Ubuntu Manpage: websockify - WebSockets to TCP socket bridge

Provided by: websockify_0.10.0+dfsg1-5build2_amd64

NAME

       websockify - WebSockets to TCP socket bridge

SYNOPSIS

        websockify [options] [source_addr:]source_port target_addr:target_port
        websockify [options] [source_addr:]source_port -- WRAP_COMMAND_LINE

OPTIONS

        -h, --help         show this help message and exit
        -v, --verbose      verbose messages and per frame traffic
        --record=FILE      record sessions to FILE.[session_number]
        -D, --daemon       become a daemon (background process)
        --run-once         handle a single WebSocket connection and exit
        --timeout=TIMEOUT  after TIMEOUT seconds exit when not connected
        --cert=CERT        SSL certificate file
        --key=KEY          SSL key file (if separate from cert)
        --ssl-only         disallow non-encrypted connections
        --web=DIR          run webserver on same port. Serve files from DIR.
        --wrap-mode=MODE   action to take when the wrapped program exits or
                            daemonizes: exit (default), ignore, respawn

DESCRIPTION

       At  the  most  basic  level,  websockify just translates WebSockets traffic to normal TCP socket traffic.
       Websockify accepts the WebSockets handshake, parses it, and then begins forwarding  traffic  between  the
       client and the target in both directions.

       websockify was formerly named wsproxy and was part of the noVNC project.

NOTES

WebSockets binary data
Websockify supports all versions of the WebSockets protocol (Hixie and HyBI). The older Hixie versions of
the protocol only support UTF-8 text payloads. In order to transport binary data over UTF-8 an encoding
must used to encapsulate the data within UTF-8. Websockify uses base64 to encode all traffic to and from
the client. This does not affect the data between websockify and the server.

Encrypted WebSocket connections (wss://)
To encrypt the traffic using the WebSocket 'wss://' URI scheme you need to generate a certificate for
websockify to load. By default websockify loads a certificate file name self.pem but the --cert=CERT
option can override the file name. You can generate a self-signed certificate using openssl. When asked
for the common name, use the hostname of the server where the proxy will be running:

openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out self.pem -keyout self.pem

Additional websockify features
These are not necessary for the basic operation.

* Daemonizing: When the -D option is specified, websockify runs in the background as a daemon
process.

* SSL (the wss:// WebSockets URI): This is detected automatically by websockify by sniffing the
first byte sent from the client and then wrapping the socket if the data starts with '\x16' or
'\x80' (indicating SSL).

* Session recording: This feature that allows recording of the traffic sent and received from the
client to a file using the --record option.

* Mini-webserver: websockify can detect and respond to normal web requests on the same port as the
WebSockets proxy. This functionality is activate with the --web DIR option where DIR is the root
of the web directory to serve.

* Wrap a program: see the "Wrap a Program" section below.

Wrap a Program
In addition to proxying from a source address to a target address (which may be on a different system),
websockify has the ability to launch a program on the local system and proxy WebSockets traffic to a
normal TCP port owned/bound by the program.

The is accomplished with a small LD_PRELOAD library (rebind.so) which intercepts bind() system calls by
the program. The specified port is moved to a new localhost/loopback free high port. websockify then
proxies WebSockets traffic directed to the original port to the new (moved) port of the program.

The program wrap mode is invoked by replacing the target with -- followed by the program command line to
wrap.

`./websockify 2023 -- PROGRAM ARGS`

The --wrap-mode option can be used to indicate what action to take when the wrapped program exits or
daemonizes.

Here is an example of using websockify to wrap the vncserver command (which backgrounds itself) for use
with noVNC:

`./websockify 5901 --wrap-mode=ignore -- vncserver -geometry 1024x768 :1`

Here is an example of wrapping telnetd (from krb5-telnetd). telnetd exits after the connection closes so
the wrap mode is set to respawn the command:

`sudo ./websockify 2023 --wrap-mode=respawn -- telnetd -debug 2023`

The wstelnet.html page demonstrates a simple WebSockets based telnet client.

Use client certificate verification
This feature requires Python 2.7.9 or newer or Python 3.4 or newer.

The --verify-client option makes the server ask the client for a SSL certificate. Presenting a valid (not
expired and trusted by any supplied certificate authority) certificate is required for the client
connection. With -auth-plugin=ClientCertCNAuth, the client certificate can be checked against a list of
authorised certificate users. Non-encrypted connection attempts always fail during authentication.

Here is an example of a vncsevrer with password-less, certificate-driven authentication:

`./websockify 5901 --cert=fullchain.pem --key=privkey.pem --ssl-only --verify-client --cafile=ca-
certificates.crt --auth-plugin=ClientCertCNAuth --auth-source='jane@example.com Joe User9824510'
--web=noVNC/ --wrap-mode=ignore -- vncserver :1 -geometry 1024x768 -SecurityTypes=None`

The --auth-source option takes a white-space separated list of common names. Depending on your clients
certificates they can be verified email addresses, user-names or any other string used for
identification.

The --cafile option selects a file containing concatenated certificates of authorities trusted for
validating clients. If this option is omitted, system default list of CAs is used. Upon connect, the
client should supply the whole certificate chain. If your clients are known not to send intermediate
certificates, they can be appended to the ca-file as well.

Note: Most browsers ask the user to select a certificate only while connecting via HTTPS, not WebSockets.
Connecting directly to the SSL secured WebSocket may cause the browser to abort the connection. If you
want to connect via noVNC, the --web option should point to a copy of noVNC, so it is loaded from the
same host.

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