Accessing data link layer packets - c

I want to create a socket for accessing IPv4 packets from data link layer. From unix network programming V1,
socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_DGRAM, htons(ETH_P_IP))
1)I am implementing a dhcp client, is this the correct way of doing that? (means without accessing data link layer, i cannot receive reply from dhcp server) or is there any other easier way?
also, since this socket will receive all IPv4 packets destined for my system, how should I distinguish dhcp reply packet from other packets?
2)please suggest me a good link/tuorial for network programming with data link layer access. In the above book, it is not detailed description.
This is my code

Did you tried looking at PCAP libraries?
It provides nice filtering functions on IP, port and other things.

Do you need the link layer headers too? If so, You need to use SOCK_RAW—SOCK_DGRAM will remove the link layer header before feeding it to your application.
You can identify DHCP requests by the source and destination ports, since DHCP generates traffic on UDP ports 67 and 68.

Related

Can a RAW socket be bound to an ip:port instead of an interface?

I need to write a proxy server in C language on Linux (Ubuntu 20.04). The purpose of this proxy server is as follows. There're illogical governmental barriers in accessing the free internet. Some are:
Name resolution: I ping telegram.org and many other sites which the government doesn't want me to access. I ask 8.8.8.8 to resolve the name, but they response of behalf of the server that the IP may be resolved to 10.10.34.35!
Let's concentrate on this one, because when this is solved many other problems will be solved too. For this, I need to setup such a configuration:
A server outside of my country is required. I prepared it. It's a VPS. Let's call it RS (Remote Server).
A local proxy server is required. Let's call it PS. PS runs on the local machine (client) and knows RS's IP. I need it to gather all requests going to be sent through the only NIC available on client, process them, scramble them, and send them to RS in a way to be hidden from the government.
The server-side program should be running on RS on a specific port to get the packet, unscramble it, and send it to the internet on behalf of the client. After receiving the response from the internet, it should send it back to the client via the PS.
PS will deliver the response to the client application which originates the request. Of course this happens after it will unscramble and will find the original response from the internet.
This is the design and some parts is remained gloomy for me. Since I'm not an expert in network programming context, I'm going to ask my questions in the parts I'm getting into trouble or are not clear for me.
Now, I'm in part 2. See whether I'm right. There're two types of sockets, a RAW socket and a stream socket. A RAW socket is opened this way:
socket(AF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_ALL));
And a stream socket is opened this way:
socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
For RAW sockets, we use sockaddr_ll and for stream sockets we use sockaddr_in. May I use stream sockets between client applications and PS? I think not, because I need the whole RAW packet. I should know the protocol and maybe some other info of the packet, because the whole packet should be retrieved transparently in RS. For example, I should know whether it has been a ping packet (ICMP) or a web request (TCP). For this, I need to have packet header in PS. So I can't use a stream socket, because it doesn't contain the packet header. But until now, I've used RAW sockets for interfaces and have not written a proxy server to receive RAW packets. Is it possible? In another words, I've the following questions to go to next step:
Can a RAW socket be bound to localhost:port instead of an interface so that it may receive all low-level packets containing packet headers (RAW packets)?
I may define a proxy server for browser. But can I put the whole system behind the proxy server so that packets of other apps like PING may route automatically via it?
Do I really need RAW sockets in PS? Can't I change the design to suffice the data I got from the packets payload?
Maybe I'm wrong in some of the concepts and will appreciate your guidance.
Thank you
Can a RAW socket be bound to localhost:port instead of an interface so that it may receive all low-level packets containing packet headers (RAW packets)?
No, it doesn't make sense. Raw packets don't have port numbers so how would it know which socket to go to?
It looks like you are trying to write a VPN. You can do this on Linux by creating a fake network interface called a "tun interface". You create a tun interface, and whenever Linux tries to send a packet through the interface, instead of going to a network cable, it goes to your program! Then you can do whatever you like with the packet. Of course, it works both ways - you can send packets from your program back to Linux through the tun interface, and Linux will act like they just arrived on a network cable.
Then, you can set up your routing table so that all traffic goes to the tun interface, except for traffic to the VPN server ("RS"), which goes to your real ethernet/wifi interface. Otherwise you'd have an endless loop where your VPN program PS tried to send packets to RS but they just went back to PS.

Alter packet to secure it with AEH/ ESP

I am currently new to this field and did some research on raw socket programming and packet injection and sniffing but could come across my requirement which is to inject a packet with ESP and AEH headers. (To intercept an insecure packet and apply either ESP or AEH).
The tutorials I found mostly talks about injecting packets into networks/ altering the header such as, https://gist.github.com/securitytube/5325122 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CohFrRNTo , how to modify packet header(IP header, TCP Header) before the host send them into the network . I must be looking at the wrong topics.
I would be really grateful if you experts could point me to any API or opensource project that could be used to perform this task.
First you need to capture an IP packet then mangle it and then send it and avoid the original packet be sent.
You can use libpcap library to capture packets, then mangle them and add your ESP and AH headers (and do all the work IPSec does) and then send it using raw INET sockets (instead of packet sockets, which one of your links shows, with packet socket you need to add your own IP headers). For raw INET sockets:
socket(AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, int protocol);
You can also use Netfilter and add iptable rules to drop outgoing/incoming packets or send them to your handler. This is a very strong tool and you can do everything with it.
I assume you know you will have to implement management of Security Associations and directly handle hash algorithms, authentications algorithms, encryption algorithms, etc.

