SSH tool — sshuttle

Where transparent proxy meets VPN meets ssh

Sshuttle facilitates the creation of a VPN connection between your computer and any remote server that can be accessed via ssh, provided that the server has a sufficiently recent Python installation.

Some reasons to use sshuttle (from the GitHub page)

As far as I know, sshuttle is the only program that solves the following common case:

• Your client machine (or router) is Linux, FreeBSD, or macOS.
• You have access to a remote network via ssh.
• You don't necessarily have admin access on the remote network.
• The remote network has no VPN, or only stupid/complex dangerous VPN protocols (e.g., IPsec, PPTP, etc.). Or maybe you are the admin, and you just got frustrated with the awful state of VPN tools.
• You don't want to create an ssh port forward for every single host/port on the remote network. It's stupid and dangerous.
• You hate OpenSSH's port forwarding because it's randomly slow and/or stupid.
• You can't use OpenSSH's PermitTunnel feature because it's disabled by default on OpenSSH servers; plus, it does TCP-over-TCP, which has terrible performance.

Installation

Depending on your package manager, do

• nala sudo nala install sshuttle
• apt sudo apt upgrage && sudo apt install sshuttle
• apk doas apk update && doas apk add sshuttle
• homebrew brew install sshuttle
• if you don't have python, install it too

Or use git clone:

git clone https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle.git
cd sshuttle
sudo ./setup.py install

Generate a secure SSH key

Some basics first ssh-keygen

• -a rounds Default is 16, more is better but slower, see docs
• -C "comment"
• -t type use ed25519
• -P passphrase
• -R hostname Removes all keys belonging to the specified hostname
• -f filename /directory/path/filename if not the ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

ssh-keygen -a 64 -t ed25519 -P "" -C "sshuttle_key" -f /home/sshuttle/.ssh/sshuttle_key

Other requirements

• You need to run as root, but the other machine does not need to be root
• You need python to be installed on both machines

Usage

How to use sshuttle

Tunnel to all networks (0.0.0.0/0)

$ sudo sshuttle -r user@server 0/0

Tunnel to a particular subnet

$ sudo sshuttle -r root@router:31415 192.0.2.0/24

Run it as a daemon.

-D --daemon

Set different levels of verbosity

At max, you see it on the console each time a new TCP session is redirected

-v -vv -vvv

Test your IP

curl ifconfig.me

Running as a service

Sshuttle can also be run as a service and configured using a config management system: https://medium.com/@mike.reider/using-sshuttle-as-a-service-bec2684a65fe

References

sshutle ^[1]