Ssh

Tunneling

local/remote socket

Suppose you are at work and want to browse 192.168.1.4 at your home but you can only access your ssh server. Of course you could run a VPN connection to your home but you can also do that with SSH:

 _________                ___________________________________
/         \              /                                   \
|         |              |                                   |
| [work] ===={internet}====> [ssh server] ----> [192.168.1.4] |
|         |              |                                   |
\_____ ___/              \___________________________________/

Establish a secured http connection (tunneled in SSH):

$ ssh -NL 1234:192.168.1.4:80 user@remotesshserver

Then browse http://127.0.0.1:1234 to access remote 192.168.1.4:80

SOCKS proxy

A SSH tunnel can be used to browse Internet resources (e.g. domains blocked) using another server:

 _________                _______________
/         \              /                \
|         |              |                |
| [work] ===={internet}====> [ssh server] |
|         |              |                |
\_____ ___/              \________________/
    ||                           ||
     X blocked                   ||
 ___||____                       ||
/         \                      ||
|         |      allowed         ||
| website |=======================
|         |
\_____ ___/

To do that, you only need to bind your SSH connection to a local socket (e.g. on port 8080) as follows:

$ ssh -D 8080 user@remoteserver

On a Windows machine, you can do that with Putty:

  

Then tell your browser to use a local SOCKS proxy as follows:

SSH without password

Standard user

Now, let's generate the keys:

On the client, run the following command and don't enter a passphrase when asked (leave empty):

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

Now create the remote ~/.ssh directory:

$ ssh user@remotessh mkdir .ssh

And append the id_rsa.pub to the remote .ssh/authorized_keys file:

$ cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@remotessh 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys' 

root access

Protect ssh root access as follows:

$ cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config
...
PermitRootLogin without-password
...

This directive means that root access via ssh will be only possible via keys. Just do as previously and add id_rsa.pub to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

rsync reverse

Suppose you have a remote server running on port 222/tcp and you want to perform an incremental backup from your client

$ rsync -avz -e "ssh -p 222" root@remotessh:/remote/path/ /local/path/
receiving incremental file list
./
test.txt
test1/
test2/

sent 73 bytes  received 171 bytes  162.67 bytes/sec
total size is 5  speedup is 0.02

Note

If used in crontab, remove the -v argument as it is for verbose output

Install OTP

INCOMPLETE SECTION OR ARTICLE

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Thank you for your comprehension.