security-research VS tailscale

> Alright, let's take a step back. First, I am not a mobile developer.

I think you're whichever kind of developer your current position requires. You've been talking about Android non-stop throughout this conversation, and conversations you've had with others on this website [1]. When you were lambasting me about my perceived knowledge of mobile development you were touting your Android knowledge. Now that I've proven Android is actually one of the primary tools Google uses to promote Chrome (and you admitted you don't know much about iOS) you want to distance yourself from mobile development altogether.

> Other examples include whatever iOS does (which I don't know), containers (docker and the likes), VMs, and everything in-between (like what snap or flatpak use).

We're not discussing theoretical means with which you could sandbox an application, we're talking about how apps are actually used in reality. If you need to fire up a virtual machine every time you use your favorite desktop apps, then you're only proving my point that they're not inherently very secure. Not to mention, the average user probably has no idea what Docker or a virtual machine even is. Like I said in my original response, lots of things are possible in theory, but in practice web browsers are much better at sandboxing apps than desktop operating systems (and even better than mobile operating systems).

> If anything, modern browsers are so complex (and getting worse with time) that the attack surface is big

Ironically, a lot of that complexity arises from the web's insistence on security. V8 is complex because it has so many safeguards in place to sandbox JavaScript, and that sandboxing is taken very seriously. There's a reward anywhere from 10,000 to 150,000 USD if you can escape the sandbox [2][3]. Browsers are inherently more secure than desktop apps because they limit access to the underlying platform. Someone developing malware as a web app has to first escape the browser sandbox, just to gain the privileges that a desktop app has natively. If it helps, you can think of every desktop app as a webapp which has already escaped the browser.

> Moreover, Web UIs bring their own class of issues that don't really apply to native apps.

No, web developers have just spent so much time thinking about security, that native app developers haven't even realized these security issues are relevant yet. It took years for Apple and Google to come to the brilliant conclusion that they should notify users when an app is reading from the clipboard, something which at the time was considered just a Browser "class of issue". Maybe in 2034 they'll figure this out for desktop apps.

> But CORS is really a browser thing, I don't think it really makes sense to compare it to anything outside the "webview world".

It makes sense to compare it to things outside of the browser because it protects users and servers. You seem to want to disqualify any point I make that you can't disprove. If you don't think web technology is comparable to anything outside the browser, then what are we even arguing about? This whole discussion has been about comparing the security of web apps to non-web apps.

> If security is your concern (and you seem to insist that it is), then webapps are really not better than the alternatives. Actually, the Apple Store and the Play Store (to give an example in the mobile world) allow Apple and Google to somehow monitor the apps that users install, which is most certainly more secure than a model where anyone can load any webapp from any website.

Apple and Google have to monitor which apps make it to their app stores, BECAUSE apps are so much more prone to security problems. You once again have it completely backwards. No one has to gatekeep websites because browsers are so much better at sandboxing applications. And allow me to remind you that admitted you have no idea how iOS sandboxing works, so you can't really be confident about this stance even if it did make sense.

And now you're arguing in favor of the app store duopoly which contradicts your point about software diversity. You can't have it both ways. You're trying to hold on to two contradictory points at the same time: you don't like the supposed lack of Browser diversity (which is why you seem to detest Chromium), but you like the supposed security guarantees of the mobile app store duopoly, which is even less diverse.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38919389

[2] https://github.com/google/security-research/blob/master/v8ct...

[3] https://bughunters.google.com/about/rules/5745167867576320/c...

But both Nebula and tinc max out at around 1 Gbit/s on my Hetzner servers, thus not using most of my 10 Gbit/s connectivity. This is because they cap out at 100% of 1 CPU. The Nebula issue about that was closed due to "inactivity" [2].

I also observed that when Nebula operates at 100% CPU usage, you get lots of package loss. This causes software that expects reasonable timings on ~0.2ms links to fail (e.g. consensus software like Consul, or Ceph). This in turn led to flakiness / intermittent outages.

I had to resolve to move the big data pushing softwares like Ceph outside of the VPN to get 10 Gbit/s speed for those, and to avoid downtimes due to the packet loss.

Such software like Ceph has its own encryption, but I don't trust it, and that mistrust was recently proven right again [3].

So I'm currently looking to move the Ceph into WireGuard.

Summary: For small-data use, tinc and Nebula are fine, but if you start to push real data, they break.

[1]: https://github.com/gsliepen/tinc/issues/218

[2]: https://github.com/slackhq/nebula/issues/637

[3]: https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisor...

moved here: https://github.com/google/security-research/tree/master/pocs/bios/tpm-carte-blanche

Sorry, it's from [0] linked further down in the comments. I didn't notice that when posting, or I would have made my comment a reply to that post [1].

[0] https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisor...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27842381

To quickly identify affected and patched kernel versions see

https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisor...

Funny thing is I agree with you that Google should hold itself to that bar, but I don't agree as to Project Zero being the reason. I think we very much should distinguish Google from P0, and that P0's policy should be irrelevant here; their entire purpose is to be an independent team of security researchers finding vulnerability in software, indiscriminately. It seems a number of others here feel similarly (judging by the responses), and ironically their support for the position is probably being lost by dragging P0 into the conversation.

The reason I think Google should hold itself to that bar is something else: Google itself uses that bar for other vendors. From the horse's mouth [1]:

> This is why Google adheres to a 90-day disclosure deadline. We notify vendors of vulnerabilities immediately, with details shared in public with the defensive community after 90 days, or sooner if the vendor releases a fix.

If they're going to do this to others as general company policy, they need to do this to themselves.

[1] https://www.google.com/about/appsecurity/

PoC: https://github.com/google/security-research/tree/master/pocs...

https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisories/GHSA-gxcr-cw4q-9q78 -TheFlow's writeup for the current kernel vuln

Tailscale

Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard® protocol, which means only devices on your private network can communicate with each other.

Might be possible to do using a VPN as long as you can get broadcast/multicast packets forwarded.

Tailscale unfortunately doesn't support it...yet?

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/1013

Tailscale - Make depaware output patch compatible

Tailscale https://tailscale.com

It's a feature of the client, and that is open source: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale

My plan is to set up an EC2 instance and host a VPN, considering options like Netmaker, OpenVPN, or Tailscale. The goal is to connect these devices to the VPN, enabling SSH access from any connected node. This method seems cost-effective(Considering I want to use 100s of devices and potentially 1000s) and straightforward, requiring a simple setup with a sudo apt command on the Raspberry Pi.

It's likely just `tailscale serve https / `.

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/blob/main/ipn/serve.g...

And they also support direct embedding:

https://tailscale.dev/blog/embedded-funnel

I think this is built on the wireguard-go + gvisor mashup, that allows you to do this with just Wireguard:

https://github.com/WireGuard/wireguard-go/tree/master/tun/ne...

One of my favorite applications of this is this little tool that turns Wireguard VPNs into SOCKS5 proxies (which you can selectively enable in your browser)

https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/octeep/wireproxy

I agree, it's a feature that I find sorely lacking in my tailnet.

These are the relevant Github issues to follow, hopefully they address these someday:

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/465