I'm just copy pasting my reddit writeup since that's where the creator is active. For those curious the basic idea of cosmos (https://cosmos-cloud.io/) is home server with a push towards default safety stuff. Reverse proxy over your docker containers configured to not see beyond their world sort of thing so you can safely control access. I believe it's a one person project and still very much in development, but given that so many people just drop "roll your own, you just need to learn...." as the solution I find this to be vastly preferable, and maybe better than things like CasaOS

Post:
I've had less time than I hoped to really poke at this, so it's a bit rambly/stream of consciousness. Figured I'd put this up as a data point for anyone either considering cosmos, or maybe as some feedback. If anyone wants more detail on a specific part I'll gladly dive in, but for now if I don't put this up I never will. A very large thanks to the various people who guided me on the discord.

Techstack/layout/hardware:

1. Cloudflare domain with proxy active
2. Ubiquiti UDM Pro router
3. MS01 on Unbuntu, in default DMZ vlan
4. Client devices on other vlans(a secure VLAN, technically not the default but similar) or external to network

Personal skill level: I code for a living, but that's probably overstating my skill. Mostly light CRUD apps. Network is a MASSIVE blindspot that I know very little about. This project was in part to help fix that by getting me some practical experience. It's also GROSSLY overspecc'd for my skill level with some hope I can eventually do some more ambitious stuff.

Setup: I had installed Cosmos before and run it locally unsecured/self signed (as provided by just clicking on the button in cosmos), just to make sure I understood "intended" behavior.

My initial hiccups mostly revolved around me setting up port forwarding incorrectly in the router, so i'll skip most of that. Short version is misread something, went down the out of date documentation rabbit hole and then doubled down with some AI hallucinations. In the end it's MUCH easier than I was making it.

All i needed to do was setup a 443 port forward to the static IP of my Cosmos box. It's even limited to cloudflare IPs only, which was just taking the list provided by cloud flare and copy pasting it in. There's a section in ubiquitis network interface for this and it's very straight forward.

From there it was configuring the right tokens so I could do the cloudflare DNS Challenge, which is well documented (went the double token route rather than full key.) Once I found the right pages for that it was simple.

Made my tokens, but was confused as hell because in Comsos it says "you don't need to fill everything out" for cloudflare, and there's CLEARLY duplicate entries, so I wasn't sure if I needed to fill out both.

From what I can tell, you need to fill out the duplicates (so you will double enter your email and your key/tokens). You can leave blank things like timeouts or whatever you're not using (key if using tokens, token if using key). Some clarity on the dupe thing might help.

I do think a small guide on bare minimum DNS config would also help. I was using a root A record and a CNAME wildcard record, and I never got it to working with cosmos. Unsure if that's my fault or not, but when I changed the wildcard to another A record (so A record for root and A record for *), it started working. For someone like me who knows fuck all about any of this, there was a lot of stumbling around with DNS.

Of note I did select allow wildcard domains and .local domains on all attempts. No insecure http local access.

From there it, mostly, started working. Https enabled and everyone can connect....exceeeept .local domains.

This is the part i'm still struggling with. There's not a lot of documentation on .local, just "it will work if you check the box". I'm not sure if it clashes with https, or if i need to self sign, or if it really should be that easy.

My understanding is I just make new url for an app, call it whatever.local, and boom I should be able to connect so long as i'm one the same network.

In practice, I see no traffic hitting the server when I try this(unless on the server itself), and get timeouts from local clients (server does work). I got it to work once from a client on another vlan after trying to curl the https://whatever.local, but the next morning with nothing changed (went to bed right after and just left the machines running), it no longer worked.

I did 100% confirm this worked because I used filebrowser to transfer some large data at speeds that NEVER would have been possible if it wasn't over my local network(everything is wired, no wifi, hence the desire for .local access). Also worth noting that I CAN ping the server locally and ssh to it from my other network, so i'm confident the firewall/vlans are configured correctly for that.

Even for that brief moment when it was working, I STILL couldn't hit domain.local. It clearly exists, but if I can hit it (again from the server box or for that one moment from my other machine) I get the "you should use your domain address" text and cannot continue.

I suspect router shenanigans (i do have mdns enabled on all VLANS), but I'm having a hard time finding logs and what not for this. I'm also unsure if I don't know enough and am doing some config that obviously shouldn't work. I have toggled the "allow insecure local access" option in testing once or twice, but it doesn't seem to change anything. Not sure how long the delay should be.

