infra/docs/runbooks/kms-public-exposure.md

Runbook: KMS public exposure (vlmcs.viktorbarzin.me:1688)

vlmcs.viktorbarzin.me:1688/TCP is intentionally open to the internet so any visitor can activate Volume License Microsoft products. The webpage at https://kms.viktorbarzin.me/ documents how to use it.

Two hostnames, on purpose (do not merge them):

• kms.viktorbarzin.me — the website (Traefik). Serves the docs and the /scripts/*.ps1 activators. Internally resolves to the Traefik LB (10.0.20.203), which has no :1688 listener.
• vlmcs.viktorbarzin.me — the KMS endpoint (vlmcsd). A-only (no AAAA — the IPv6 tunnel doesn't forward 1688). Resolves to 10.0.20.202 on the LAN (Technitium split-horizon, set via API — cloudflare_record.vlmcs in stacks/kms owns the public A) and to 176.12.22.76 on the internet (Cloudflare → pfSense WAN NAT :1688). Every slmgr / ospp command on the page points here.

Pointing a client at kms.viktorbarzin.me:1688 fails from the LAN with "KMS server cannot be reached" — that name is the website, not the KMS server.

This runbook covers operations on the public exposure: where to find logs, how to tune the rate limit, how to revoke if abused.

Architecture

• K8s service: windows-kms in namespace kms, MetalLB dedicated LB IP 10.0.20.202:1688. ETP=Local, so vlmcsd sees real WAN client IPs in its log (pfSense WAN forwards do DNAT-only, no SNAT; ETP=Local skips the kube-proxy SNAT too). Same pattern mailserver used pre-2026-04-19. Sharing 10.0.20.200 isn't an option — all 10 services there are ETP=Cluster and MetalLB requires a single ETP per shared IP.
• Native DNS auto-discovery for LAN clients: any Windows client with DNS suffix viktorbarzin.lan activates with zero config — Windows queries _vlmcs._tcp.viktorbarzin.lan SRV by default, the SRV target resolves to vlmcs.viktorbarzin.lan → 10.0.20.202, and slmgr /ato succeeds. Records:
  • _vlmcs._tcp.viktorbarzin.lan SRV 0 0 1688 vlmcs.viktorbarzin.lan
  • vlmcs.viktorbarzin.lan A 10.0.20.202
  • kms.viktorbarzin.lan A 10.0.20.200 (Traefik — for the user-facing website at https://kms.viktorbarzin.lan/; not the KMS server) Manual override (e.g., for clients without the suffix or for clients on the public internet): slmgr /skms vlmcs.viktorbarzin.me:1688 (works LAN + WAN) or slmgr /skms 10.0.20.202:1688 (LAN, direct). Do not use kms.viktorbarzin.me:1688 — that name is the website (Traefik), not the KMS server. To revert a manually-overridden client back to auto-discovery: slmgr /ckms.
• Pod fluidity: deployment has replicas=1 (notifier dedup state is per-pod) with no node affinity. TCP readiness/liveness probes on 1688 gate Pod Ready on the listener actually being up, so MetalLB only advertises 10.0.20.202 from a node where vlmcsd is serving.
• pfSense WAN forward: WAN TCP/1688 → k8s_kms_lb:1688 (alias = 10.0.20.202, dedicated to KMS). Description: KMS public — kms.viktorbarzin.me. Other forwards using k8s_shared_lb (WireGuard, HTTPS, shadowsocks, smtps, etc.) are unaffected.
• Filter rule on the WAN interface, TCP/1688 destination <k8s_kms_lb>, with state-table per-source caps:
  • max-src-conn 50 — concurrent connections per source IP
  • max-src-conn-rate 10/60 — 10 new connections per 60 seconds per source
  • overload <virusprot> flush — sources that exceed either cap get added to pfSense's stock virusprot pf table and have their existing states flushed. (virusprot is the only table pfSense's filter generator targets for overload; see /etc/inc/filter.inc. Don't try to point it at a custom table — the schema doesn't expose that knob.)
• Probe filter in slack-notifier: a bare TCP open/close (no Application/Activation block from vlmcsd) is treated as a probe — Uptime Kuma's port-type monitor on windows-kms.kms.svc:1688 and the kubelet readiness/liveness probes both hit this path. Probes increment kms_connection_probes_total{source} (source ∈ internal_pod, cluster_node, external) and log to stdout, but never post to Slack. Real activations still post.
• Website /scripts carve-out: the website is Anubis-fronted (PoW challenge). /scripts/* is carved out to the bare nginx backend (module.ingress_scripts in stacks/kms) because PowerShell iwr | iex is a non-JS client and can't solve the PoW — without the carve-out the one-liner downloads the Anubis challenge HTML and iex chokes on it. Everything except /scripts/* stays behind Anubis. Verify: curl -A curl https://kms.viktorbarzin.me/scripts/setup-kms.ps1 returns the script (not "Making sure you're not a bot!").

