MIMIC® Online Documentation

HOWTO: MIMIC on GCP

  1. Table of Contents

    1. Table of Contents
    2. Overview
    3. Prerequisites
    4. Usage
    5. Operating System
    6. Networking
    7. Display
    8. Processing Power
    9. Compatibility

  2. Overview

    3. MIMIC Simulator runs on public clouds, including Google Cloud Platform , Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure .

    Every public cloud environment has many choices to run software. This HOWTO document details the recommendations and best practices to run MIMIC on GCP Compute Engine and access the simulated devices over the Internet from your application.

    There are many references on the Internet, but we have found them to be flawed, and we have correct instructions below. We'll refer to external pages that we believe have the best instructions, and amend the ones that need it.

    If you follow the instructions below, you should have MIMIC running in less than 2 hours and being accessed from the Internet, including another instance on GCP. The basic MIMIC installation on any physical system is normally 15 minutes, the workarounds for GCP are the rest. If you are stuck and spend more than 5 minutes on a task below, contact our Technical Support for quick assistance.

  3. Prerequisites

    4. In order to run MIMIC on GCP, you need an GCP account .

    It helps to have a working knowledge of the operating systems that MIMIC runs under (Linux and Windows).

  4. Usage

    5. GCP Compute Engine , like all other public clouds, has limitations that we have to workaround to harness the power of MIMIC. These limitations fall into 4 categories:

    1. operating system

    2. networking

    3. display

    4. processing power

    The following sections detail the best choices.

  5. Operating System

    6. Although MIMIC runs on a variety of operating system versions, as detailed in our supported platforms page , the recommended choice on GCP is Rocky Linux 8.1+ or Windows 2019 .

    We recommend to pick one of those OSs when creating your GCP VM instance for MIMIC. Windows is adequate for up to 10,000 agents, but we recommend Linux for higher scale.

    We recommend at least 2 vCPUs, 4 GiB RAM and 32 GiB data disk for upto 100 agents in MIMIC. Later you can increase these resources if needed.

    While creating the VM instance, you need to customize the firewall rules to allow external access to certain ports (including the default port 22 for SSH on Linux or 3389 for RDP on Windows, in particular

    • UDP port 1194 - the default OpenVPN port

    • TCP port 5903 or 5904 - the VNC port(s) if VNC is used

    NOTE: make sure the firewall rules for the VM instance are correct. This has caused a lot of grief for a lot of people. For example, if tcpdump does not display the expected packets, it's likely the firewall.

    More OS-specific instructions below.

    1. Rocky Linux

      2. More considerations while creating the MIMIC VM instance:

      1. SSH

        Select Rocky Linux as the OS:

        In the Security section, you can Add manually generated SSH keys for the first VM you create. The user will be as specified in the added public key. You can reuse those keys later on to reduce the number of keys to maintain.

        You can generate keys as detailed here Make sure to save the keys on your local system to access the MIMIC VM with ssh.

        Press Create.

      Once the VM is running, we need to configure certain things in the OS to run MIMIC. Use SSH to login to the MIMIC VM, then:

      1. SELINUX

        By default SELINUX is enabled and we need to disable it as detailed in this page ;

        For example: 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ getenforce
Enforcing
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo vi /etc/selinux/config
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo reboot
Connection to xx.xx.xx.xx closed by remote host.
Connection to xx.xx.xx.xx closed.

        After the reboot you should get the following output: 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~] getenforce
Disabled

      2. Firewall

        If the firewall is enabled then we need to disable the firewall , since the GCP network security group already filters all external access: 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ systemctl status firewalld
● firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; enabled; vendor p>
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2022-07-12 16:00:12 UTC; 24s ago
...
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo systemctl stop firewalld
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ systemctl status firewalld
● firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; enabled; vendor p>
   Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2022-07-12 16:00:53 UTC; 5s ago
...

        and when it works, you can permanently disable the firewall with 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo systemctl disable firewalld
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/firewalld.service.
Removed /etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.fedoraproject.FirewallD1.service.

