A tool utilizing Docker that allows you to be able to connected to multiple Cisco AnyConnect/OpenConnect networks at one time
Like many of you, I use Cisco AnyConnect to connect to Networks.
In my case, I had two separate Cisco AnyConnect networks that I needed to be connected to in order to be connected to a Virtual Desktop/Server through either RDP/SSH on each network.
As a result, I started digging into the IP Stack and seeing about ways to leverage Docker to segment route mapping and allow something like this to work to my advantage.
Here’s a rough sketch of what’s done here:
My Local Computer -> Spin Up Docker Container -> Have Docker Container Connect to Remote Cisco AnyConnect Endpoint
My Local Computer -> Allocate a local port and forward it to a remote address INSIDE the Docker Container (Destination IP/DNS and Port)
My Local Computer -> Open RDP/SSH Session on localhost and allocated local port -> Connection to Remote Desktop/Server Succeeded!
Now, I had a few issues getting this up and going and the major one was making sure that the OpenConnect/AnyConnect Client wasn’t effectively blocking out ssh connections to allow this port forward allocation. However, I DID end up finding a way around this and made sure that the OpenConnect/AnyConnect Client wasn’t hijacking all requests to port 22 and instead was only hijacking/redirecting requests to the VPN.
The previous version of this tool used to use VPN-Splice but I have now removed that dependency and everything works great!
All in all I ended up with this great combo of work and I am extremely proud of it. It has to be the most complex little tool I think I have ever written and it would NOT be possible without the people over at Docker.