Where the logs are

vlmcsd (kms namespace, k8s)

# Live tail
kubectl logs -n kms -l app=kms-service -c windows-kms --tail=50 -f

# All activations in the running pod
kubectl logs -n kms -l app=kms-service -c windows-kms | grep "Incoming KMS request"

Source IPs from the WAN are real client IPs (pfSense DNAT-only + ETP=Local preserve them through the chain). LAN clients hitting the LB IP directly appear as their own IP. Pod-source probes (Uptime Kuma) appear as a Calico pod IP in 10.10.0.0/16. Kubelet readiness/liveness probes appear as the hosting node IP in 10.0.20.0/24.

Slack notifier (kms namespace, k8s)

kubectl logs -n kms -l app=kms-service -c slack-notifier --tail=50 -f

Posts to #alerts, dedup window 1h per (source-IP, product). Activations also increment the Prometheus counter kms_activations_total{product,status} exposed on the same pod at :9101/metrics (scraped by the cluster-wide kubernetes-pods job; query via Prometheus or Grafana directly).

Probe-only TCP connections (open+close, no KMS RPC) are silently filtered out of Slack and counted in kms_connection_probes_total{source}. Useful queries:

# Probe rate by source
rate(kms_connection_probes_total[5m])
# Probes from the public WAN (a non-zero rate here means real port-scans
# are reaching us, not just internal monitoring)
rate(kms_connection_probes_total{source="external"}[5m])

pfSense — virusprot table and filter hits

# SSH to 10.0.20.1 as root
pfctl -t virusprot -T show          # who's currently in the virusprot table
pfctl -t virusprot -T expire 86400  # boot anyone added more than 24h ago
pfctl -t virusprot -T flush         # nuke the entire table

# Filter rule hit counts (find the KMS public rule, look at Evaluations / States)
pfctl -sr -v | grep -A 4 1688

# State table — current TCP/1688 connections, per source
pfctl -ss | grep ':1688 '

Tightening or loosening the rate limit

The filter rule is configured via the pfSense web UI (Firewall → Rules → WAN, look for the KMS public — kms.viktorbarzin.me rule) under Advanced Options → "Maximum new connections per source per seconds" and "Maximum state entries per source".

• Default: max-src-conn 50, max-src-conn-rate 10/60
• To tighten (suspected abuse): drop to max-src-conn 10, max-src-conn-rate 3/60. Flush state and existing virusprot afterwards (pfctl -k 0.0.0.0/0 -K 0.0.0.0/0 is overkill — just save+apply the rule, pfSense reloads pf and existing virusprot stay blocked).
• To loosen (legitimate users blocked): bump to max-src-conn-rate 30/60. The virusprot table flush still applies on overload; reduce its lifetime via Firewall → Advanced → State Timeouts if entries linger.

The overload table entry survives pf reloads. Running pfctl -t virusprot -T flush after a tuning change clears the slate.

Revoking the public exposure

If the activation surface needs to come down (abuse, legal, audit):

1. pfSense web UI → Firewall → NAT → Port Forward → find WAN TCP/1688 → k8s_kms_lb → delete (or disable). Apply.
2. pfSense web UI → Firewall → Rules → WAN → find KMS public — kms.viktorbarzin.me → delete (or disable). Apply.
3. Verify externally: from a phone tether, nc -zw3 kms.viktorbarzin.me 1688 should now fail.

The k8s service stays reachable on the LAN (10.0.20.202:1688 directly, and the website at kms.viktorbarzin.lan via Traefik on 10.0.20.200:443) — only the WAN port-forward is removed.

To put it back, recreate the NAT rule (target alias k8s_kms_lb, port 1688) and the filter rule with the same per-source caps. The alias itself is independent of any forward and persists across delete/restore.

Related

• Stack: stacks/kms/ (Terraform; deployment, MetalLB Service, ingress, ExternalSecret for the Slack webhook)
• Webpage source: kms-website/ repo (Hugo + nginx; Woodpecker builds + pushes to forgejo, then kubectl set image deployment/kms-web-page)
• Networking architecture footnote: docs/architecture/networking.md § "MetalLB & Load Balancing"