403: Keeping Systems Simple

TechSNAP

We’re back from LinuxFest Northwest with an update on all things WireGuard, some VLAN myth busting, and the trade-offs of highly available systems.

Links:

• TechSNAP Episode 390: What’s Up with WireGuard
• WireGuard Sent Out Again For Review — WireGuard lead developer Jason Donenfeld has sent out the ninth version of the WireGuard secure network tunnel patches for review. If this review goes well and lands in net-next in the weeks ahead, this long-awaited VPN improvement could make it into the mainline Linux 5.2 kernel.
• CloudFlare announces Warp VPN — Using Cloudflare’s existing network of servers, Internet users all over the world will be able to connect to Warp VPN through the 1.1.1.1 app. In the same vein, Warp VPN will not significantly increase battery usage by using an efficient protocol called WireGuard.
• CloudFlare Launches "BoringTun" As Rust-Written WireGuard User-Space Implementation - Phoronix — CloudFlare took to creating BoringTun as they wanted a user-space solution as not to have to deal with kernel modules or satisfying certain kernel versions. They also wanted cross platform support and for their chosen implementation to be very fast, these choices which led them to writing a Rust-based solution.
• cloudflare/boringtun — BoringTun is an implementation of the WireGuard® protocol designed for portability and speed.
• VPN protocol WireGuard now has an official macOS app — You can already download the WireGuard app on Android and iOS, but today’s release is all about macOS.
• WireGuard Windows Pre-Alpha — I've been mostly absent these last weeks, due to being completely absorbed in Windows programming. I think we're finally getting to the state where we might really benefit from testing of the "pre-alpha".
• Wintun – Layer 3 TUN Driver for Windows — Wintun is a very simple and minimal TUN driver for the Windows kernel, which provides userspace programs with a simple network adapter for reading and writing packets. It is akin to Linux's /dev/net/tun and BSD's /dev/tun.
• WireGuard for Kubernetes: Introducing Gravitational Wormhole — Wormhole is a Kubernetes network plugin that combines the simplicity of flannel with encrypted networking from WireGuard.
• gravitational/wormhole: Wireguard based overlay network CNI plugin for kubernetes
• NetworkManager 1.16 — NetworkManager 1.16 is a big feature release bringing support for WireGuard VPN tunnels
• Portal Cloud - Subspace — Subspace is an open source WireGuard® VPN server that supports connecting all of your devices to help secure your internet access.
• subspacecloud/subspace — A simple WireGuard VPN server GUI
• jimsalterjrs/wg-admin — Simple CLI utilities to manage a WireGuard server
• 5 big misconceptions about virtual LANs — In the real world, VLANs are anything but simple.
• High Availability vs. Fault Tolerance vs. Disaster Recovery — You need IT infrastructure that you can count on even when you run into the rare network outage, equipment failure, or power issue. When your systems run into trouble, that’s where one or more of the three primary availability strategies will come into play: high availability, fault tolerance, and/or disaster recovery.
• High Availability: Concepts and Theory — Running server operations using clusters of either physical or virtual computers is all about improving both reliability and performance over and above what you could expect from a single, high-powered server.
• RPO and RTO: Understanding the Differences — Recovery time objective refers to how much time an application can be down without causing significant damage to the business. Recovery point objectives refer to your company’s loss tolerance: the amount of data that can be lost before significant harm to the business occurs.
• JupiterBroadcasting/Talks — Public repository of crew talks, slides, and additional resources.
• Command Line Threat Hunting — That viruses and malware are Windows problems is a misnomer that is often propagated through the Linux community and it's an easy one to believe until you start noticing strange behavior on your system. What do you do next? Join Ell Marquez and Tony Lambert in discussing a common sense approach to threat detection using only command line tools.
• Fear the Man in the Middle? This company wants to sell quantum key distribution — For now, Quantum XChange has only said about a dozen companies are part of the pilot. But with the appetite for quantum solutions in the US increasing—the National Quantum Initiative was just signed into law at the end of 2018 to advance the tech—this could be an opportune time to enter the market, so long as the service lives up to its billing.