There are good reasons to supports helpers in user-space instead:
* Rapid connection tracking helper development, as developing code
in user-space is usually faster.
* Reliability: A buggy helper does not crash the kernel. Moreover,
we can monitor the helper process and restart it in case of problems.
* Security: Avoid complex string matching and mangling in kernel-space
running in privileged mode. Going further, we can even think about
running user-space helpers as a non-root process.
* Extensibility: It allows the development of very specific helpers (most
likely non-standard proprietary protocols) that are very likely not to be
accepted for mainline inclusion in the form of kernel-space connection
tracking helpers.
This patch adds the infrastructure to allow the implementation of
user-space conntrack helpers by means of the new nfnetlink subsystem
`nfnetlink_cthelper' and the existing queueing infrastructure
(nfnetlink_queue).
I had to add the new hook NF_IP6_PRI_CONNTRACK_HELPER to register
ipv[4|6]_helper which results from splitting ipv[4|6]_confirm into
two pieces. This change is required not to break NAT sequence
adjustment and conntrack confirmation for traffic that is enqueued
to our user-space conntrack helpers.
Basic operation, in a few steps:
1) Register user-space helper by means of `nfct':
nfct helper add ftp inet tcp
[ It must be a valid existing helper supported by conntrack-tools ]
2) Add rules to enable the FTP user-space helper which is
used to track traffic going to TCP port 21.
This confirms that our test helper is receiving packets including the
conntrack information, and adding expectations in kernel-space.
The user-space helper can also store its private tracking information
in the conntrack structure in the kernel via the CTA_HELP_INFO. The
kernel will consider this a binary blob whose layout is unknown. This
information will be included in the information that is transfered
to user-space via glue code that integrates nfnetlink_queue and
ctnetlink.
Signed-off-by: Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@netfilter.org>