I'm trying to write the linux client script for a simple port knocking setup. My server has iptables configured to require a certain sequence of TCP SYN's to certain ports for opening up access. I'm able to successfully knock using telnet or manually invoking netcat (Ctrl-C right after running the command), but failing to build an automated knock script.
My attempt at an automated port knocking script consists simply of "nc -w 1 x.x.x.x 1234" commands, which connect to x.x.x.x port 1234 and timeout after one second. The problem, however, seems to be the kernel(?) doing automated SYN retries. Most of the time more than one SYN is being send during the 1 second nc tries to connect. I've checked this with tcpdump.
So, does anyone know how to prevent the SYN retries and make netcat simply send only one SYN per connection/knock attempt? Other solutions which do the job are also welcome.
Yeah, I checked that you may use nc too!:
$ nc -z example.net 1000 2000 3000; ssh example.net
The magic comes from (-z: zero-I/O mode)...