HowNetWorks / tracetrout

A magical reverse traceroute HTTP(S) server

TraceTrout

TraceTrout is a HTTP(S) server that returns a reverse traceroute from the server to the client. It does this by piggybacking the established connection, modifying the outgoing TCP packets' TTL values while the server is sending the response.

Figure 1: A dramatization of a rainbot trout swimming against the data stream.

Quickstart

$ docker run -ti --rm -p 8080:8080 --cap-add NET_ADMIN hownetworks/tracetrout

The above Docker image doesn't support IPv6. Use the hownetworks/tracetrout:ipv6 image if you're feeling adventurous and want to work with Docker and IPv6.

Here's a Docker Compose file for getting you started with the following features:

• HTTPS enabled
• Automatic certificates from Let's Encrypt
• Augmenting trace data with hownetworks/whereabouts

version: "3"

services:
  tracetrout:
    image: hownetworks/tracetrout
    volumes:
      - autocert-cache:/autocert-cache
    environment:
      INFO_URI_TEMPLATE: http://whereabouts:8080/ip/{ip}
      HTTPS_ENABLED: "true"
      HTTPS_AUTOCERT_ENABLED: "true"      
      HTTPS_AUTOCERT_DIR_CACHE: /autocert-cache
      ## Uncomment the following line to limit the automatic cert generation to the given hostname(s)
      # HTTPS_AUTOCERT_HOSTS: tracetrout1.example.com,tracetrout2.example.com      
    ports:
      - "443:8080"
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

  whereabouts:
    image: hownetworks/whereabouts

volumes:
  autocert-cache: {}

A Less Quick Start

Prerequisites

The code is designed to run on Linux. Also ensure that iptables and libnetfilter-queue1 packages are installed:

$ apt-get install iptables libnetfilter-queue1

Modify your iptables:

$ iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --sport 8080 -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0
$ iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 8080 -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0
$ iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type time-exceeded -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0

$ iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080

Compiling

Compilation requires the libnetfilter-queue-dev package and Go 1.8 or later.

$ apt-get install libnetfilter-queue-dev
$ go build

Running

To start listening on port 8080:

$ ./tracetrout

Prior Art

• https://dankaminsky.com/2002/11/18/77/, the section about paratrace.
• https://lwn.net/Articles/217023/
• https://github.com/david415/ParasiticTraceroute