SpectraGate

A beginner-friendly banner grabbing lab cloaked in mystery. One port. Many protocols. No map.

🌈 What's This?

SpectraGate is a lightweight TCP multiplexer that simulates a world where the traditional link between ports and services is broken. Instead of finding SSH on 22 or HTTPS on 443, students must explore a single exposed port and uncover what’s behind it using only the banners returned and their protocol intuition.

This lab was built to:

• Disrupt the assumption that “port = service”
• Sharpen skills in manual protocol probing
• Get hands on experience with (curl, openssl, nc, telnet, etc.)
• Provide a light intro to real-world obfuscation and protocol camouflage

🧪 How It Works

• Listens on one external port (default: 2345)
• Peeks at the first few bytes sent by the client
• Matches against known protocol signatures
• Transparently reroutes the connection to a corresponding local service

Example:

• Client sends SSH-2.0... → gets routed to port 2222
• Client sends GET / HTTP/1.1 → routed to port 80
• Client tries a TLS handshake → routed to port 443

🔍 Why It Matters

In the real world:

• Attackers hide services on weird ports.
• Defenders use protocol obfuscation and deception.
• Automated scanners fail unless you get creative.

SpectraGate forces manual curiosity. There's no shortcut. No help. Just instinct.

Find the service in the signal. Not the number.

⚙️ Setup

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/SSHad0w/spectragate.git
   cd spectragate

2. (Optional) Review or modify ROUTES in spectragate.py to change the fingerprint mappings.

3. Run it:

   python3 spectragate.py --port 2345

4. On another machine, run service_runner.sh.

🧪 Test It Out

Try probing from a Kali VM or another machine:

curl http://your_ip:2345
nc your_ip 2345
openssl s_client -connect your_ip:2345
ssh -p 2345 your_ip

Didn’t work? Good. Debug it. That's the whole point.

🔐 Logs

Every successful connection is logged in Spectragate.log. Want to analyze behavior later? Check the timestamps and fingerprints.

🧱 Built With

• Python 3 (asyncio)
• A hunger for clarity
• A flair for the dramatic

🕳️ Hidden Portals

This project may evolve. Its architecture is a small fragment of a larger... spectrum.

Future plans may include:

• Simulated CTF challenges behind protocols
• Obfuscated protocol layers
• Response faking and deception traps
• Integration into broader lab environments

But today it’s just SpectraGate.

🖤 License

MIT. Learn from it. Modify it. Share it. And remember: not everything behind the port is what it seems.

See you on the other side of the SpectraGate.