February 28, 2020

SSH Jump from one server to another

A jump host (also known as a jump server) is an intermediary host to a remote network, through which a connection can be made to another host. It bridges two dissimilar security zones and offers controlled access between them.
A classic scenario is connecting from your desktop or laptop from inside your company’s internal network, which is highly secured with firewalls. In order to easily manage a server in a DMZ (demilitarized zone), you may access it via a jump host.

In this scenario, you want to connect to HOST 2, but you have to go through HOST 1, because of firewall, routing and access privileges. There is a number of valid reasons why jump hosts are needed.

Static Jumphost List

Static jumphost list means, that you know the jumphost or jumphosts that you need to connect a machine. Therefore you need to add the following static jumphost ‘routing’ in ~/.ssh/config file and specify the host aliases as shown.

### First jumphost. Directly reachable
Host one    
	Hostname example1.com    
	IdentityFile ~/ssh.pem    
	User bob-mcguire

### Host to jump to via jumphost1.example.org
Host two    
	Hostname example2.com    
	IdentityFile ~/ssh.pem    
	User bob-mcguire    
~/.ssh/config

Now try to connect to a target server via a jump host

$ ssh -J one two

The above command will first open an ssh connection to server one in the background and there after, start the ssh session to the target server two.

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