tunneling-and-pivoting

SKILL: Tunneling & Pivoting — Expert Attack Playbook

AI LOAD INSTRUCTION: Expert tunneling and pivoting techniques. Covers SSH port forwarding (local/remote/dynamic/jump), Chisel reverse SOCKS, Ligolo-ng transparent TUN pivoting, socat relays, DNS/ICMP/HTTP tunneling, ProxyChains configuration, Windows pivoting (netsh/plink), and multi-layer chaining. Base models miss egress-aware tool selection and transparent routing setup.

0. RELATED ROUTING

Before going deep, consider loading:

• network-protocol-attacks for network-level attacks from pivot positions
• reverse-shell-techniques for establishing initial access shells
• unauthorized-access-common-services for exploiting services discovered through pivots
• linux-privilege-escalation or windows-privilege-escalation after pivoting to new hosts

---

1. SSH TUNNELING

Local Port Forward

Forward a local port to a remote service through the pivot.

# Access INTERNAL_HOST:3306 via localhost:3306
ssh -L 3306:INTERNAL_HOST:3306 user@PIVOT -N

# Access internal web app
ssh -L 8080:10.10.10.100:80 user@PIVOT -N
# Browse: http://localhost:8080

# Bind to all interfaces (share with teammates)
ssh -L 0.0.0.0:8080:INTERNAL:80 user@PIVOT -N

Remote Port Forward

Expose a local service to the pivot host's network.

# Make attacker's port 8000 accessible on pivot as pivot:9000
ssh -R 9000:127.0.0.1:8000 user@PIVOT -N

# Expose attacker's listener to internal network
ssh -R 0.0.0.0:4444:127.0.0.1:4444 user@PIVOT -N
# Internal hosts connect to PIVOT:4444 → reaches attacker:4444

Dynamic Port Forward (SOCKS Proxy)

# Create SOCKS4/5 proxy on localhost:1080
ssh -D 1080 user@PIVOT -N

# Use with proxychains
echo "socks5 127.0.0.1 1080" >> /etc/proxychains4.conf
proxychains nmap -sT -Pn -p 80,443,445 INTERNAL_SUBNET/24

# Or with browser SOCKS proxy → browse internal web apps