So is this a tool or an exploit? Or both? Is this something likely to get patched by the major software/hardware vendors? Would this be a tool that would be safe to use at home if I wanted to connect to a private network on AWS or GCP and did not want to poke a hole through my nat gateway at home?
Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#22I think you might have a typo in your FAQ.
"Does the server have to specify the client host? No!..... The server does need to have any unique prior knowledge about the client. "
Should that read, "The server does NOT need to have any unique...." ?
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#23So is this a tool or an exploit? Or both? Is this something likely to get patched by the major software/hardware vendors? Would this be a tool that would be safe to use at home if I wanted to connect to a private network on AWS or GCP and did not want to poke a hole through my nat gateway at home?
NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet. There are numerous ugly hacks for NAT traversal to fix what NAT breaks, all of which kind of seem like exploits, and some of which are effectively standardized in RFCs and used heavily for things like VoIP. The whole thing is a hideous mess that IPv6 will hopefully eventually kill.
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#24This is old technique from early 2000 and flawed as others have described. Outgoing ICMP is blocked in every corporate environment I have ever been to and never makes it to the Internet facing gateway.
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
DNS working in a corporate IT environment is a surprise. Often, clients are issued an internal DNS server via DHCP, and outbound DNS to arbitrary servers is blocked. This helps mitigate DNS hijacking and also allows some additional outbound domain filtering and logging.
And of course, with the advent of DNS over HTTPS, this is no longer as effective. I can still access blocked sites and get around logging, I just have to set up a tunnel to cloudflare.
Which, from a security point of view, would be grounds for immediate termination and quite some companies I worked for would try to sue you to pay for impact assessment.
(connecting a usb-modem is much safer, I'd have to actually spot the device which would require getting out of my chair... ;)
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#26So is this a tool or an exploit? Or both? Is this something likely to get patched by the major software/hardware vendors? Would this be a tool that would be safe to use at home if I wanted to connect to a private network on AWS or GCP and did not want to poke a hole through my nat gateway at home?
NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet. There are numerous ugly hacks for NAT traversal to fix what NAT breaks, all of which kind of seem like exploits, and some of which are effectively standardized in RFCs and used heavily for things like VoIP. The whole thing is a hideous mess that IPv6 will hopefully eventually kill.
> NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet
Or to phrase it more generously, NAT is an ugly but simple hack that allowed the internet grow despite limited address space and without a gigantic investment in hardware to support an over-engineered replacement protocol.
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#27Cool, I used to do this by spoofing udp packets from 3.3.3.3 from the client to the servers public up, but was unreliable due to anti spoofing filter. This way is better
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet. There are numerous ugly hacks for NAT traversal to fix what NAT breaks, all of which kind of seem like exploits, and some of which are effectively standardized in RFCs and used heavily for things like VoIP. The whole thing is a hideous mess that IPv6 will hopefully eventually kill.
> NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet Or to phrase it more generously, NAT is an ugly but simple hack that allowed the internet grow despite limited address space and without a gigantic investment in hardware to support an over-engineered replacement protocol.
It may have done that back when 128 bit addresses were actually expensive, but it also altered the evolution of that network from a more open peer to peer architecture to a closed silo mediated architecture. Things that should be simple and easy became complex and expensive. We are all poorer for it. You could say that instead of paying to upgrade we are paying for lost capabilities and technical debt.
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> NAT is an ugly hack to extend IPv4 address space that breaks the internet Or to phrase it more generously, NAT is an ugly but simple hack that allowed the internet grow despite limited address space and without a gigantic investment in hardware to support an over-engineered replacement protocol.
It may have done that back when 128 bit addresses were actually expensive, but it also altered the evolution of that network from a more open peer to peer architecture to a closed silo mediated architecture. Things that should be simple and easy became complex and expensive. We are all poorer for it. You could say that instead of paying to upgrade we are paying for lost capabilities and technical debt.
I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway, just with firewalls. ISPs were not above port blocking regardless.
Re: Pwnat – Autonomous Nat Traversal (2010)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may have done that back when 128 bit addresses were actually expensive, but it also altered the evolution of that network from a more open peer to peer architecture to a closed silo mediated architecture. Things that should be simple and easy became complex and expensive. We are all poorer for it. You could say that instead of paying to upgrade we are paying for lost capabilities and technical debt.
I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway, just with firewalls. ISPs were not above port blocking regardless.
It's much easier to deal with port opening or changing than it is to deal with a fragmented address space. NAT reminds me of the networking analog of segmented addressing on 16 bit 8086 processors, but worse as it is not systematic.