Receive a TCP SYN packet without sending a SYNACK response - linux

I want to be able to receive SYN packets from a client, but not send back a SYNACK response. I have tried a few things. If you use raw sockets, it is possible to receive the full packet but linux kernel seems to automatically send back a FINACK packet. I found out that this was because I did not have a service actually listening to the port I was monitoring. My next step was to bind a socket to the port I was interested in, and use the listen() syscall to listen to that port, along with the raw socket. This approach results in the kernel automatically sending back a SYNACK rather than a FINACK. Is there anyway to receive a raw packet, and not send back an automated response? It seems that raw sockets can only snoop on packets, rather than actually handle them. I have also tried using a UDP server socket to listen to the target port, but I am still sending back an automatic FINACK.

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Linux UDP Socket: why select()?

I am new to Linux socket programming. Here I have an basic question:
for UDP, why we need select()?
As UDP is stateless, so UDP server just handles whatever data it received. There will be no new socket created once a new client sends data, right?
if so, select() will be returned/notified once this socket has data arrived. So we don't need to go throughput all to check which socket is being notified (as there will be only one socket);
Is this true? non-blocking UDP socket + select() == blocking UDP socket.
Thanks!
The main benefit of select() is to be able to wait for input on multiple descriptors at once. So when you have multiple UDP sockets open, you put them all into the fd_set, call select(), and it will return when a packet is received on any of them. And it returns an fd_set that indicates which ones have data available. You can also use it to wait for data from the network while also waiting for input from the user's terminal. Or you can handle both UDP and TCP connections in a single server (e.g. DNS servers can be accessed using either TCP or UDP).
If you don't use select(), you would have to write a loop that continuously performs a non-blocking read on each socket. This is not as efficient, since it will spend lots of time performing unnecessary system calls (imagine a server that only gets one request a day, yet is continually calling recv() all day).
Your question seems to assume that the server can work with just one UDP socket. However, if the server has multiple IP addresses, it may need multiple sockets. UDP clients generally expect the response to come from the same IP they sent the request to. The standard socket API doesn't provide a way to know which IP the request was sent to, or to set the source address of the outgoing reply. So the common way to implement this is to open a separate socket bound to each IP, and use select() or epoll() to wait for a request on all of them concurrently. Then you send the reply through the same socket that the request was received on, and it will use that socket's bound IP as the source.
(Linux has socket extensions that make this unnecessary, see Setting the source IP for a UDP socket.)

why does an HTTP request request is sent after the first ack packet?

I an simulating http client traffic with RAW socket.
I send a SYN packet then get the SYN-ACK from the server.
Finally I send an ACK+request packet and waits for the response.
I noticed that when using wget or curl,
the first ACK and the request are sent in two different packets.
why is that, and is that relevant to anything?
A client application that uses a TCP socket typically calls socket() then connect() then send(). The connect() function establishes the TCP connection, and to do this the TCP protocol requires 3 packets: SYN, SYN+ACK, ACK. After that the send() call sends the first data. Therefore the ACK and data are sent separately.
I think your packet flow probably does satisfy the TCP protocol (see https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793), but it is unusual.

ETH_P_IP is not working as expected, I can only receive incoming packets

I'm trying to use Packet socket to get both incoming and outgoing IP packets.
When I create socket, I've specified ETH_P_IP parameter,
socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_IP)
But with ETH_P_IP, I can only see incoming packets, not outgoing ones. If I use ETH_P_ALL, I can see them all.
So, what's the "correct" flags to use?

How do I prevent Linux kernel from responding to incoming TCP packets?

For my application, I need to intercept certain TCP/IP packets and route them to a different device over a custom communications link (not Ethernet). I need all the TCP control packets and the full headers. I have figured out how to obtain these using a raw socket via socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_IP)); This works well and allows me to attach filters to just see the TCP port I'm interested in.
However, Linux also sees these packets. By default, it sends a RST when it receives a packet to a TCP port number it doesn't know about. That's no good as I plan to send back a response myself later. If I open up a second "normal" socket on that same port using socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); and listen() on it, Linux then sends ACK to incoming TCP packets. Neither of these options is what I want. I want it to do nothing with these packets so I can handle everything myself. How can I accomplish this?
I would like to do the same thing. My reason is from a security perspective… I am wanting to construct a Tarpit application. I intent to forward TCP traffic from certain source IPs to the Tarpit. The Tarpit must receive the ACK. It will reply with a SYN/ACK of its own. I do not want the kernel to respond. Hence, a raw socket will not work (because the supplied TCP packets are teed), I need to also implement a Divert socket. That's about all I know so far… have not yet implemented.

send/receive data through multiple interfaces

I have 2 linux based systems - a client with 2 interfaces (1 LAN, 1 modem) and a server.
I open 2 UDP sockets, and use setsockopt with SO_BINDTODEVICE to bind each socket to it's interface.
Then I send a message from client to server through each of those sockets.
Both of them reach server. Server socket reads them, and sends a reply to each of them.
Then I try to read server's reply on the client.
BUT, there is only 1 reply.
Also if I run tcpdump, I see that both of the replies are received on their relevant interfaces, on the same port that they left. Yet only one of them reaches socket. The other is lost?
The "lost" packet is not random, it's the "non" default one. If my routing table is empty, the modem one is lost. If I add a route to server ip from modem interface, the lost packet will be the lan one.
Yet, they always reach server, always return back, always seen in tcpdump, but 1 never reaches socket. How can that be?
There is an ipv4 network configuration parameter called rp_filter (reversed path validation filter). Basically, if the reply to a packet wouldn't go out the interface this packet came in, then this is a bogus packet and should be ignored. Which is why while I saw the packet on the tcpdump, it never reached socket. Disabling it did the trick.
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.eth0.rp_filter=0
sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.ppp0.rp_filter=0

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