports in STP situations must block the resulting improper traffic. The reduction of flooding situations may require an adaption of the “setageing” parameter to reasonably large values for predictably stable configurations of guests on a bridge.

Most important: General acceptance rules for established connections should only be applied in the sequence of firewall rules AFTER all critical (denial) rules regarding unacceptable traffic across certain ports have been tested for incoming/outgoing packets. This may require explicit changes of the scripts created by Firewall tools like FWbuilder.

A significant problem is the requirement that the association of IP addresses and ports must be known or determined at the time of the definition and/or application of the filter rules. This requires persistent port naming techniques and under certain circumstances also persistent MAC distribution techniques plus DHCP restrictions for the guests within the used virtualization environment.

In the next post of this series
Linux bridges – can iptables be used against MiM attacks based on ARP spoofing ? – II
we discuss how we can extend our rules to scenarios with multiple bridges on one host – and discover that we need a special treatment of packets crossing bridge borders.