Small things I noticed that might need fixing/expanding: 1. The initial admin account creation "your passwords do not match" help text is not in English. 2. Small thing but while browsing the market it seems there's a few configs that no longer work or aren't supported. EmulatorJS was the main one that seemed clearly done. 3. Hitting the domain, after logging in but not having touched it since forever, just gives you a "user unauthorized" warning but still lets you putter around the setup. 4. Related to that, it does sorta suck that right now even normal users see so much. I would like to hide a LOT of the interface for some of my users(just show them installed visible apps?), and while I can hide something like a new URL, I can't hide the URL screen, or the market, or whatever. It's "fine" but several test members had to be told "yes i know you can see that, no its fine, no you can't delete or edit, yes i know it looks like you can, yes i've tested, etc, etc" 5. In my testing, I did manage to get my domain IP banned by smart shield due to all the logging in and out. Was easy enough to bounce the box and get back in, but maybe a "heavy testing" mode an admin can enable that has smart shield chill for 30 minutes? Dunno how sane that is given the security first focus and I'm sure I could've whitelisted the IP briefly/neutered smart shield somewhere. 6. When entering your license key, you instantly see a "manage your license" button pop up. I emailed about it because I was confused and thought my license was busted, but just needed to scroll to the bottom and hit save. Just a flow thing that might wan to change. 7. Maybe an early "what is your goal" question? Local only vs using a domain vs using a domain and local access with adjusted config process to skip/auto handle things that could go wrong?
8. The "make admin only" checkbox on every app i've installed, that has it, doesn't appear to work. I have to go into the URL config and manually make it admin only from there. Maybe i'm misunderstanding where/how it's doing this, but some light testing seems to confirm that non admin accounts can access until I do that.

Side issues:

At some point in all this my Ubuntu took a spirited attempt at destroying itself and would let me login and then just show me a cursor and nothing else. Couldn't get to the terminal through the recommended ways, but after sshing to the box locally and changing uhh...the display driver I think?, it's mostly been working, but I cannot restart the machine without issues until I hard shutdown (hold the power button). I doubt this is related to cosmos (either caused by, or affecting behavior), but figure I should mention it just in case. Planning a full reinstall later.

Overall:

I do love it. Cosmos is trying to be something that I think should exist and yet for some reason does not. There's so many ways to screw something like this up and the "well just roll your own" approach is hellishly easy to screw up with extreme consequences. I have a few more upgrades/tweaks to do (get .local working, maybe reinstall the OS and the thus resetup from scratch, NAS for storage of some family videos/photos we want backed up in more than one spot), and I have mostly enjoyed how clear Cosmos has been.

I've recently moved, so I have a new ISP and I've also switched to new network hardware. I've been pulling my hair out trying to understand why I keep getting 100% timeouts when connecting to a locally hosted website. To make it more complicated, it only happens when I’m on WiFi.

Hardware setup is:

ISP router/modem -> Ubiquity Cloud Gateway -> U7 Pro AP -> Laptop
                                           -> Webserver

The issue is opening https://foo.bar.baz:58443 when on WiFi. This domain points to my home (not really bar.baz, but you get the idea). There's is port forwarding rule to get to the local server. With tcpdump, I see the request coming in on that webserver, a SSL handshake is completed and then a bunch of TCP retransmissions.

Some observations:

• If the machine with the browser is connected to a cable and not WiFi, everything is fine, no timeouts.
• Opening https://192.168.1.123:58443 (webserver address) is fine (WiFi or wired).
• Opening https://10.0.1.123:58443 (gateway address) is fine (WiFi or wired).

I thought it would be MTU related, but haven’t had any luck with changing it to a lower size. I’m not positive I’ve done this correctly, though, so it may still be MTU related.

I know there are people here that know way more than I do about networking, so I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

Pretty much what the title says - I'm building out a smallish compute cluster and hoping to set up some centralised storage that won't be a bottleneck, but I'm very much not a networking specialist. Most of the load will be random reads from compute nodes pulling in the bits of various datasets they need to work on.

Is it plausible to throw a 100GbE ConnectX-5 card and 256GB RAM into a consumer AM5 machine, format everything in ZFS, and set up a network share with KSMBD? My understanding is that I want to ensure everything's using mirroring rather than worrying about RAIDZ parity if I'm optimising for speed, which is fine, and I know that I'll only get full throughput as far as things can be cached in RAM - but is it reasonable to expect ZFS ARC to do that caching for me? Dare I hope that the SMB driver will just work if I drop it in there between the filesystem and the NIC? Or have I crossed the line into enterprisey-enough requirements that it's going to be an uphill battle to get this working anywhere near line speed?

My MSI motherboard recently had an audio issue and crashed/corrupted my PC.

I RMA'd it and did a fresh install of windows.

I fire up my PC - no internet. After some fiddle-fucking around, I try an Ethernet to USB-C adapter. Works fine.