Network Discovery of Servers

Ok, so I understand that communication between a client computer and a server computer can be initiated in windows with the creation of a socket between the two computers, but every tutorial that I have seen depends on the End User knowing the IP address of the computer that they wish to connect to.
In local network LAN games, however, the clients somehow autodetect the server. How is this done? Does the client autocheck every possible IP, is there some sort of "GetDetectedIPs" api, etc?
Im looking for answers that can be implemented in standard WIN32 API in straight C. No MFC, .NET, or C++ please. Thank you.
The technique you need is called broadcasting. It's used, for example, in BOOTP and DHCP protocols.
Sending a packet with broadcast destination address results in it being received by all devices in LAN. Broadcast address is an IP address in which the host identification field is filled with ones:
bcast_addr = ~netmask | my_addr;
The discovery process is usually like follows:
The client sends a UDP datagram with broadcast destination address at specific port.
The server listens on this port and receives the datagram. Other computers discard it.
Server sends all the necessary info about itself to the client by a usual UDP datagram.
This is usually done with zero-conf. Microsoft version of it is Simple Service Discovery Protocol.
You could just let the client send an UDP packet to every IP in a specified range and let the server answer with another UDP packet.

How to bind a Raw Socket to a specific port?

I am currently working on a programming assignment. The assignment is to implement a client,network emulator, and server. The client passes packets to a network emulator, and the network emulator passes to the server. Vice-versa applies as well. The prerequisite for the assignment is that I may only use raw sockets. So I will create my own IP and UDP headers. I have tested my packets with wireshark. They are all correct and in the proper format(it reads them properly).
Another requirement is that the emulator, client and server all have specific ports they must be bound to. Now, I do not understand how to bind a raw socket to a specific port. All my raw sockets receive all traffic on the host address they are bound to. According to man pages, and everywhere else on the internet, including "Unix Network Programming" by Richard Stevens, this is how they are supposed to work. My teacher has not responded to any of my emails and I probably will not be able to ask him until Tuesday.I see two options in front of me. First I can use libpcap to filter from a specific device and then output to my raw socket. I feel this is way out of scope for our assignment though. Or I can filter them after I receive them from the socket. This apparently has a lot of overhead because all the packets are being copied/moved through the kernel. At least, that is my understanding(please feel free to correct me if i'm wrong).
So my question is:
Is their an option or something I can set for this? Where the raw socket will bind to a port? Have I missed something obvious?
Thank you for your time.
--
The man page for raw(7) says:
A raw socket can be bound to a specific local address using the bind(2) call. If it isn't bound all packets with the specified IP protocol are received. In addition a RAW socket can be bound to a specific network device using SO_BINDTODEVICE; see socket(7).
Edit: You cannot bind a raw socket to a specific port because "port" is a concept in TCP and UDP, not IP. Look at the header diagrams for those three protocols and it should become obvious: you are working at a lower level, where the concept of port is not known.
I would think you're expected to filter the packets in your software. It sounds like the exercise is to learn what the different components of the IP stack do by recreating a simplified piece of it in user space. Normally in the kernel, the IP code would process all packets, verify the IP headers, reassemble fragments, and check the protocol field. If the protocol field is 17 (udp), then it passes it to the UDP code (every UDP packet). It's up to the UDP code to then validate the UDP header and determine if any applications are interested in them based on the destination port.
I imagine your project is expected to more or less mimic this process. Obviously none of it will be as efficient as doing it in the kernel, but since the assignment is to write (part of) an IP stack in user-space, I'd guess efficiency isn't the point of the exercise.

Filtering UDP loopback on Linux in C

I have an application bound to eth0, sending UDP packets on port A to 255.255.255.255. At the same time, I have a UDP server bound to eth0, 0.0.0.0 and port A.
What I want to do is to make sure that the server won't receive messages generated by the application (handled purely in software by the kernel) but it will receive messages generated by other hosts in the network.
I can't change the payload of UDP packets nor add any headers to it.
I've already implemented a solution using RTNETLINK to fetch all IP addresses of the machine I'm sitting on (and filter basing on address from recvfrom()), but I'm wondering if there might be a simpler and cleaner solution.
EDIT: I thought about something like tagging the skb - the tag would disappear after leaving a physical interface, but wouldn't if it's just routed in the software.
Any ideas?
If you can patch your Linux kernel, you could use a setsockopt() option for choosing if you want to loopback the broadcast packets you're sending or not.
This patch reuse the IP_MULTICAST_LOOP option exactly for this purpose.
Also, instead of "messing" with the IP_MULTICAST_LOOP option, you could easily add your own setsockopt() option, maybe called IP_BROADCAST_NO_LOOP. This would guarantee that you're not changing the behavior for any other application.
You can compute a checksum or CRC (better) over the payload and filter against this.
You can do this at the firewall level by dropping packets to broadcast address port A with source address of the eth0.

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