SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Connector

We have previously seen how static port forwarding can be extended for SOCKS-aware applications to provide dynamic port forwarding. [9.3] SOCKS is fully supported by the Tectia client, but you have to reconfigure each application to use the SOCKS proxy, which can be annoying.

Tectia Connector extends this concept further to achieve complete transparency: applications can use dynamic port forwarding without any reconfiguration whatsoever, because the applications are entirely unaware that the forwarding is happening.

To accomplish this feat, Connector worms its way into the Windows TCP/IP protocol stack (which includes hostname lookup functionality). This allows it to intercept networking operations by applications and reroute them to its own Connector engine, which then initiates SSH connections to servers on behalf of the applications. The capture and forward mechanism also allows the Connector engine to exercise precise control over network connections, and to enforce security policies that require certain kinds of connections to use secure protocols, like SSH.

Tip

As of Version 4.2, Connector requires functionality provided only by “Tectia Server (T).” [16.11] “Tectia Server (A)” can’t be used with Connector, and other non-Tectia servers are unsupported.

Connector only affects outgoing TCP connections. Applications can still accept incoming connections directly, and other protocols (like UDP, ICMP, etc.) are completely ignored by Connector. Note, however, that all applications ...