I try a wifi dongle, no issues.

Okay, motherboard issue related to the Ethernet port then, right?

Except, I plug my Ethernet cable directly into my modem, and now it's working totally fine.

Hmm, router issue? But why is it working with the usb-C adapter? Why does it work when I plug it into my steam deck? Factory reset. No dice.

Drivers updated, windows updated, everything has been disabled, re-enabled, reset, turned off and back on, etc. I'm losing my mind.

I would really like to be able to plug my expensive PC directly into my router via Ethernet, but I can't seem to make it happen. Tried two different cables (which work with other devices).

When I connect, it says it's identifying network and then gives me a 169 IP address - DHPS error then? But why wouldn't that be resolved by the clean install and the factory reset?

Everything is set to auto in terms of IP and DHPS. Everything is enabled as it should be. No firewall. No security. No blacklisted devices. Why won't my router assign an IP address to my PC when connected directly via Ethernet? And why is it working fine when connected to my modem?

msi motherboard and TP-link router by the way.

Edit: Alright folks, I'm just going to squeeze in a network card. I don't want to do another three weeks with no PC and this mobo is just old enough that I don't feel like RMA'ing repeatedly unless I have to. I really tried everything and have ruled out the router and Ethernet cable. Thank you all so much for your help.

Edit: Threw a new network card in. Used my second PCIEx16 slot. Nothing will fit there anyway since it's microatx and my gpu takes up so much space. Working great. So probably the mobo having an ethernet defect - not terribly surprising considering this was just RMA'd and they sent me back the same mobo after repair. If it shits the bed again, I'll just get a new mobo entirely. it's not an expensive one luckily. Thanks again everyone!

Good evening, everyone. I was wondering if any of my fellow Tilders had experience with using Android's Private DNS feature on unconventional android devices e.g. WearOS, Android TVs etc.

It was quite easy to figure out exactly how to set up an alternative DNS server on these devices. By default, Google has hidden the private DNS setting on them, but it is still accessible from ADB. In both of my examples it is likely easiest to enable “Wireless Debugging”, pair the devices successfully, and then run the commands.

settings put global private_dns_specifier one.one.one.one (replace this with the pertinent server!!)
settings put global private_dns_mode hostname

The issue I have been running into, however, is if there is seemingly any form of content filtering enabled on the DNS server of your choice, the WearOS device seems to think internet is unavailable when first connecting. If you open the Settings app and leave it open for long enough on the Wi-Fi page, it will switch from “Internet not available” to “Connected”. Contrary to this, if you open an app like Samsung Internet for, it does not take this time and just refuses to use any configured Wi-Fi network.

To go into my specific situation in a little more detail, I use NextDNS configured with Hagezi Multi PRO++ block list. I have no issues on my S24+ with regard to internet being deemed unavailable by the OS (sure the occasional public Wi-Fi network blocks DoT—I just use mobile data then). I have also yet to try it on my Smart TV, which is frankly the more important target device than my watch (I will get around to it in the new year once the holidays are over).

This is all a potentially very convoluted way to ask what people's experiences are with this, and if they have faced similar problems to me when using providers like NextDNS, AdGuard etc. that provide content filtering options on their encrypted DNS connections.

Merci beaucoup !

Hey all, not-a-networks-guy here.

I've currently got an rpi set up running pihole natively (not in a container) for ad and website blocking reasons. (Using port 80, no TLS) I've used the pihole localdns feature to set an internal hostname for that ip (me.lan).

On the same pi, I have podman "set up" to run FreshRSS, and I'm getting more and more annoyed about using the port # to access it. (me.lan:12345) I'd like to set up a reverse proxy (probably Traefik) in a container to redirect internally, but considering that port 80 is taken (by pihole, outside of podman) I don't see a way to direct traffic from the pihole to Traefik.

I'd really rather not reconfigure the whole setup to use containers.... I'm lazy, and also prefer my dns resolver to have the least amount of overhead possible. Is configuring the router an option here, or is the only way to achieve what I'm looking for an overhaul of the pi and containers?

If I've missed any pertinent details, let me know and I'll update here.

Hi everyone, I recently finally setup the Ruckus AP unleased system that came with my townhome. After spending a long night learning how to properly configure the system I finally set it up in a way that provided me the best speeds/range without interference.

This was achieved by setting my Ruckus APs to manually sit on the DFS channels (60-140) via the Ruckus configuration app (shown here)

This has been working great as I'm avoiding the 10~ other wifi networks in the area that are all set to the standard 36-48 and 149-160 channels (wifi analyzer screenshot here) but I'm concerned I may be inadvertently violating FCC guidelines. Note I do not live near any military installations, but I am about 13 miles away from a major airport. Will the Ruckus APs automatically change channels if they detect radar interference or am I causing trouble for someone?

