tinc - Sep 2015 - "Switch Mode" with "TunnelServer" and No Communication

Let me start with what I'm trying to accomplish. I use tinc mainly to get
to subnets behind the daemons and I don't control those subnets and
can't
guarantee overlap. I was using routing mode and reconfiguring tinc every
time i needed to get to a subnet behind a specific daemon. Then I came
across switch mode that allowed me to simply add routes based on the IP
address of the tinc daemon and not have to reconfigure tinc to get to a
different conflicting subnet (just needed to change the route).

However, due to security issues, I want to control which daemons can access
other deamons. For the most part, I just want the server to be able to
access each daemon and the subnets behind them but not have the daemons
access each other or the subnets behind them.

Everything currently connects through one central server initially, so
TunnelServer seemed like the right configuration option. If I understand
this setting correctly, it is meant to only allow traffic between nodes
that have eachother's (or at least one has the other's) host file on the
local system. However, after enabling TunnelServer, my test daemon can no
longer ping the tinc ip address of the server.

While trying to figure out what was wrong, I stumbled across this mailing
list entry; http://www.tinc-vpn.org/pipermail/tinc/2010-April/002290.html

The solution seems to be to use static mac addresses. I'm totally fine with
doing this as all config files are generated programmatically. After doing
this, the config files look something like this:


client-daemon host file:
# client1
Subnet = 7a:91:33:09:fc:d3
Subnet = 10.173.232.50/32
Subnet = 0.0.0.0/0

-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
...
-----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----


client-daemon tinc-up file:
#!/bin/bash
# client1
ip link  set $INTERFACE address 7a:91:33:09:fc:d3
ip link  set $INTERFACE up
ip addr  add 10.173.232.20/32 dev $INTERFACE
ip route add 10.173.232.0/22 dev $INTERFACE


I'm mostly looking for guidance on whether it is possible for daemons to
only accept traffic from specific daemons in switch mode. If so, what am I
doing wrong with my subnet configurations that won't let me even ping from
one daemon to the server when TunnelMode is yes?

Thanks!
-- 

J
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> I'm mostly looking for guidance on whether it is possible for daemons
to
> only accept traffic from specific daemons in switch mode. If so, what am I
> doing wrong with my subnet configurations that won't let me even ping
from
> one daemon to the server when TunnelMode is yes?
check if this patch still applies:
https://github.com/zioproto/fairvpn/blob/master/tarballs-patches/tinc/tinc-1.0.13-fairvpn.patch

it should work.

By default tinc will try to have a full mesh of connection between the
nodes of the VPN.
With this patch and TunnelServer yes you will have the data
connections only where you have a explicit ConnectTo statement.

regards

Saverio

Thank you for the reply. I'll take a look at the patch and see if I can use
it. My current solution was to just implement iptables rules on each of the
endpoints, which isn't the worst way to go. I'll probably need to use
the
patch if I want to control the traffic on the service level.

Thanks again!

J

On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 12:29 AM Saverio Proto <zioproto at gmail.com>
wrote:
> > I'm mostly looking for guidance on whether it is possible for
daemons to
> > only accept traffic from specific daemons in switch mode. If so, what
am
> I
> > doing wrong with my subnet configurations that won't let me even
ping
> from
> > one daemon to the server when TunnelMode is yes?
>
> check if this patch still applies:
>
>
https://github.com/zioproto/fairvpn/blob/master/tarballs-patches/tinc/tinc-1.0.13-fairvpn.patch
>
> it should work.
>
> By default tinc will try to have a full mesh of connection between the
> nodes of the VPN.
> With this patch and TunnelServer yes you will have the data
> connections only where you have a explicit ConnectTo statement.
>
> regards
>
> Saverio
> _______________________________________________
> tinc mailing list
> tinc at tinc-vpn.org
> http://www.tinc-vpn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinc
>
-- 

J
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