How to ssh over HTTP proxy in Python Paramiko?

Question

I am adapting a Python script to be OS independent and run on Windows. I have changed its ssh system calls to calls to paramiko functions. I am stuck with the issue of http proxy authentication. In Unix (actually Cygwin) environment I would use ~/.ssh/config

Host *
    ProxyCommand corkscrew http-proxy.example.com 8080 %h %p

Is there a way to obtain the same using paramiko (or the Python ssh module) either using or not using corkscrew? This post seems to suggest that, but I don't know how.

Note: I am behind a firewall that allows me to use only port 80. I need to control Amazon ec2 instances so I configured the sshd server on those machines to listen to port 80. Everything is working fine in my cygwin+corkscrew prototype, but I would like to have a Python script that works without Cygwin.

Answer 1

You can use any pre-established session to paramiko via the sock parameter in SSHClient.connect(hostname,username,password,...,sock).

Below is a code-snippet that tunnels SSH via HTTP-Proxy-Tunnel (HTTP-CONNECT). At first the connection to the proxy is established and the proxy is instructed to connect to localhost:22. The result is a TCP tunnel over the established session that is usually used to tunnel SSL but can be used for any tcp based protocol.

This scenario works with a default installation of tinyproxy with Allow <yourIP> and ConnectPort 22 being set in /etc/tinyproxy.conf. The proxy and the sshd are running on the same host in my example but all you need is any proxy that allows you to CONNECT to your ssh port. Usually this is restricted to port 443 (hint: if you make your sshd listen on 443 this will work with most of the public proxies even thought I do not recommend to do this for interop and security reasons). If this ultimately allows you to bypass your firewall depends on what kind of firewall is employed. If there's no DPI/SSL-Interception features involved, you should be fine. If there's SSL-Interception involved you could still try to tunnel it via ssl or as part of HTTP payload :)

import paramiko
import socket
import logging

logging.basicConfig(loglevel=logging.DEBUG)
LOG = logging.getLogger("xxx")

def http_proxy_tunnel_connect(proxy, target,timeout=None):
        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        sock.settimeout(timeout)
        sock.connect(proxy)
        LOG.debug("connected")
        cmd_connect = "CONNECT %s:%d HTTP/1.1\r\n\r\n"%target
        LOG.debug("--> %s"%repr(cmd_connect))
        sock.sendall(cmd_connect)
        response = []
        sock.settimeout(2) # quick hack - replace this with something better performing.
        try: 
            # in worst case this loop will take 2 seconds if not response was received (sock.timeout)
            while True:
                chunk = sock.recv(1024)
                if not chunk: # if something goes wrong
                    break
                response.append(chunk)
                if "\r\n\r\n" in chunk: # we do not want to read too far ;)
                    break
        except socket.error, se:
            if "timed out" not in se:
                response=[se]
        response = ''.join(response)
        LOG.debug("<-- %s"%repr(response))
        if not "200 connection established" in response.lower():
            raise Exception("Unable to establish HTTP-Tunnel: %s"%repr(response))
        return sock

if __name__=="__main__":
    LOG.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    LOG.debug("--start--")
    sock = http_proxy_tunnel_connect(proxy=("192.168.139.128",8888), 
                                     target=("192.168.139.128",22),
                                     timeout=50)
    ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
    ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())
    ssh.connect(hostname="192.168.139.128",sock=sock, username="xxxx", password="xxxxx")
    print "#> whoami \n%s"% ssh.exec_command("whoami")[1].read()

output:

DEBUG:xxx:--start--
DEBUG:xxx:connected
DEBUG:xxx:--> 'CONNECT 192.168.139.128:22 HTTP/1.1\r\n\r\n'
DEBUG:xxx:<-- 'HTTP/1.0 200 Connection established\r\nProxy-agent: tinyproxy/1.8.3\r\n\r\n'
#> whoami 
root

here are some other resources on how to tunnel through proxies. Just do whatever is needed to establish your tunnel and pass the socket to SSHClient.connect(...,sock)