If you're going to be writing a socket server, you need to be thinking about security right from the start. You're opening a new door for hackers to attack your host computers, and you're responsible for making sure that you're not making your users vulnerable.
The first option for securing your service is deciding whether you need a TCP/IP based socket open to external machines, or whether an AF_UNIX style socket that is only accessible by other programs on the local computer is good enough. You not only prevent external hackers from connecting, it's also a lot faster to skip the network code that AF_INET sockets involve. I'll provide a modified example that demonstrates this in a later post.
If you do need an internet socket, then your top priority must be to avoid writing code that external attackers can hack using buffer overflows. When you're writing code that accepts user inputs, never use plain C functions like sprintf() or gets() that don't allow you to specify a length for the buffer you're writing into. If the user has set things up so they send input that overflows your buffer, they could write to the stack and start executing arbitrary code. The existing example just uses read() with a fixed length, so there's no chance of a client exploit, but as soon as you have to start accepting more arbitrary inputs it's something you need to think about. This is one great reason to use an established library like Java which doesn't suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities as C. If you are using C, look at newer functions that take a buffer length argument like snprintf.
Another problem that's tough to find a solution for, but is hopefully not a problem as long as your host isn't compromised, is local port hijacking. This is where another process on the same machine tries to grab your socket. In certain cases they can get priority over your service, and fool the outside world into connecting to them instead. You can try to avoid it by binding your service to a specific IP address of the host instead of INADDR_ANY, but it can be hard to do this for all the IPs a server may have.
Firewalls are another issue. It's tempting to view them as an obstruction, and try to work around them by piggy-backing on a well-known port like 80, but from a security point of view you're much better off if you can work in concert with them. It will take a little bit more effort sometimes to persuade the firewall owner to authorize your service, but there are some rules that make life easier.
- Make your port number configurable. This is good in general, there may be another service running on your default port, and it allows you to fit into any firewall policies about which port ranges are open.
- Only use a single port. Fewer ports mean fewer rules in the firewall, which means less maintenance, lighter processing load and better performance. You can use your own light-weight protocol to distinguish different types of data you're sending across a single connection, rather than using multiple connections to do the same job.
- Don't connect back to the client with a new socket. FTP does this, and it means that the firewalls on both ends need to be set up correctly, and opens up the possibility that an attacker could connect to a client listening for your incoming connection. It's much better to leave the connection initiation to the client, and then just use that for two-way communication.
These are some of the socket-specific issues, but now you're writing code that's open to external attack, you need to ask yourself about the security implications of every design and implementation decision you make. For more information, here's one of my favorite guides. It's actually from Microsoft, but most of the content is applicable on any platform.
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