      3. Latest OS

        Since Rocky Linux is very stable, there is little risk and a lot of benefit to update the OS, eg.: 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo yum update
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package
   Arch   Version              Repository                                  Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 kernel
...
Complete!
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo reboot
Connection to xx.xx.xx.xx closed by remote host.
Connection to xx.xx.xx.xx closed.

      4. Install MIMIC

        Install MIMIC according to the Linux installation instructions you received. On systems without a GUI web browser, you can copy from another system (eg. via scp), or use command-line browsers like curl to download the MIMIC images from the web.

        When you invoke MIMICD and it shows ready, eg something like: 

        [user@mimic-rocky bin] ./mimicd
INFO  07/04.19:39:05 - MIMIC Simulator Lab v21.10
 built Nov 18 2021 11:01:32
 Copyright (c) 1997-2021 Gambit Communications, Inc.
 Registered individual license #1, expires 7/1/2023
INFO  07/04.19:39:05 - Running 64-bit
 machine x86_64
 OS Linux 4.18.0-372.9.1.el8.x86_64
 2 CPUs
...
INFO  07/04.19:39:06 - ready

        then you can CTL-C it and go onto the next step. Else, contact support@gambitcomm.com.

      Now you need to tackle network access via OpenVPN below.

    2. Windows 2019

      3. More considerations while creating the MIMIC VM:

      1. RDP

        Follow the directions from Google to connect to your VM instance via RDP.

        Use the decrypted password or save the RDP file on your local system to access the VM with Remote Desktop.

      Once the VM is running, we need to configure certain things in the OS to run MIMIC. Use RDP to login to the MIMIC VM, then:

      1. Firewall

        Configuring your firewall is your policy decision. Nothing will work unless your firewall is setup correctly. We recommend to temporarily disable any firewall with Settings, then Update & Security, then Windows Security. The GCP security group already filters all inbound connections except the ones you explicitely allowed above.

      2. Routing

        Enable the Routing and Remote Access service in the Services Administrative Tool.

      3. Install a usable Web Browser

        We found the Internet Explorer browser to be unusable, thus recommend to install a recent browser like Firefox .

      4. Install MIMIC

        Install MIMIC according to the Windows installation instructions you received.

      Now you need to tackle network access via OpenVPN below.

  6. Networking

    7. GCP like most public clouds virtualizes networking , so there are rules that prevent MIMIC from operating by default. In particular, the VM exposes only the IP addresses that you configure (and rent). MIMIC needs to export potentially hundreds or thousands of IP addresses for the simulated devices, as it can do when you run it in a physical network.

    The workaround is to run a VPN between the MIMIC system and any external system that wants to access the IP addresses of simulated devices in MIMIC.

    There are many choices. We recommend to install the free, open-source OpenVPN , which is distributed for many operating systems:

    1. Rocky Linux

      1. Install EPEL

        install EPEL as detailed at this page . 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
...
epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm                791 kB/s |  22 kB     00:00    
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package              Architecture   Version         Repository            Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 epel-release         noarch         8-8.el8         @commandline          22 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total size: 22 k
Installed size: 32 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1 
  Running scriptlet: epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1 
  Verifying        : epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1 
Installed products updated.

Installed:
  epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                                                   

Complete!

      2. Install OpenVPN

        install OpenVPN as detailed at this page , eg: 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo dnf install openvpn
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - 202 kB/s | 154 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64   17 MB/s | 7.1 MB     00:00    
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package               Architecture   Version                Repository    Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 openvpn               x86_64         2.4.9-1.el8            epel         542 k
Installing dependencies:
 pkcs11-helper         x86_64         1.22-7.el8             epel          64 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  2 Packages

Total download size: 606 k
Installed size: 1.6 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/2): openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64.rpm           1.9 MB/s | 542 kB     00:00    
(2/2): pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64.rpm      180 kB/s |  64 kB     00:00    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           1.5 MB/s | 606 kB     00:00     
...
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64  1.6 MB/s | 1.6 kB     00:00    
Importing GPG key 0x2F86D6A1:
 Userid     : "Fedora EPEL (8) "
 Fingerprint: 94E2 79EB 8D8F 25B2 1810 ADF1 21EA 45AB 2F86 D6A1
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-8
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Key imported successfully
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64                        1/2 
  Running scriptlet: openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2 
  Installing       : openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2 
  Running scriptlet: openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2 
  Verifying        : openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             1/2 
  Verifying        : pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64                        2/2 
Installed products updated.

