spiped

Source: https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped Signed binaries & docs: https://www.tarsnap.com/spiped.html Golang implementation (2014 alpha): https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/dchest/spipe

Force of habit. No particular reason, "4kiB feels like a nice number", cargo culting. Choose one :) . It doesn't matter if you have more than 256 bits, as your key file gets hashed with SHA256 at the end[1]. It could be 5GiB it would be the same. So yes, you're right to mention that more bits don't add more security. [1] https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/blob/2194b2c64de65eed119ab...

* The tool is not obscure, it's packaged in most distributions.[1][2][3] It was written and maintained by Colin Percival, aka "the tarnsnap guy" or "the guy who invented scrypt". He is the security officer for FreeBSD. * spiped can be used transparently by just putting a "ProxyCommand" in your ssh_config. This means you can connect to a server just by using "ssh", normally. (as opposed to wireguard where you need to always be on your VPN, otherwise connnect to your VPN manually before running ssh) * As opposed to wireguard which runs in the kernel, spiped can easily be set-up to run as a user, and be fully hardened by using the correct systemd .service configuration [4] * The protocol is much more lightweight than TLS (used by stunnel), it's just AES, padded to 1024 bytes with a 32 bit checksum. [5] * The private key is much easier to set

In past threads, people have mentioned enjoying my Tarsnap (https://github.com/Tarsnap/tarsnap) code. I personally think that the spiped (https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped) code is even better.

I'd suggest spiped: https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped It has far less "legacy" code than tarsnap.

Thanks! I'd recommend the spiped source code (https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped) rather than the Tarsnap code though -- tarsnap is built around libarchive, which (while it's still great code) is not organized the same way as the code I personally write.

Grepping my checked-out source trees quickly: 1. spiped re-binds SIGINT if it is launched as pid 1, in order to work around a Docker bug: https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/blob/master/spiped/main.c#... 2. In my POSIX-violation-workarounds script, ironically enough, I work around a bug in bash which makes 'command -p sh' run with the incorrect path (this has since been fixed, but continues to be present in older installed versions of bash): https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/commit/e3968941c9c1b20c63d... 3. In my getopt code, I use a (non-C99-compliant) computed goto in order to work around a bug in LLVM's handling of sigsetjmp/siglongjmp: https://github.com/Tarsnap/libcperciva/commit/92e666e59503de... 4. Many years ago, I added a spurious 'volatile' into some Tarsnap code in order to prevent a buggy LLVM optimization step from running (it

Picture time! More surface (both spiped and ssh are accepting connections): | → |ssh | → |spiped Less surface (spipe accepts connection, ssh is behind it): | → | spiped ↝ | ssh | With proper configuration, spiped sits in front of ssh, authenticating and decrypting traffic and passing it to ssh. spiped is a tiny program, uses symmetric crypto (small surface). SSH isn't a tiny program, uses more complex asymmetric crypto (larger surface). To learn more: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-07-04-spiped-secure-pip... To learn how to put it in front of SSH, see https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped#example-usage

It's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with TLS (see: OpenSSL). Also, TLS has roots in a time where we knew much less in terms of crypto; as time went on and flaws were discovered, SSL/TLS was patched all around, meaning it has become much harder to implement correctly. Noise starts from a clean state with modern knowledge of cryptography and modern cryptography. Much easier to understand and replicate, much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with. TLS brings modularity and evolutivity, much needed in a protocol the scale of HTTP. In Whatsapp's case, Whatsapp controls both the server and the client; it is much easier to transition between versions because all bricks are under control. When you don't need what TLS brings anymore it makes sense to discard it. As another example: Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/) uses spiped (https://www

I got bitten by this a couple of days ago - I wrongly assumed that tags on GitHub were identical to the tarballs offered on the project's website. Not so much, as it turns out: https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/issues/26