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(I'm a Tailscale co-founder) The idea is to avoid building yet another commercial service that holds onto your username and password. People have enough identit

(I'm a Tailscale co-founder) The idea is to avoid building yet another commercial service that holds onto your username and password. People have enough identities already. More details here: https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works/ https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works/ We know we keep getting feedback that people want a different way to authorize their accounts (especially for personal use), so we're looking at other options. We just really want to stay out of the username+password business; it's simply bad security practice.

mromanuk 7y ago
Maybe you can look at Sign In with Apple, it works native and for websites too. https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/ https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/
- CharlesW 7y ago
  This, please! I'd personally prefer username/password auth, otherwise I believe that this is the most privacy-focused option. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210699 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210699
- apenwarr 7y ago
  I really love the privacy- and security-centric design of Sign In with Apple, but so far it only works if you have Apple hardware, right? Tailscale's selling point is you can use it on all your devices (modulo Android support which isn't released yet).
  - bgentry 7y ago
    Quoting from the page linked above: Sign in with Apple works natively on iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. And it works in any browser, which means you can deploy it on your website and in versions of your apps running on other platforms. So it at least sounds like it can be used anywhere with a web login flow. Although the docs say this must be accomplished using their JS library, as opposed to a standard OAuth2 flow of some kind: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple
    - apenwarr 7y ago
      Cool! Maybe it's more doable than we thought.
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    FWIW I setup tailscale a few days ago with an iPad mini, iPhone, and Mac mini server. I don't know how many networks would be "Apple Only", but I would certainly prefer a quick Apple Sign in button vs. using Google.
c17r 7y ago
Since it's mostly tech-savvy people here that want something else and I'm assuming it's an oauth process, perhaps github and/or gitlab?
- dave_universetf 7y ago
  Github's on the list to support, yeah. We can speak most "identity provider" protocols these days (OAuth, OIDC, SAML, etc.), but it's this weird little universe: the protocols are meant to let you implement once to support everyone, but in practice every IdP has its own little idiosyncrasies that mean you need a little bit of dedicated code for each new IdP. So, we end up with a backlog of "support IdP X, which is ostensibly OAuth but does something strange we've never seen yet" :)
  - c17r 7y ago
    Thank you for your response. Having battle scars from handling authentication in an enterprise SaaS, you'll notice I chose my words carefully and didn't say "just do/use" :) I really want to give you guys money for my personal use but $10/user/month is steep when I know the other users will only use it once it a blue moon (but of course, when they need it they'll REALLY need it). If there was something like a "supporter plan" that was similar if not identical to the free plan but charged a flat fee, I'd be all over that.
    - dave_universetf 7y ago
      "supporter tier" is an interesting idea! We're still figuring out what kind of pricing makes sense for personal use vs. company use. Hopefully we'll have something soon! In the meantime, it's fine to be on the solo plan for personal use, it's there and free to be used :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mholt 7y ago
I'd actually rather you have my username and password, since I use a password manager and every password is long and unique. I don't want to tie my Google/Apple/<X-Mega-Corp> account to my Tailscale account. This way I can also more easily keep track of which accounts I have since my password manager stores them all. So I will wait for email signup (which currently just subscribes me to a mailing list...)!
- bradfitz 7y ago
  (also Tailscale) FWIW, we'll probably also be supporting GitHub (and maybe Twitter?) auth, as well as perhaps letting you run your own auth server if you set up the right DNS records. Lot of things yet to do.
  - dstaley 7y ago
    Super excited to see that you'll be supporting GitHub! That being said, do you have plans to implement any sort of account merging? For example, the ability to login with one of multiple authorized accounts (so my Google Account, my Twitter account, or my GitHub account).
    - apenwarr 7y ago
      (Tailscale co-founder) This question goes through my mind a lot. I personally want it for myself. However there's a "weakest link" problem in identity management: if you have N identity managers merged together, then your account is only as secure as the weakest one of them. So connecting multiple identity providers to one account might be risky. On the other hand, I really like Keybase's way of federating multiple identities together, where each additional identity provider increases rather than decreases confidence.
      - philsnow 7y ago
        There's more than just security concerns, when you allow a bunch of third-party accounts to access one of your first-party accounts. If your highest concept of identity is the account and identity managers allow you to authenticate to that account, let's say you have a tailscale account with id 123, and any human who has access to john@personal.org or john.smith@job.com can access that account. What do you do when John leaves job.com? Can John (accessing the account through john@personal.org) still admin the job.com bits? I think the right abstraction is having first-party (in this case tailscale) accounts belonging to one or more "teams" and authenticating with a @job.com address allows you to switch to the job.com team in the UI / allows you to generate API creds that modify job.com's team.
ahnick 7y ago
Have you considered integrating with Keybase? I think the identity system of Keybase coupled with the secure mesh networking of Tailscale would be a really powerful combination.
- apenwarr 7y ago
  I quite like Keybase. Do they offer an oauth2 or SAML login feature nowadays that somehow integrates with your strong device authentication?
- bradfitz 7y ago
  I just started talking to Max at Keybase about this today, actually. It'll require work on both our sides, but we both want to do it.
ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
So why not Webauthn?