Installed:
  openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64           pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64          

Complete!

      3. Install easy-rsa

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ sudo dnf install easy-rsa
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package            Architecture     Version               Repository      Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 easy-rsa           noarch           3.0.7-1.el8           epel            46 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 46 k
Installed size: 117 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch.rpm                 203 kB/s |  46 kB     00:00    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                            52 kB/s |  46 kB     00:00     
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch                            1/1 
  Verifying        : easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch                            1/1 
Installed products updated.

Installed:
  easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch                                                   

Complete!

      4. Configure OS parameters

        If not already done so by the system, enable IP forwarding if necessary. 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
0
[user@mimic-rocky ~]$ echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
1

        These commands need to be issued at every reboot. For example, if your system uses sysctl then do this: 

        echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward=1" > /etc/sysctl.d/openvpn-ipforward.conf
sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/openvpn-ipforward.conf

      5. Configure OpenVPN server

        We ship a set of OpenVPN configuration files that will let you get started faster than configuring all the certificates and keys by hand. Later, when you want to configure the keys by hand, you can follow the instructions at this page .

        Download and install our OpenVPN patch with these commands 

        [user@mimic-rocky ~]$ cd /tmp
[user@mimic-rocky tmp]$ curl --output patch-openvpn.tar.gz http://mirror2.gambitcommunications.com/update/images/patch-openvpn.tar.gz
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 12976  100 12976    0     0   3004      0  0:00:04  0:00:04 --:--:--  3004
[user@mimic-rocky tmp]$ cd /etc
[user@mimic-rocky etc]$ gunzip -c /tmp/patch-openvpn.tar.gz | sudo tar xf -

      6. Run OpenVPN server

        [user@mimic-rocky etc]$ sudo systemctl start openvpn-server@server.service
[user@mimic-rocky etc]$ sudo systemctl status openvpn-server@server.service
● openvpn-server@server.service - OpenVPN service for server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/openvpn-server@.service; enabled; ve>
   Active: active (running) since Thu 2020-07-02 18:39:05 UTC; 10s ago
     Docs: man:openvpn(8)
           https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/Openvpn24ManPage
           https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/HOWTO
 Main PID: 3524 (openvpn)
   Status: "Initialization Sequence Completed"
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 23807)
   Memory: 1.6M
   CGroup: /system.slice/system-openvpn\x2dserver.slice/openvpn-server@server.s>
           └─3524 /usr/sbin/openvpn --status /run/openvpn-server/status-server.>

Jul 02 18:39:05 MIMIC systemd[1]: Starting OpenVPN service for server...
Jul 02 18:39:05 MIMIC systemd[1]: Started OpenVPN service for server.

        Now you can connect one or more OpenVPN clients as detailed below.

    2. Windows 2019

      1. Install and run OpenVPN

        Download the appropriate binaries from the OpenVPN downloads page and install. Run the OpenVPN GUI .

      2. Configure OpenVPN client

        We ship a set of OpenVPN configuration files that will let you get started faster than configuring all the certificates and keys by hand. Later, when you want to configure the keys by hand, you can follow the instructions at this page .

        Download our OpenVPN patch from our download site .

        Extract all the files in the ZIP file in a temporary directory, eg. in Windows Explorer under your Downloads folder. We'll call this the patch folder below.

        Follow the instructions in the file install-openvpn\README_CLIENT_WINDOWS.txt.

