OpenVPN Client-to-Client Configuration Guide

linuxopenvpnvpn

When using a TUN (layer 3) OpenVPN server with client-to-client disabled, my clients can still talk to each other.

The client-to-client config should prevent this according to the documentation:

Uncomment out the client-to-client directive if you would like
connecting clients to be able to reach each other over the VPN. By
default, clients will only be able to reach the server.

Why can the clients continue to communicate to each other when this option is disabled?

Here is my server conf:

port 443
proto tcp
dev tun
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/server.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/server.key
dh /etc/openvpn/keys/dh4096.pem
topology subnet
server 10.10.201.0 255.255.255.128
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
crl-verify /etc/openvpn/keys/crl.pem
push "route [omitted]"
push "dhcp-option DNS [omitted]"
keepalive 10 120
comp-lzo
user nobody
group nogroup
persist-key
persist-tun
plugin /usr/lib64/openvpn/plugins/openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so login
cipher AES-256-CBC
tls-auth /etc/openvpn/keys/pfs.key 0
verb 4

Best Answer

If client-to-client is enabled, the VPN server forwards client-to-client packets internally without sending them to the IP layer of the host (i.e. to the kernel). The host networking stack does not see those packets at all.

           .-------------------.
           | IP Layer          |
           '-------------------'


           .-------------------.
           | TUN device (tun0) |
           '-------------------'


           .-------------------.
           | OpenVPN server    |
           '-------------------'
             ^           |
          1  |           |  2   
             |           v
 .----------------.  .----------------.
 | Client a       |  | Client b       |
 '----------------'  '----------------'

If client-to-client is disabled, the packets from a client to another client go through the host IP layer (iptables, routing table, etc.) of the machine hosting the VPN server: if IP forwarding is enabled, the host might forward the packet (using its routing table) again to the TUN interface and the VPN daemon will forward the packet to the correct client inside the tunnel.

           .-------------------.
           | IP Layer          |  (4) routing, firewall, NAT, etc.
           '-------------------'      (iptables, nftables, conntrack, tc, etc.)
              ^          |
          3   |          |  5
              |          v
           .-------------------.
           | TUN device (tun0) |
           '-------------------'
             ^           |
          2  |           |  6  
             |           v
           .-------------------.
           | OpenVPN server    |
           '-------------------'
             ^           |
          1  |           |  7  
             |           v
 .----------------.  .----------------.
 | Client a       |  | Client b       |
 '----------------'  '----------------'

In this case (client-to-client disabled), you can block the client-to-client packets using iptables:

 iptables -A FORWARD -i tun0 -o tun0 -j DROP

where tun0 is your VPN interface.

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