From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2017 11:18:00 +0000 (+0100) Subject: New post about geolocated traceroutes. X-Git-Url: http://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/6d0cc68a8638853ef6a5bd1aab8f7a2165dc0a53?ds=inline New post about geolocated traceroutes. --- diff --git a/blog/data/2017-01-09-geotraceroute.txt b/blog/data/2017-01-09-geotraceroute.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..6ff995ce17 --- /dev/null +++ b/blog/data/2017-01-09-geotraceroute.txt @@ -0,0 +1,151 @@ +Title: Where did that package go? — geolocated IP traceroute +Tags: debian, surveillance, web, stortinget, personvern, nuug, kart +Date: 2017-01-09 12:20 + +

Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the +web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through? +It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it +is hard to find all the details. Many years ago, I wrote a system to +map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a +network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed +to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users. Back +then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends +to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the +graph and the map. The output from traceroute typically look like +this: + +

+traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
+ 1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
+ 2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
+ 3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
+ 4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
+ 5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
+ 6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
+ 7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
+ 8  * * *
+ 9  * * *
+[...]
+

+ +

This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the) +network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the +www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a +package to reach the equipment and return to me. Three packages are +sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path. This +is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the +traceroute request.

+ +

There are many ways to measure trace routes. Other good traceroute +implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do +both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP +traceroute and a lot of other capabilities). All of them are easily +available in Debian.

+ +

This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of +different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread +information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe. The +background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get +from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts, +JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content. This will +leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers +and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP, +the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).

+ +

Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site +www.stortinget.no. It is read daily by all members of parliament and +their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other +citizens of Norway. A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will +ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com, +insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com, +stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com, +www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se. I extracted this by +asking PhantomJS to visit the +Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to +render the page (in HAR format using +their +netsniff example. I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how +to do this). My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP +addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal +information is spread when visiting the page.

+ +

map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP

+ +

When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good +free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute +wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP. KML +is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several +of the GIS tools I have available. I got good help from by NUUG +colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in +my +kmltraceroute git repository. Unfortunately, the quality of the +free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my +friends had access to) is not up to the task. The IP addresses of +central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the +controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really +located, as you can see from the +KML file I created using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind. + +

scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no

+ +

I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by +the scrapy project, +showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in +question. +The +graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG +format, and give a good indication on who control the network +equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation. This graph +make it possible to see the information is made available at least for +UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level +3 Communications and NetDNA.

+ +

example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no

+ +

In the process, I came across the +web service GeoTraceRoute by +Salim Gasmi. Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names, +various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out +candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct +geolocation. But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have +a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available +for postprocessing. So I contacted the developer and asked if he +would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to +clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a +machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway. So +since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this +service thanks to a sensor node set up by +the NUUG assosiation, and get the +trace in KML format for further processing.

+ +

map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute

+ +

Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to +Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland. Plenty of places where the +Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors +without your best interest as their top priority.

+ +

Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop +over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and +ask for the KML file from geotraceroute, and create a combined KML +file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses +behind the DNS name is traced this time. To get them all, one would +have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from +geotraceroute). That might be the next step in this project.

+ +

Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where +the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it. +And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can +be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in +Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe. (Hm, what should +we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything +unencrypted over the Internet.

+ +

PS: KML files are drawn using +the KML viewer from Ivan +Rublev, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application +Marble. There are heaps of other options too.