      3. Run OpenVPN server

        Follow the instructions in the file install-openvpn\README_SERVER_WINDOWS.txt in the patch you downloaded in the previous section.

      Now you can connect one or more OpenVPN clients as detailed below.

  7. Display

    8. MIMIC can be controlled in a variety of ways:

    The most feature rich of these, particularly at the outset, is the MIMICview GUI. In order to display the MIMICview GUI, you need to have a display connected to the VM. This section details your choices for the supported MIMIC operating systems:

    1. Rocky Linux

      2. On Linux, the MIMICview GUI is a X client that needs an X server to display. On a Linux desktop that is the physical monitor of the machine, but in the cloud we need to find other choices:

      1. Display on a remote X server

        If your GCP VM has access to a remote X server, all you need to do to display MIMICview on it is to set the DISPLAY environment variable as detailed in our Linux instructions ;

      2. Access via Remote Desktop

        as detailed in this Microsoft page ;

      3. Access via VNC

        install the Tight VNC server or Tiger VNC server with the common/install-vnc script in the MIMIC install area. Then install a VNC client on your desktop system. Then you can access your cloud system via VNC as in this screenshot:

    2. Windows 2019

      3. MIMICview displays natively in the Windows desktop that you RDP to.

  8. Processing power

    9. Running a small scenario with hundreds of simulated agents does not need much processing power, as detailed in our scalability recommendations .

    But, if you are running simulations with thousands of agents or higher performance requirements, you'll need to scale up your MIMIC system as detailed in this FAQ entry . In addition, on cloud platforms the physical CPUs are sometimes multiplexed for several vCPUs, so you are not getting the entire processing power. This is beyond our control. Eg. if 8 vCPUs are maxed out with CPU usage, then you need to scale up to the next level.

  9. Compatibility

    10. This section lists the OpenVPN clients we have tested for the latest version 2.4.9:

    1. CentOS 8

      1. Install EPEL

        install EPEL as detailed at this page . 

        [root@localhost ~]# dnf install epel-release
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package               Architecture    Version            Repository       Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 epel-release          noarch          8-8.el8            extras           23 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 23 k
Installed size: 32 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch.rpm                 134 kB/s |  23 kB     00:00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                            70 kB/s |  23 kB     00:00
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1
  Installing       : epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1
  Running scriptlet: epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1
  Verifying        : epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch                            1/1

Installed:
  epel-release-8-8.el8.noarch

Complete!

      2. Install OpenVPN

        install OpenVPN as above, eg: 

        root@localhost ~]# yum install openvpn
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - 184 kB/s | 154 kB     00:00
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64  2.0 MB/s | 7.1 MB     00:03
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package               Architecture   Version                Repository    Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 openvpn               x86_64         2.4.9-1.el8            epel         542 k
Installing dependencies:
 pkcs11-helper         x86_64         1.22-7.el8             epel          64 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  2 Packages

Total download size: 606 k
Installed size: 1.6 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/2): pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64.rpm      327 kB/s |  64 kB     00:00
(2/2): openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64.rpm           1.7 MB/s | 542 kB     00:00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           780 kB/s | 606 kB     00:00
warning: /var/cache/dnf/epel-6519ee669354a484/packages/openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature, key ID 2f86d6a1: NOKEY
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64  1.6 MB/s | 1.6 kB     00:00
Importing GPG key 0x2F86D6A1:
 Userid     : "Fedora EPEL (8) "
 Fingerprint: 94E2 79EB 8D8F 25B2 1810 ADF1 21EA 45AB 2F86 D6A1
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-8
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Key imported successfully
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1
  Installing       : pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64                        1/2
  Running scriptlet: openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2
  Installing       : openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2
  Running scriptlet: openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             2/2
  Verifying        : openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64                             1/2
  Verifying        : pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64                        2/2
Installed:
  openvpn-2.4.9-1.el8.x86_64           pkcs11-helper-1.22-7.el8.x86_64

Complete!