I recently moved to a new place with a new ISP, and my Mullvad VPN isn't playing nicely with Firefox like it used to. Can any of you networking gurus please help me troubleshoot?

When the VPN is enabled, most requests from the browser fail immediately. If I pull up the dev tools Network tab, I can see that these requests fail with an NS_ERROR_FAILURE message before any data is transferred.

I have Firefox configured to use "strict" Enhanced Tracking Protection. When I reduce it to "standard" my requests go through.

I'm also trying to use DNS over HTTPS with a custom provider (Mullvad, via https://dns.mullvad.net/dns-query). I'm configuring this in Firefox, using the "Increased Protection" DoH setting. When I do that, Firefox reports the DoH status as "Status: Not active (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)". This happens even when Enhanced Tracking Protection is set to "standard" — in other words, that reduced setting fixed the NS_ERROR_FAILURE for HTTP requests, but not for DoH.

So how do I fix this so Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection, DNS over HTTPS, and Mullvad all work together? I never had this problem with my old ISP, so I suspect something's being blocked at the WAN level that I need to circumvent.

• OS: macOS Sonoma 14.5
• VPN protocol: WireGuard
• ISP: AT&T Fiber

I'm just using the official Mullvad client app with mostly default settings. The fiber gateway modem/router came with some default packet filtering firewall rules but I disabled everything in the admin panel. Weirdly, rebooting my machine fixed this temporarily, but the next time I disconnected/reconnected the VPN it broke again. Other browsers (with default settings and no DoH) are working fine when the VPN is connected.

Edit: Solved! Solution here.

Hey all, I'm interested in going down the rabbit hole with Ubiquiti equipment or other manufacturers, more specifically with access points, routers, and a switch. I want to ween off my ISP-supplied all-in-one equipment as their newer hardware limits basic features such as port forwarding, and I'm interested in re-enabling my self-hosted software. Wi-Fi standards have been moving pretty quickly, as have hardware. What setups do you have established in your homes?

I don't really have a budget in mind, and have a 2.5GbE port I'd like to utilize for media consumption over LAN.

Hey everyone!

Sorry if this is a long post, but I've done my research and I would like to make a few questions.

I've decided that I would like to buy a NAS mainly to storage all of my documents, photos and videos, so that, I can access them from multiple devices and also use it to upload important documents to Backblaze B2. Then, I've actually discovered that I can install a few Docker containers and I could use it as a media server (Jellyfin) and serve the content to my Apple TV (neat!).

I considered a QNAP (better hardware for the price) but everyone recommends Synology instead (because of the stronger security and better overall software), but to be honest, I'm not sure what should I get.

My budget would be to buy a NAS (without counting the disks) below €1000. Ideally, €500-600 but I don't mind stretching to the €700 mark, if it is really worth it.

Spoiler alert: I think, it should be the DS920+ (4-bay) or the DS1520+ (5-bay). I think a NAS above 4-bay is better for future-proofing.

Looking here in Germany at price comparators, I could buy the DS920+ for €663 and the DS1520+ for €750. But these prices seem to be at an all-time high :(

Questions & Assumptions:

0. I'm not sure if the price difference of about €100 is worth the premium to get the 5-bay model. There are only two differences between these two models: The 5-bay has one extra slot, and it has 4x 1 Gbe LAN ports instead of 2x 1 Gbe. All the rest is the same. What is your opinion?

1. I've read that if you run a few containers (~10) it consumes quite a bit of RAM (~3 Gb), so it should be ideal to have at least 8 Gb. This is the reason I've said that I think I can only choose the DS920+ or DS1520+. Looking at official Synology resellers, these models, seem to come already with 8 Gb, and they are within my budget. Is my research wrong?

2. These two models, have an encryption engine. I think this is necessary to encrypt my files before sending them to Backblaze, or?

3. A lot of people seem to say to simply pick Synology's hybrid RAID setup called SHR-1 or SHR-2. I would go the easy way here and pick one of those two. Would you think that is a bad idea, and it is better to pick a specific (standard) RAID? I've read about the long long long RAID rebuild that could happen in some situations, and picking the "right" RAID could decrease the rebuild in days (or weeks!!!!).

4. In case, I choose a NAS model with Nvme cache slots, most people say it is not worth it to use if you are not running Virtual Machines and the SSD’s "burn" really fast. I have no interest on VMs.

