Open source MAC Telnet client and server for connecting to Mikrotik RouterOS routers and Linux machines via MAC address.
Based on MAC-Telnet the original work of haakonnessjoen (Håkon Nessjøen). The original version implements the following:
- A linux console tool for connecting to MikroTik RouterOS devices via their ethernet address.
- Linux daemon that implements the MAC Telnet Daemon to permit connecting to Linux machines via their ethernet address.
Forked to implement additional functionality for tunneling any TCP connection trough the MAC Telnet protocol. The main use case is connecting to Linux machines via their ethernet address using SSH protocol for security.
The server supports two modes of operation:
- Standard MAC-Telnet Server Mode
- TCP Connection Forwarding Mode: Tunnels a TCP connection to a local port on the client to a specific local port on the server side through MAC-Telnet protocol. This mode of operation is used for forwarding SSH connections through the MAC-Telnet protocol.
The client supports three modes of operation:
- Standard MAC-Telnet Client Mode
- TCP Connection Forwarding Mode: Tunnels a specific local port on the client to the server through MAC-Telnet protocol.
- SSH Forwarding Mode: The client takes care of setting up the tunnel and launching the SSH client.
The MAC-Telnet and Forwarding modes of operation are not compatible. Both the client and the server must operate in the same mode for successful communications. The SSH Forwarding Mode has the following advantages in comparison to standard MAC-Telnet:
- The_mactelnet.users_ configuration file is not needed. Instead of maintaining another set of user passwords for MAC-Telnet, the standard authentication mechanisms supported by ssh are used.
- Public key authentication works seamlessly permiting logins without password.
- The communication between client and server is encrypyted by SSH.
- The daemon does not require root privileges and can be run by a non-privileged user for additional security. In case the -n option is used the daemon, the command must be run as root user, but the_-U_ option can be used to drop privileges once the initial setup phase ends.
- The daemon relies on the security model of SSH, instead of creating a shell environment itself.
For information on other projects you can check my GitHub Personal Page and GitHub Profile.
Check the website for the original project MAC-Telnet by haakonnessjoen (Håkon Nessjøen) for the official documentation of the project.
The documentation for the forked version with the experimental features is published at MAC-Telnet Project Web Page by Ali Onur Uyar ([aouyar @ GitHub] (https://github.com/aouyar)).
PyMunin is copyrighted free software made available under the terms of the GPL License Version 3 or later.
See the LICENSE file that acompanies the code for full licensing information.