      3. Install easy-rsa

        [root@localhost ~]# yum install easy-rsa
...
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package            Architecture     Version               Repository      Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 easy-rsa           noarch           3.0.7-1.el8           epel            46 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 46 k
Installed size: 117 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch.rpm                 101 kB/s |  46 kB     00:00
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                            62 kB/s |  46 kB     00:00
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1
  Installing       : easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch                            1/1
  Verifying        : easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch                            1/1

Installed:
  easy-rsa-3.0.7-1.el8.noarch

Complete!

      4. Configure OpenVPN client

        We ship a set of OpenVPN configuration files that will let you get started faster than configuring all the certificates and keys by hand. Later, when you want to configure the keys by hand, you can follow the instructions at this page .

        Download and extract our OpenVPN patch with these commands 

        [root@localhost ~]# cd /tmp
[root@localhost tmp]#  curl --output patch-openvpn.tar.gz http://mirror2.gambitcommunications.com/update/images/patch-openvpn.tar.gz
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 17024  100 17024    0     0  21147      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 21121

[root@localhost tmp]# cd /etc
[root@localhost etc]#  gunzip -c /tmp/patch-openvpn.tar.gz | tar xf -

        We need to change one line to point to the IP address of the MIMIC VM running the OpenVPN server at the line indicated with GAMBIT. 

        [root@localhost tmp]# cd openvpn/client
[root@localhost client]# vi azure.ovpn

        The line to be changed is the line starting with 

        remote

      5. Run OpenVPN client 

        [root@localhost client]#  openvpn --config azure.ovpn
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 OpenVPN 2.4.9 x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] [MH/PKTINFO] [AEAD] built on Apr 24 2020
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 library versions: OpenSSL 1.1.1c FIPS  28 May 2019, LZO 2.08
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 WARNING: --ns-cert-type is DEPRECATED.  Use --remote-cert-tls instead.
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 Outgoing Control Channel Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 Incoming Control Channel Authentication: Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]52.255.165.38:1194
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 Socket Buffers: R=[212992->212992] S=[212992->212992]
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 UDP link local: (not bound)
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 UDP link remote: [AF_INET]52.255.165.38:1194
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 TLS: Initial packet from [AF_INET]52.255.165.38:1194, sid=317be4a9 c723e38c
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 VERIFY OK: depth=1, CN=MIMIC-azure
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 VERIFY OK: nsCertType=SERVER
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 VERIFY OK: depth=0, CN=MIMIC-azure
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 Control Channel: TLSv1.3, cipher TLSv1.3 TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, 2048 bit RSA
Mon Jul  6 13:58:56 2020 [MIMIC-azure] Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]52.255.165.38:1194
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 SENT CONTROL [MIMIC-azure]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1)
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,route 10.8.0.1,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 10.8.0.6 10.8.0.5,peer-id 1,cipher AES-256-GCM'
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: timers and/or timeouts modified
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: --ifconfig/up options modified
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: route options modified
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: peer-id set
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: adjusting link_mtu to 1625
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 OPTIONS IMPORT: data channel crypto options modified
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 Data Channel: using negotiated cipher 'AES-256-GCM'
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 Outgoing Data Channel: Cipher 'AES-256-GCM' initialized with 256 bit key
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 Incoming Data Channel: Cipher 'AES-256-GCM' initialized with 256 bit key
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 ROUTE_GATEWAY 10.0.0.1/255.255.255.0 IFACE=enp0s3 HWADDR=08:00:27:b7:d6:22
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 TUN/TAP device tun0 opened
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 TUN/TAP TX queue length set to 100
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 /sbin/ip link set dev tun0 up mtu 1500
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 /sbin/ip addr add dev tun0 local 10.8.0.6 peer 10.8.0.5
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 /sbin/ip route add 10.8.0.1/32 via 10.8.0.5
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 WARNING: this configuration may cache passwords in memory -- use the auth-nocache option to prevent this
Mon Jul  6 13:58:57 2020 Initialization Sequence Completed