5. Most people say to pick an Enterprise (Server) HDD instead of a NAS HDD mainly because price is similar in some cases and Enterprise has longer life and warranty. I should also pick a CMR HDD which is helium filled. 5400 rpm would be preferable to 7200 rpm because of the noise. Sadly, all Enterprise HDD's and most of NAS HDD's are 7200 rpm. Is the noise difference that big? The NAS will be in our living room.

6. Is 8 TB still the best cost per Terabyte?

7. I was extremely sad to hear that the Hitachi hard drive division was bought by WD. I've had lots of misfortune with WD drives (and let's not forget the debacle with the SMR and CMR drives) and I would prefer not to give money to them, but, nevertheless, I'm still tempted to buy the Ultrastar drives that belonged to Hitachi. Does anyone know if WD kept the components, manufacturing processes, staff, etc., that made these brilliant disks?

8. Following the HDD topic, what is your experience with Seagate or Toshiba drives?

9. These two NAS models have the same Intel Celeron CPU, which supports hardware transcoding. To be honest, I don't know in which cases would that happen. It seems if I use Infuse on the Apple TV it would never transcode (and instead direct play) because Infuse would do the transcoding in software. Should I take in account that hardware transcoding is a must-have or a nice-to-have?

10. Would you recommend having a CCTV system connected to the NAS? Should I dedicate one entire HDD just for the NVR system? Would a standalone NVR device be better?

11. My last question is: Should I just wait for the new model of the DS920+ or DS1520+? The 20 means it was launched in 2020 (in Summer specifically) and it seems Synology refreshes the model every two years., that means, a new model would be available in Summer this year. Most people say it is not worth the wait because Synology is very conservative in its model updates/refreshes. People are saying that a better CPU will be of course available (do I even need that for my use cases?) and probably upgrade the 1 Gbe LAN ports to 2.5 Gbe or 10 Gbe (10 Gbe I really doubt it). I've read that a 4K stream does not fill a 1 Gbe bandwidth, and you could theoretically have three 4K streams in a single 1 Gbe connection. If all else fails, I could just do a link aggregation of the two ports to be 2 Gbe, or?

12. Anything I'm forgetting? Should I be careful with something in particular?

I know I should buy a UPS too, but I think I'll create a separate post regarding this topic because I would also want a recommendation regarding a UPS for my other devices.

I know that I could actually build my own NAS and use Unraid for the OS. Furthermore, I'm just at a time in my life with too much on my plate (baby and small child) and having something that just works is preferable. When they are older and more independent, I'll have more time to investigate this option :)

Again, sorry for the long post. Thank you everyone!

Hello everyone, I'm going to move to a new apartment and doing full time home office while my wife is doing part home office, so I'm looking to improve my internet connectivity. I already plan to get the 400 mbps down fiber cable plan. So, I have to be honest that routers is one of those topics that I should know more than I should but don't, so I'm not sure what should I expect and the features I want or don't need.

Some time ago, I discovered and bookmarked the amazing website smallnetbuilder which at the time I thought, I would just trust his thorough reviews and choose the best router within my budget. Sadly, the website seems abandoned now, so I'm not sure if there is something new on the market or if the routers on his "Best" rank, are still valid options. By the way, I don't really game online.

My requirements are:

• 150€ budget, but willing to go to 200€ if really worth it;
• Mesh compatibility, just in case I need it in the future;
• Hopefully very low packet loss maybe 0-0.5%;
• Compatibility/support with open source firmware;
• Maybe VPN support (not sure, if worth it);
• 2.5Gb LAN ports would be nice for future-proofing, but I think this is not possible without going over the budget;
• Something that I don't know and never heard about, but you would really recommend it to me :).

After a first glance, the Asus RT-AX58U looks nice. Just not sure about only having two 5GHz streams and no LAN port aggregation.

Bonus dumb question(s) (sorry): Will all the routers work with my ISP modem? Or is it normal to always check with the ISP first before buying?

I recently got my home internet upgraded to 10 Gb/s. I currently have the following hardware:

• 10 Gb/s fiber modem (from the ISP)
• 1 Gb/s ASUS combo router/AP/switch (needs replacement)
• 2.5 Gb/s 4 port switch (not currently in use)
• 5 Gb/s USB C ethernet adapter

My ASUS router is the bottleneck in my current setup. My actual internet speeds are more in the 2-5 Gb/s range when plugged directly into the modem. So I'd be happy if I can get 2.5 Gb/s hardware between my laptops and the modem. That makes my existing ASUS router the bottleneck and in need of replacement. Is there a good, relatively cheap, standalone router (no switch or AP) I can build/buy that supports >1Gb/s speeds? Or is there a good all-in-one solution that isn't way too expensive? I'd honestly prefer to have different components each doing just one job.

I already tried hooking the switch into the modem directly to see what happens. Under that configuration only one device plugged into the switch has internet access.

