dit4c-routing-server

A routing server for DIT4C, based on SSH. It uses NGINX to proxy requests, and reverse port forwarding over unix domain sockets to expose instances. Authentication is via PGP-based SSH keys, fetched from a configured server.

Used with dit4c-helper-listener-ssh. It can also be used stand-alone against any repository of PGP keys.

(It would also be trivial to rewrite etc/confd/templates/register-login to work with GitHub's SSH key API using curl + jq, as this was used during initial PoC testing.)

How it works

Starting the server

The following environment variables must be set when running the ACI:

• ROUTING_SCHEME - "http" or "https". Used for calculating end-user URL.
• ROUTING_DOMAIN - base domain, where end-user subdomains are <REMOTE_USER>.<ROUTING_DOMAIN>
• PGP_LOOKUPURL - URL template for looking up PGP keys, where <REMOTE_USER> is the identity provided during registration. eg. https://dit4c.net/instances/<REMOTE_USER>/pgp-keys

Optionally, TLS_KEY and TLS_CERT can be provided to allow the ACI do expose HTTPS.

eg. To run via HTTP using rkt:

/usr/bin/rkt run \
  --dns=8.8.8.8 \
  --port http:80 \
  --port ssh:2222 \
  https://github.com/dit4c/dit4c-routingserver-ssh/releases/download/v0.1.2/dit4c-routingserver-ssh.linux.amd64.aci \
  --set-env ROUTING_SCHEME=http \
  --set-env ROUTING_DOMAIN=routing-domain.example \
  --set-env PGP_LOOKUPURL='https://dit4c-server.example/instances/<REMOTE_USER>/pgp-keys'

Client interaction

To connect, the client performs an initial connection with the registration user:

ssh -i $SSH_PRIVATE_KEY -p $SSH_PORT register@$SSH_HOST $REMOTE_USER

The server accepts any private key for this step. It uses the value of REMOTE_USER (via SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND) with PGP_LOOKUPURL to perform a GET request for application/pgp-keys content. All PGP keys capable of authentication will be converted to SSH keys and associated with the REMOTE_USER value provided. The server then terminates the session.

The client then reconnects for listening using one of the registered SSH keys:

ssh -i $SSH_PRIVATE_KEY \
    -o "ServerAliveInterval 30" \
    -R $SOCKET:$TARGET_HOST:$TARGET_PORT \
    -p $SSH_PORT \
    listen@$SSH_HOST $SOCKET

The filepath picked for SOCKET (the UNIX domain socket on the server) should generally start with /tmp/, and for security reasons should not be easily guessable. On connection, the server uses the client private key to look up the REMOTE_USER, and creates a symlink so NGINX can reverse-proxy traffic to the provided UNIX socket.