        You can verify by pinging the OpenVPN server IP address: 

        [root@localhost ~]# ping 10.8.0.1
PING 10.8.0.1 (10.8.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.8.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=23.0 ms
64 bytes from 10.8.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=29.6 ms
^C
--- 10.8.0.1 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 2ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 23.001/26.303/29.606/3.306 ms

      6. Add routes

        To get to the remote agent addresses over the OpenVPN tunnel, you can add static routes for the networks that these agent addresses are in, eg. to get to the 10.48.0.1 or 10.201.0.110 agents in the default MIMIC agent configuration agent.cfg: 

        [root@localhost client]# route add -net 10.48.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 tun0
[root@localhost client]# route add -net 10.201.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 tun0

      7. Access the agents

        Once the routes are in place, you should be able to access the running agents, eg. with NET-SNMP snmpwalk: 

        [root@localhost client]# ping 10.48.0.1
PING 10.48.0.1 (10.48.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.48.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=22.1 ms
^C
--- 10.48.0.1 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 1 received, 50% packet loss, time 3ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 22.080/22.080/22.080/0.000 ms

[root@localhost client]# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public 10.201.0.110 system
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software ..
IOS (tm) 3000 Software (IGS-D-L), Version 11.0(14a), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)..
Copyright (c) 1986-1997 by cisco Systems, Inc...
Compiled Wed 02-Apr-97 19:23 by tlane
SNMPv2-MIB::sysObjectID.0 = OID: SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.9.1.74
DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance = Timeticks: (2594) 0:00:25.94
SNMPv2-MIB::sysContact.0 = STRING: support@gambitcomm.com
SNMPv2-MIB::sysName.0 = STRING: cisco-2524
SNMPv2-MIB::sysLocation.0 = STRING: 603-881-3500
SNMPv2-MIB::sysServices.0 = INTEGER: 6
SNMPv2-MIB::sysORLastChange.0 = Timeticks: (0) 0:00:00.00
[root@localhost client]# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public 10.48.0.1 system
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software ..
IOS (tm) RSP Software (RSP-JSV56I-M), Version 12.1(7), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)..
Copyright (c) 1986-2001 by cisco Systems, Inc...
Compiled Fri 23-Feb-01 05:14 by kellythw
SNMPv2-MIB::sysObjectID.0 = OID: SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.9.1.46
DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance = Timeticks: (16922) 0:02:49.22
SNMPv2-MIB::sysContact.0 = STRING: support@gambitcomm.com
SNMPv2-MIB::sysName.0 = STRING: cisco-7513
SNMPv2-MIB::sysLocation.0 = STRING:
SNMPv2-MIB::sysServices.0 = INTEGER: 78
SNMPv2-MIB::sysORLastChange.0 = Timeticks: (0) 0:00:00.00

      8. Limitations

        We have found and solved these limitations. Anything else is beyond our support for this third-party software:

        • Change Keys

          The configuration files we supply uses the same keys for anyone who runs them. If you want to change the keys, you will have to configure them on the server. First, stop the OpenVPN server, and move the existing keys aside, eg.: 

          [user@mimic-rocky etc]$ sudo systemctl stop openvpn-server@server.service
[user@mimic-rocky etc]$ sudo mv /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa.GAMBIT

          and copy a new easy-rsa area, eg.: 

          [user@mimic-rocky etc]$ sudo cp -r /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa.GAMBIT /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
[user@mimic-rocky etc]$ cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa

          then overwrite the old keys with the instructions at this page starting at the line 

          sudo ./easyrsa init-pki

          until (and including) the line 

          openvpn --genkey --secret pfs.key

          Then restart the OpenVPN server. The new keys will be picked up by the server.conf config file, but also need to be copied to the client system. You need to copy these files to your client OpenVPN configuration folder:

          • ca.crt
          • client.crt
          • client.key

        • Multiple OpenVPN clients

          Once you can issue client certificates, to allow multiple clients to your OpenVPN server you need to give each client a different CN (common name) in its certificate. Else use the --duplicate-cn option as detailed in this post .