I did some cursory Googling but found stuff that I'm not looking for (maps of the web and traceroutes hooked up to GeoIP lookups). Is there a resource that will show me the internet as a series of interconnected hops? Preferably with information on the connections between nodes that indicates the amount of traffic. I'm interested in the topography of the internet itself - not physically where hops are located.

Friday Security Briefing

Hello there! I hope you're all looking forward to something this weekend. Today's briefing will cover a captivating tale of scheming against financial centers, woes of virtual networking, and the possibility of Russia behaving quite unnecessarily.

"Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf." ~ Unattributed proverb

Wall Street targeted by new Capital Call investment email scammers

The tactic of exploiting enterprise email systems remains a successful and active attack vector for bad actors. The emerging development is the use of "capital call" style scam, wherein scammers pretend to have investor or insurance business with the business.

"In an example shared by the researchers, the scam email attached a Capital Call Notice for US $970,357.00 to be deposited into a bank account under the fraudsters’ control."

"If the targeted investor was duped into wiring the funds, then it is likely that money would be quickly moved into other accounts and withdrawn by mules to prevent the payment from being returned to the victim."

The flexibility that cryptocurrencies provide to discreetly rearrange money may actually be disadvantageous for banks in certain situations.

Source: Tripwire, Wall Street targeted by new Capital Call investment email scammers

High severity Linux network security holes found, fixed

(CVE-2021-26708) Alexander Popov of London has discovered five security holes in the Linux kernel's virtual socket implementation. This is concerning, my personal use of virtual networking systems could be a lot more thought out. I do tend to keep my use of libvirt to a minimum but ideally I would be running my virtualization workstation on a separate box optimized for safe practices.

"These holes entered Linux when virtual socket multi-transport support was added. This networking transport facilitates communication between virtual machines (VM) and their host. It's commonly used by guest agents and hypervisor services that need a communications channel that is independent of the VM network configuration. As such, people who are running VMs on the cloud, which is pretty much everyone these days, are especially vulnerable."

Source: ZDNet, High severity Linux network security holes found, fixed

Ukraine: DDoS attacks on govt sites originated from Russia

Ukraine is proposing that information on the threat actors responsible for a DDoS on Ukrainian government websites originated from Russian domains.

However, they did not claim that the threat actors were affiliated with the Russian state.

I am curious about the motivations if this was sanctioned by Russia. Are they testing their capabilities against a softer target in order to learn from the European and American Cyber-Defense response? Perhaps this was a way for Russia to demonstrate it's competency at cyber warfare.

"The National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity (NCCC) at the NSDC states that these DDoS attacks have been massive and have targeted government websites in the defense and security sector."

Possible retaliation?

"Last week, news leaked that Ukrainian law enforcement, in cooperation with the US and French police, arrested alleged Egregor ransomware operation members.

Three days later, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) issued a press release about the Egregor arrests and seizing the ransomware group's equipment."

Source: Bleeping Computer, Ukraine: DDoS attacks on govt sites originated from Russia

I have interactive firewalls like OpenSnitch running on most of my desktop OS's. I like to see what is going on with my machines' network connections to learn about networking, infosec, and to have have some peace of mind.

Example workflow:

1. Get a firewall notification of a new incoming connection to some process running on my machine
2. If no DNS entry exists and only the IP address is provided, then I google the IP
3. I find something like https://ipinfo.io/74.125.20.189
4. I make a decision as to whether allow/deny based on the ownership info which I found in step 3.

Aside from trusting the particular site presenting the ownership info, how reliable is this information regarding IP ownership?

For example, if an IP came back as "Google" could it really be a GCP instance running a command and control server?

Another example, I know that large corps own big blocks of IPv4, but they must lease these IP's out to whomever, right? I imagine there is some wild-west market for these with little accountability?

Are either of these scenarios realistic? If so, is my entire workflow for "do I trust this IP" pointless?

I'm sharing in case some of you are having a similar issue at work or at home, and to hear your opinion and/or similar stories!

I've been using Ubiquiti access points in my home for a few years now, and overall, they've worked very well. 3 APs giving near perfect 5GHz VHT80 coverage on DFS channels. LAN transfers are about 600-650mbit on laptops, which has proven to be plenty for wireless clients in my home. Keep in mind that this is a pretty basic setup... besides the APs, there's just the ISP provided GPON ONT which is also a typical all-in-one ISP solution (router, switch, AP, firewall, DHCP server...) with it's Wi-Fi turned off.

