SteamQueryProxy

Valve Steam Query reverse proxy using NFQUEUE to intercept and cache the Steam Query protocol for misbehaving dedicated servers.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Server_queries

Rationale

Some dedicated servers under linux have in-built flood protection on for the Steam Query Port protocol that can not be adjusted or disabled. This causes issues with websites and services that monitor the server and collect metrics, causing the server to appear "offline" when this protection is triggered.

This application makes use of netfilter NFQUEUE to intercept the Steam Query protocol datagrams and reply to them directly from a local cache of values collected from the game server every 10 seconds.

This issue has been incorrectly identified at times as being caused by provider DDoS protection, most notibly OVH.

Risks

There is a chance that the server information could be up to 10 seconds old which might be flagged by the steam master server as spoofed. Use this at your own risk.

Method of operation

At startup and every 10 seconds there after the application attempts to connect to the game server directly and collect the A2S_INFO, A2S_PLAYER, and A2S_RULES details which it then caches into ram.

Incoming packets from clients are collected by the application via the NFQUEUE C interface, which is then parsed for Steam Query protocol packets, anything that does not match is passed through to the backend application without modification.

When a steam query message is identified to be handled the application manually crafts a valid reply packet with the appropriate information and sends this to the client. The intercepted packet is dropped preventing it from reaching the application.

Building

Dependencies

cmake
gcc
libnetfilter-queue-dev (>= 1.0.4)
libmnl-dev

Compiling

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make

Usage

Add a iptables nfqueue target that processes every incoming packet for the query port (usually 27015), I recommend using the following rule which will fail safe even if this application is not running:

iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27015 -m length --length 33:57 -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0 --queue-bypass

NOTE: You MUST have an accept rule for the loopback device lo before this rule as this application needs to connect to the game server. Failure to do this will result in an infinite loop, for example:

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27015 -m length --length 33:57 -j NFQUEUE --queue-num 0 --queue-bypass

After this has been done simply start SteamQueryProxy for the correct queue on the game port, for example:

./SteamQueryProxy -p 27105 -n 0

You should start to see messages such as the following:

Got S2C_CHALLENGE:: 0x1545279c
Got A2S_INFO_REPLY: 203 bytes
Got A2S_PLAYER_REPLY: 40 bytes
Got A2S_RULES_REPLY: 1258 bytes
A2S_INFO 0x4c1eeb6b
A2S_INFO 0x86be12d4
A2S_PLAYER 0x4c1eeb6b
A2S_INFO 0x1a6bb070
A2S_RULES 0x4c1eeb6b
A2S_INFO 0x80b77a95
A2S_INFO 0xb3a8b7ce
A2S_INFO 0x8f892200
A2S_INFO 0x064e69ae
A2S_INFO 0x9eec7936
A2S_INFO 0x5f934826
A2S_INFO 0x8888ab3a
A2S_PLAYER 0x5f934826
A2S_RULES 0x5f934826
A2S_INFO 0xc68183a1
A2S_INFO 0xd3e0952d
A2S_INFO 0xafcf3596
A2S_INFO 0xff49c049

Messages starting with Got are sucessful requests for the actual server information from the game server which are cached in ram. All other messages are intercepted messages which have been handled by this application and the security challenge that has been used for the request.

Flood Mitigation

It was pointed out that this tool might be useful for VSE flood protection and as such special care has been taken to add support for multi-queue support across multiple threads. Additionally any packets arriving from invalid IP addresses are also now ignored, with the option to also ignore private IP ranges.

There is no way to completely prevent the VSE flood attack, however with the performance gains of using this tool, it should help to keep things operational.

On my local loopback using four threads on an Epyc 7343 I was able to successfully handle a flood of 1 million packets per second before I started to see packets queue.

Multi-Queue/Thread Configuration

If you wish to use the multi-queue/thread configuration you will need to adjust your iptables rules to account for additional queues.

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m udp --dport 27015 -m length --length 33:57 -j NFQUEUE --queue-balance 0:1 --queue-bypass

The above example creates two pools and balances incoming packets between them, it is possible to create more pools by changing the queue ID range, for example 0:3 would create four pools, with IDs, 0, 1, 2 and 3.

When doing this it is required that you run the application with the correct parameters to process the data now entering these queues. Assuming you have used the example above, you would need to use two threads, for example:

./SteamQueryProxy -p 27015 -n 0 -t 2

To ensure low latency processing the application should be run with nice -20 if possible, and be sure to not allocate too many threads as your CPU only has so many cores to run them.

Statistics

It is possible to print out packet count statistics from the application by specifying the -s or --print-stats argument the desired collection interval.

Here is a sample of my system during a simulated VSE attack.

Stats=Packets: 882361  Blocked: 119918  Challenges: 762443  Answers: 0       Passed: 0      
Stats=Packets: 905480  Blocked: 122705  Challenges: 782776  Answers: 0       Passed: 0      
Stats=Packets: 943630  Blocked: 128027  Challenges: 815603  Answers: 0       Passed: 0      
Stats=Packets: 877504  Blocked: 119748  Challenges: 757755  Answers: 0       Passed: 0      
Stats=Packets: 906318  Blocked: 123261  Challenges: 783054  Answers: 3       Passed: 0      
Stats=Packets: 990549  Blocked: 134388  Challenges: 856162  Answers: 0       Passed: 0

The columns here are:

Packets - The total packets processed by the application
Blocked - The total packets blocked due to invalid source IPs.
Challenges - The total number of challenges sent in response to a query
Answers - The total number of answers to queries where the challenge was answered correctly.
Passed - The total number of packets passed through to the game server.

As can be seen here, of the millions of spoofed packets sent, it was still possible for a legitmate client to query the server information unobstructed and zero traffic was passed to the backend game server.

Specific to CS:GO and CS2

As of CS:GO 1.32.3.0 (Including CS2) the game server no longer responds to the A2S_RULES request, as such you will see the following periodic error:

recvfrom: Resource temporarily unavailable

This is benign and can be ignored, it will not affect the proper operation of this tool.

Donations

If you like this project and find it useful and would like to help out you can support this project directly by using the following platforms.

GitHub
Ko-Fi
Patreon
Paypal
BTC - 14ZFcYjsKPiVreHqcaekvHGL846u3ZuT13
ETH - 0x6f8aEe454384122bF9ed28f025FBCe2Bce98db85

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2022 Geoffrey McRae

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

License

gnif/SteamQueryProxy

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