Can you configure NGINX to redirect a HTTP request to SSH connection?

Question

I have a server that is only accessible through a single port (I use a VPN with port forwarding). I have setup a reverse proxy using NGINX for some HTTPS servers that I'm hosting.

I'm wondering if I can do something similar where I can specify a location, and it redirects to a LAN IP with the ssh port 22.

location /ssh/ {
  proxy_pass      192.168.1.44:22;
}

I know proxy_pass only works for HTTP, but I'm wondering if there is something that would work for ssh.

Answer 1

This is a good question. Yes you can use nginx to redirect SSH traffic. In the following example, nginx will redirect traffic, according to protocol. This means that nginx is able to identify SSH traffic and redirect to SSH server, and also identify HTTPS traffic, and redirect to a web server.

In this example 10.10.10.4 is the SSH server, while 10.10.10.5 is the web server in the backend (behind nginx proxy)

stream {
    upstream ssh {
        server 10.10.10.4:22;
    }

    upstream web {
        server 10.10.10.5:443;
    }

    map $ssl_preread_protocol $upstream {
        default ssh;
        "TLSv1.2" web;
    }

    # SSH and SSL on the same port
    server {
        listen 443;

        proxy_pass $upstream;
        ssl_preread on;
    }
}