As I said, I was pretty happy with the results, however there was one feature that I could never get to work just right; roaming. You could be walking around the house watching a live stream and the stream would pause for 5-8 seconds until the roaming transition was over. Strangely, with VoIP calls, roaming would be about 3-5 seconds. Even enabling fast roaming features (which I believe is simply 802.11r) on the AP's controller would not give the results I was looking for. After days of tweaking TX power settings, channel selection and trying to implement Minimum RSSI (which I ended up not using), I finally gave up and resigned myself to the 4-6 seconds (oh, the humanity) of roaming time.

Fast forward to about two months ago and I added a new router to the setup (UBNT ER-4) and a switch (UBNT USW-24). Setup went smooth, already had some cat.6 cabling around the house, now it was time to actually use it. Had some fun setting up a guest Wi-Fi network on it's own VLAN, which was always a concern of mine; having "untrusted" devices connect to my network. The access points do client isolation on guest networks by default, but in my mind it wasn't enough as I have some file servers and time machines on the network.

Anyways, a few days after doing the setup I'm walking around the house with a livestream on my mobile and suddenly realize that it's not losing the connection. I try with a VoIP call and it worked flawlessly. I start walking around faster and still, the phone is roaming without an issue. I was very excited!

I'm thinking it must be the router that somehow solved the roaming issue. My first theory was that the DHCP server on the ER-4 was doing it's thing much faster than the ISP's device, allowing the wireless clients to actually roam faster. So I do a web search and I find some very relevant info. It was a thread on a forum and reddit thread with a sysadmin that was about to give up on the APs because of roaming issues. In both threads, there were replies about what switch were they using.

Apparently, some switches (Cisco and HP were mentioned), have a "MAC aging" interval setting which is way too high by default, or they simply have bugged firmware that doesn't allow the switch to "re-learn" the MAC address of a device on a different switch port. I assume that ISP provided "el-cheapo" gear has similar issues.

So, if you're having roaming issues with your wireless clients, check your switches!!!

Anyways, just wanted to share this story. Thank you for reading. :-)

For my particular use case I share my home PC with my spouse and since I'm the more tech-savvy of the two I'll need to occasionally remote in and help out with some random task. They know enough that the issue will usually be too complex to simply guide over the phone, so remote control it is.

I'm also trying to improve my personal efforts toward privacy and security. To that end I want to avoid closed-source services such as TeamViewer where a breach on their end could compromise my system.

The following is the current state of what I'm now using as I think others may benefit from this as well:

Setup

Web

I use a simple web form as my first authentication. It's just a username and password, but it does require a web host that supports server side code such as PHP. In my case I just created a blank page with nothing other than the form and when successful the page generates a 6 digit PIN and saves it to a text file in a private folder (so no one can simply navigate to it and get the PIN).

I went the text file route because my current hosting plan only allows 1 database and I didn't want to add yet another random table just for this 1 value.

Router

To connect to my home PC I needed to forward a port from my router. I'm going to use VNC as it lets me see what is currently shown on the monitor and work with someone already there so I forward port 5900 as VNC's default port. You can customize this if you want. Some routers allow you to SSH into their system and make changes that way so a step more secure would be to leave the port forward disabled and only enable it once a successful login from the web form is disabled. In my case I'll just leave the port forwarded all the time.

IP Address

To connect to my computer I need to know it's external IP address and for this I use FreeDNS from Afraid.org. My router has dynamic DNS support for them already included so it was easy to plug in my details to generate a URL which will always point to my home PC (well, as long as my router properly sends them my latest IP address). If your router doesn't support the dynamic DNS you choose many also allow either a download or the settings you would need to script your own to keep your IP address up to date with their service.

Signal

Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messenger which supports text, media, phone and video calls. There's also a nifty command line option on Github called Signal-cli which I'm using to provide my second form of authentication. I just downloaded the package, moved to my $PATH (in my case /usr/local/bin) and set it up as described on their README. In my case I have both a normal cell phone number and another number provided by Google Voice. I already use my normal cell phone number with Signal so for this project I used Signal-cli to register a new account using my Google Voice number.

VNC

My home PC runs Ubuntu 18.04 so I'm using x11vnc as my VNC server. Since I'm leaving my port forwarded all the time I most certainly do NOT want to leave VNC also running. That's too large a security risk for me. Instead I've written a short bash script that first checks the web form using curl and https (so it's encrypted) with its own login information to check if any PIN numbers have been saved. If a PIN is found the web server sends that back and then deletes the PIN text file. Meanwhile the bash script uses the PIN to start a VNC session with that PIN as the password and also sends my normal cell the PIN via Signal-cli so that I can login.

I have this script set to run every minute so I'm not waiting long after web login and I also have the x11vnc session set to timeout after a minute so I can quickly connect again should I mess something up. It's also important that x11vnc is set to auto exit after closing the session so that it's not left up for an attacker to attempt to abuse.

