[dba-Tech] Interesting new secure protocol and Wireguard

[Jim Lawrence]

Hi All:

Here is a very interesting new "shell" that is positioned to replace SSH on all roaming devices. "Mosh is a replacement for interactive SSH terminals. It's more robust and responsive, especially over Wi-Fi, cellular, and long-distance links." It is perfect for using with your laptops, tablets and cell phones...no more dropped secure sessions:

https://mosh.org/

It does run on all major platforms as well:

https://mosh.org/#getting

The next step is that the product is being used as a core for a app called WireGuard. WireGuard is the heir apparent for OpenVPN. "WireGuard® is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPSec, while avoiding the massive headache. It intends to be considerably more performant than OpenVPN." (For those who have played around with IPSec and tried to secure a stable connection...it is complex to install and there is little in the way of simple documentation, at least for us novices.):

https://www.wireguard.com/

It uses all the standard encryption and salting protocols like: "WireGuard uses state-of-the-art cryptography, like the Noise protocol framework, Curve25519, ChaCha20, Poly1305, BLAKE2, SipHash24, HKDF, and secure trusted constructions.". 
  
It also runs on all platforms but it does not run, yet, on Windows natively, but there are some Containers being built and ready for distribution on Windows.

Even though WireGuard is not absolutely completed (something like Windows products. ;-0)), it is being baked into the new editions of the Linux core:

https://www.wireguard.com/quickstart/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/02/linux_kernel_wireguard/

Of course from all the Linux purists there are serious concerns about Linux becoming bloated but safety and size must be carefully balanced. 

Aside: If you want small, IoT small, try Alpine Linux: https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ It runs fast on every PC/laptop built in the last 20 years. "A container requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage.". Working fine in a virtual container on one of my Raspberry PIs.

Jim