This is a prototype of the SPIN platform.

What is SPIN?

This software is part of the SPIN project.

SPIN stands for Security and Privacy for In-home Networks, it is a traffic visualization tool and analysis tool intended to help protect the home network with an eye on the Internet of Things devices and the security problems they might bring.

Currently, the SPIN prototype is implemented as a package that can be run on either a Linux system or an OpenWRT-based router; it can show network activity in a graphical interface, and has the option to block traffic on top of existing firewall functionality.

For a screenshot, see here.

Building the source code

The SPIN prototype is tested on OpenWRT, Debian and Raspbian systems.

It also comes bundled with the Valibox router image software, available as pre-built images for GL-Inet AR-150, VirtualBox, and the Raspberry Pi 3. See the Valibox website

On (Linux) PC

Dependencies

gcc
make
autoconf
libnfnetlink-dev
libnetfilter-conntrack-dev
libnetfilter-queue-dev
libnetfilter-log-dev
libldns-dev
libmicrohttpd-dev

apt-get install gcc make autoconf libnfnetlink-dev libmnl-dev libnetfilter-queue-dev libldns-dev libmicrohttpd-dev

Library dependencies:

libnetfilter-log1
libnetfilter-queue1
libnfnetlink0
libmnl

apt-get install libnfnetlink0 libmnl0

Runtime dependencies:

mosquitto (or any MQTT software that supports websockets as well)
kernel modules for conntrack and netfilter

For the traffic capture functionality you'll also need:

tcpdump

Building

Run in the source dir:

    autoreconf --install
    mkdir build
    (cd build; ../configure && make)

Running from source tree

To run SPIN, you need to run two daemons; spind to collect data, and spinweb to serve the interface and process user commands. You'll also need an MQTT server, such as mosquitto, with websockets support on port 1884 (as well as plain MQTT on port 1883). MQTT is used to publish traffic data monitored by the SPIN daemon.

The SPIN system is most useful when run on a gateway; there are several instructions on the web on how to set up a Debian system as a gateway. One example is https://gridscale.io/en/community/tutorials/debian-router-gateway/.

To run spind from the source tree, with stdout output and debug logging, use: (sudo) (cd ./src/build/spind/; spind -o -d)

To run the webserver, use: (cd ./src/build/spinweb; ./spinweb)

Note that the actual current working directory for spinweb must be the build directory of spinweb itself, as it needs the relative links to template files to be correct when run from the build tree. This is not an issue when SPIN is installed to the system.

System

SPIN sends its data to MQTT, which any MQTT client can then read. A web-based client ('the bubble app') can be served with the spinweb daemon in src/build/spinweb/, the main HTML file is spin_graph/graph.html, and depending on where you host it. By default it listens to localhost only, on port 13026. You can access it from a browser with the URL http://localhost:13026/spin_graph/graph.html if spind is running. When running on a different system, you will need to configure spinweb to listen on the local network interface through either the configuration file or with the command-line option '-i'.

Spinweb also provides a method to send commands to the SPIN daemon. A client command script can be found in the scripts/ directory.

For OpenWRT

If you have a build environment for OpenWRT (see https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/build), you can add the following feed to the feeds.conf file: src-git sidn https://github.com/SIDN/sidn_openwrt_pkgs

After running scripts/feeds update and scripts/feeds install, you can select the spin package in menuconfig under Network->SIDN->spin.

Running make package/spin/compile and make package/spin install will result in a spin-.ipk file in bin/.

This package has an extra file in addition to the ones described in the previous section: a startup script /etc/init.d/spin; this script will load the kernel module and start the spin_mqtt.lua daemon.

Please keep in mind that for the 'bubble-app' front-end, you will also need to install a webserver, and configure it to serve the pages installed by the package in /usr/lib/spin/web_ui/static.

On OpenBSD

OpenBSD is not fully supported at this time. For now, it is possible to compile spind and run with limited functionality (compared to the Linux/OpenWRT build).

Installing the dependencies:

# pkg_add autoconf%2.69 automake%1.16 ldns-utils mosquitto

Compiling spind:

$ cd src
$ AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69 AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.16 autoreconf --install
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ CC=clang LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib" CFLAGS="-g -O0 -I/usr/local/include" ../configure --enable-passive-mode-only
$ find . -name Makefile | xargs sed -i -e 's/-Werror//g'
$ AUTOCONF_VERSION=2.69 AUTOMAKE_VERSION=1.16 make

Running SPIN

When the OpenWRT package is installed, SPIN should start automatically after a reboot. Simply use a browser to go to http://192.168.8.1:13026/spin_graph/graph.html to see it in action (assuming that the router that is running SPIN has the internal IP 192.168.8.1). You may need to configure the local interface and port in /etc/config/spin

When installed locally, a few manual steps are required:

(0. Configure your system to be a gateway, example instructions: https://gridscale.io/en/community/tutorials/debian-router-gateway/)

Configure and start an MQTT service; this needs to listen to port 1883 (mqtt) and 1884 (websockets protocol).
Load the relevant kernel modules: modprobe nf_conntrack nfnetlink_log nfnetlink_queue. On some systems, the conntrack modules are split into several separate modules, in which case you'll need to run modprobe on nf_conntrack_ipv4 and nf_conntrack_ipv6 as well.
Enable conntrack accounting: sysctl net.netfilter.nf_conntrack_acct=1
Start the spin daemon (sudo) (cd ./src/build/spind/; spind -o -d)
Start the spinweb daemon (cd ./src/build/spinweb/; ./spinweb
Load the spin bubble app by visiting http://127.0.0.1:13026/spin_graph/graph.html

High-level technical overview

The software contains three parts:

a daemon that aggregates traffic and DNS information (with nf_conntract and nflog) and sends it to MQTT
a web API
a html/javascript front-end for the user

The information that is sent to MQTT contains the following types:

Traffic: information about traffic itself, source address, destination address, ports, and payload sizes
Blocked: information about traffic that was blocked (by SPIN, not by the general firewall)
DNS: domain names that have been resolved into IP addresses (so the visualizer can show which domain names were used to initiate traffic)

The daemon will also listen for configuration commands in the MQTT topic SPIN/commands. This will be replaces by RPC calls in the near future.

CIRALabs/spin