System Flow

Once everything is setup and working this is what it's like for me to connect to my home PC:

1. Browse to my web form and login
2. Close web form and wait for Signal message
3. Launch VNC client
4. Connect via dynamic DNS address (saved to VNC client)
5. Enter PIN code
6. Close VNC when done

Code

Here's some snippets to help get you started

PHP for Web Form Processing

<?php
// Variables
$username = 'your_username';
$password = 'your_password_super_long_and_unique';
$filename = 'path_to_private_folder/vnc/pin.txt';

// Process the login form
if($action == 'Login'){
	$file = fopen($filename,'w');
	$passwd = rand(100000,999999);
	fwrite($file,$passwd);
	fclose($file);
	exit('Success');
}

// Process the bash script
if($action == 'bash'){
	if(file_exists($filename)){
		$file = fopen($filename,'r');
		$passwd = fread($file,filesize($filename));
		fclose($filename);
		unlink($filename);
		exit($passwd);
	} else {
		exit('No_PIN');
	}
}
?>

Bash for x11vnc and Signal-cli

# See if x11vnc access has been requested
status=$(curl -s -d "u=your_username&p=your_password_super_long_and_unique&a=bash" https://vnc_web_form.com)

# Exit if nothing has been requested
if [ "$status" = "No_PIN" ]; then
  # No PIN so exit; log the event if you want
  exit 0
fi

# Strip non-numeric characters
num="${status//[!0-9]/}"

# See if they still match (prevent error messages from triggering stuff)
if [ $status != $num ]; then
  # They don't match so probably not a PIN - exit; log it if you want
  exit 1
fi

# Validate pin number
num=$((num + 0))
if [ $num -lt 100000 ]; then
  # PIN wasn't 6 digits so something weird is going on - exit; log it if you want
  exit 1
fi
if [ $num -gt 999999 ]; then
  # Same as before
  exit 1
fi

# Everything is good; start up x11vnc
# Log event if you want

# Get the current IP address - while dynamic DNS is in place this serves as a backup
ip=$(dig +short +timeout=5 myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com)

# Send IP and password via Signal
# Note that phone number includes country code
# My bash is running as root so I run the command as my local user where I had registered Signal-cli
su -c "signal-cli -u +google_voice_number send -m '$num for $ip' +normal_cell_number" s3rvant

# Status was requested and variable is now the password
# this provides a 1 minute window to connect with 1-time password to control main display
# again run as local user
su -c "x11vnc -timeout 60 -display :0 -passwd $num" s3rvant

Final Thoughts

There are more secure ways to handle this. Some routers support VPN for the connect along with device certificates which are much stronger than a 6 digit PIN code. Dynamically opening and closing the router port as part of the bash script would also be a nice touch. For me this is enough security and is plenty convenient enough to quickly offer tech support (or nab some bash code for articles like this) on the fly.

I'm pretty happy with how Signal-cli has worked out and plan to use it again with my next project (home automation). I'll be sure to post again once I get that ball rolling.

One of the people in an IRC channel I frequent pointed out a site I've been building uses CDNs that are IPv4 only. I never realized this, I just assumed every major provider had deployed IPv6. Oh, how very wrong I was. A quick check of some major (to me) sites shows a shocking lack of IPv6, including:

• Bootstrap (stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com)
• Discord
• FontAwesome (use.fontawesome.com)
• GitHub/GitHub pages
• GitLab/GitLab pages (self-hosted supports IPv6, but officially hosted GitLab only supports IPv4 due to Azure limitations)
• jQuery, IF you use code.jquery.com (some tutorials use ajax.googleapis.com, which does have IPv6, but an unfortunate amount use code.jquery.com, including the getting started page for Bootstrap)
• Parts of Amazon/AWS (Amazon is IPv4 only, some of AWS is IPv4 only, including S3)
• Reddit
• Stack Overflow/Exchange/etc
• Twitter

An honorable mention goes to Angular's websites because the websites themselves are IPv4 only but the libraries are hosted on ajax.googleapis.com, which is IPv6 accessible. I checked npm, PyPI, RubyGems, and Tildes, and they all support IPv6.

I can understand why companies like Amazon have partial support (upgrading can be a PITA if you're a cloud service provider with uptime requirements), but then you have services like Discord (launched in 2015 with no obligation to maintain service) that only support IPv4. At the very least, I'd expect CDNs referenced by thousands (if not millions) of webpages to be on IPv6 by now.

Am I missing something? CDNs are pretty static, it's just a matter of choosing one that supports IPv6, you don't even need to update your application if you just change the DNS entries.