    2. Windows

      1. Install and run OpenVPN

        Download the appropriate binaries from the OpenVPN downloads page and install. Run the OpenVPN client.

      2. Configure OpenVPN client

        We ship a set of OpenVPN configuration files that will let you get started faster than configuring all the certificates and keys by hand. Later, when you want to configure the keys by hand, you can follow the instructions at this page .

        Download our OpenVPN patch from our download site .

        Extract all the files in the ZIP file in a temporary directory, eg. in Windows Explorer under your Downloads folder. We'll call this the patch folder below.

        Import the file openvpn\client\azure.ovpn under your patch folder with the OpenVPN GUI Import file... menu item.

        This will create a azure folder under your OpenVPN configuration folder. You can find the location with the OpenVPN GUI Settings... menu item, Advanced tab.

        Copy the rest of the files under openvpn\client from the patch folder to the azure folder under the OpenVPN Configuration Files folder. It will complain about overwriting the existing azure.ovpn file, select Don't overwrite.

        Once the files are copied, you need to edit one line in the azure.ovpn file with the Edit Config menu item under the azure menu in the OpenVPN GUI to point to the GCP VM IP address. The line to be changed is the line starting with 

        remote

        Once the changes are saved, you can run the client by picking Connect under the azure menu in the OpenVPN GUI. A log will popup with the progress, and it will finally indicate 

        azure is now connected

        in the status bar.

        You can verify by pinging the OpenVPN server IP address: 

        $ ping 10.8.0.1

Pinging 10.8.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.8.0.1: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.8.0.1: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.8.0.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.8.0.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 10.8.0.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 23ms

      3. Add routes

        To get to the remote agent addresses over the OpenVPN tunnel, you can add static routes for the networks that these agent addresses are in, eg. to get to the 10.48.0.1 or 10.201.0.110 agents in the default MIMIC agent configuration agent.cfg:

        First, print the routing table, something like (only important lines included below): 

        $ route print
===========================================================================
Interface List
...
===========================================================================

IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.0.1    192.168.0.106    266
         10.8.0.1  255.255.255.255         10.8.0.5         10.8.0.6    266
...

        The gateway is in the Gateway column of the route entry to 10.8.0.1, usually it is 10.8.0.5 with the azure.ovpn configuration we provide.

        To get to the remote agent addresses over the OpenVPN tunnel, you can add static routes for the networks that these agent addresses are in, eg. to get to the 10.48.0.1 or 10.201.0.110 agents in the default MIMIC agent configuration agent.cfg. NOTE: this has to be done from an Administrator CMD prompt: 

        $ route add 10.48.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 10.8.0.5
 OK!
$ route add 10.201.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 10.8.0.5
 OK!

        After that, you can access both the MIMIC agents and the Internet simultaneously.

      4. Access the agents

        Once the routes are in place, you should be able to access the running agents, eg. with NET-SNMP snmpgetnext: 

        $ ping 10.48.0.1

Pinging 10.48.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 10.48.0.1: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.48.0.1: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.48.0.1: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=64
Reply from 10.48.0.1: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 10.48.0.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 23ms, Average = 22ms

$ ./snmpgetnext -v 1 -c public -One 10.48.0.1 .1.3
.1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.0 = STRING: "Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software ..
IOS (tm) RSP Software (RSP-JSV56I-M), Version 12.1(7), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)..
Copyright (c) 1986-2001 by cisco Systems, Inc...
Compiled Fri 23-Feb-01 05:14 by kellythw"

      5. Limitations

        We have found and solved these limitations. Anything else is beyond our support for this third-party software:

        • Change Keys

          Create new ca.crt, client.key and client.crt files for your client as detailed above.

        • Multiple OpenVPN clients

          Once you can issue client certificates, to allow multiple clients to your OpenVPN server you need to give each client a different CN (common name) in its certificate. Else use the --duplicate-cn option as detailed in this post .

 
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