#127 TCP Wrappers

The basics of TCP wrappers.

Notes

TCP wrappers is an ACL system for services running on a host, and provide basic traffic filtering. It is implemented as a library libwrap that services must link to be used.

As such, it is mainly useful for real-time response to abuse/suspicious activity with well-known services. A more complete solution on a host is a software firewall like iptables or nftables.

These days, most hosts are hidden behind a hardware firewall or load balancer endpoints, so the amount of direct traffic they would receive from the unfiltered Internet may be minimal.

Basic Usage

Checking if a service is using tcp wrappers:

$ ldd $(which sshd) | grep libwrap
  libwrap.so.0 => /lib64/libwrap.so.0 (0x00007f1fea580000)

Rules are defined in

/etc/hosts.allow
/etc/hosts.deny

e.g.

$ cat /etc/hosts.deny
sshd: 222.186.*

Who was that trying to brute force a root login?

$ whois  222.186.31.166
...
inetnum:        222.184.0.0 - 222.191.255.255
netname:        CHINANET-JS
descr:          CHINANET jiangsu province network
descr:          China Telecom
descr:          A12,Xin-Jie-Kou-Wai Street
descr:          Beijing 100088
country:        CN
admin-c:        CH93-AP
tech-c:         CJ186-AP
mnt-by:         APNIC-HM
mnt-lower:      MAINT-CHINANET-JS
mnt-routes:     MAINT-CHINANET-JS
mnt-irt:        IRT-CHINANET-CN
remarks:        --------------------------------------------------------
remarks:        To report network abuse, please contact mnt-irt
remarks:        For troubleshooting, please contact tech-c and admin-c
remarks:        Report invalid contact via www.apnic.net/invalidcontact
remarks:        --------------------------------------------------------
status:         ALLOCATED PORTABLE
last-modified:  2020-02-04T05:38:43Z
...

Peeking at the source

wget https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/blfs/conglomeration/tcp_wrappers/tcp_wrappers_7.6.tar.gz
tar zxvf tcp_wrappers_7.6.tar.gz
rm tcp_wrappers_7.6.tar.gz

From a quick read:

tcpd is the main wrapper daemon
inetd is “tricked” into running tcpd instead of the indended service (like sshd)
tcpd accpets requests, filters and logs as appropriate then passes the connection off to the intended service daemon

Project Notes

#127 TCP Wrappers

Notes

Basic Usage

Peeking at the source

Credits and References