How to listen to all ports (UDP and TCP) or make them all appear open in Debian

Question

I got an external Debian server. The problem is that my university campus doesn't allow connections to go outside when the port is different than TCP port 22, 80, 443, or UDP port 123. I tested them manually. On my Debian server I would like to listen to all my UDP and TCP ports so I can clearly figure out which TCP and UDP ports my university let through their firewall. Nmap is wonderful on the client side to test that, but what should I do on the server side?

symcbean · Accepted Answer

tcpdump usually comes as standard on Linux distros. It will log all packets visible at the server note that

you probably want to set it running with a filter for your client IP to cut down on the noise

I think this includes packets not accepted by iptables on the local machine - but you might want to test this

e.g.
/usr/sbin/tcpdump -i eth0 -c 3000000 -np host client.example.com >tcp.log

Then just run nmap from your client.

Zibri · Answer

sudo iptables -t nat -p tcp -I PREROUTING -m multiport --dports 1:65535 -j DNAT --to-destination :5555

ncat -lkp 5555 -vvv

edgarstack · Answer

I think you could write a small program with raw sockets using a UDP or TCP, then you can listen all the ports and you just have to filter the headers to know the ports.

Raw socket programming in python (Linux) | BinaryTides

Shawn J. Goff · Answer

I don't have a good way to test this right now, but...

I believe you can use iptables to translate every port to a single port. It would be something like the following:

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -m multiport -sports 0:65535 -J DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:1024

That should redirect all incoming ports to 1024. You can then start a server on 1024.

How to listen to all ports (UDP and TCP) or make them all appear open in Debian

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