mromanuk 7y ago

Maybe you can look at Sign In with Apple, it works native and for websites too. https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/ https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/

CharlesW 7y ago
This, please! I'd personally prefer username/password auth, otherwise I believe that this is the most privacy-focused option. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210699 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210699
apenwarr 7y ago
I really love the privacy- and security-centric design of Sign In with Apple, but so far it only works if you have Apple hardware, right? Tailscale's selling point is you can use it on all your devices (modulo Android support which isn't released yet).
- bgentry 7y ago
  Quoting from the page linked above: Sign in with Apple works natively on iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. And it works in any browser, which means you can deploy it on your website and in versions of your apps running on other platforms. So it at least sounds like it can be used anywhere with a web login flow. Although the docs say this must be accomplished using their JS library, as opposed to a standard OAuth2 flow of some kind: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sign_in_with_apple
  - apenwarr 7y ago
    Cool! Maybe it's more doable than we thought.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  FWIW I setup tailscale a few days ago with an iPad mini, iPhone, and Mac mini server. I don't know how many networks would be "Apple Only", but I would certainly prefer a quick Apple Sign in button vs. using Google.

c17r 7y ago

Since it's mostly tech-savvy people here that want something else and I'm assuming it's an oauth process, perhaps github and/or gitlab?

dave_universetf 7y ago
Github's on the list to support, yeah. We can speak most "identity provider" protocols these days (OAuth, OIDC, SAML, etc.), but it's this weird little universe: the protocols are meant to let you implement once to support everyone, but in practice every IdP has its own little idiosyncrasies that mean you need a little bit of dedicated code for each new IdP. So, we end up with a backlog of "support IdP X, which is ostensibly OAuth but does something strange we've never seen yet" :)
- c17r 7y ago
  Thank you for your response. Having battle scars from handling authentication in an enterprise SaaS, you'll notice I chose my words carefully and didn't say "just do/use" :) I really want to give you guys money for my personal use but $10/user/month is steep when I know the other users will only use it once it a blue moon (but of course, when they need it they'll REALLY need it). If there was something like a "supporter plan" that was similar if not identical to the free plan but charged a flat fee, I'd be all over that.
  - dave_universetf 7y ago
    "supporter tier" is an interesting idea! We're still figuring out what kind of pricing makes sense for personal use vs. company use. Hopefully we'll have something soon! In the meantime, it's fine to be on the solo plan for personal use, it's there and free to be used :)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mholt 7y ago

I'd actually rather you have my username and password, since I use a password manager and every password is long and unique. I don't want to tie my Google/Apple/<X-Mega-Corp> account to my Tailscale account. This way I can also more easily keep track of which accounts I have since my password manager stores them all. So I will wait for email signup (which currently just subscribes me to a mailing list...)!

bradfitz 7y ago
(also Tailscale) FWIW, we'll probably also be supporting GitHub (and maybe Twitter?) auth, as well as perhaps letting you run your own auth server if you set up the right DNS records. Lot of things yet to do.
- dstaley 7y ago
  Super excited to see that you'll be supporting GitHub! That being said, do you have plans to implement any sort of account merging? For example, the ability to login with one of multiple authorized accounts (so my Google Account, my Twitter account, or my GitHub account).
  - apenwarr 7y ago
    (Tailscale co-founder) This question goes through my mind a lot. I personally want it for myself. However there's a "weakest link" problem in identity management: if you have N identity managers merged together, then your account is only as secure as the weakest one of them. So connecting multiple identity providers to one account might be risky. On the other hand, I really like Keybase's way of federating multiple identities together, where each additional identity provider increases rather than decreases confidence.
    - philsnow 7y ago
      There's more than just security concerns, when you allow a bunch of third-party accounts to access one of your first-party accounts. If your highest concept of identity is the account and identity managers allow you to authenticate to that account, let's say you have a tailscale account with id 123, and any human who has access to john@personal.org or john.smith@job.com can access that account. What do you do when John leaves job.com? Can John (accessing the account through john@personal.org) still admin the job.com bits? I think the right abstraction is having first-party (in this case tailscale) accounts belonging to one or more "teams" and authenticating with a @job.com address allows you to switch to the job.com team in the UI / allows you to generate API creds that modify job.com's team.

ahnick 7y ago

Have you considered integrating with Keybase? I think the identity system of Keybase coupled with the secure mesh networking of Tailscale would be a really powerful combination.

apenwarr 7y ago
I quite like Keybase. Do they offer an oauth2 or SAML login feature nowadays that somehow integrates with your strong device authentication?
bradfitz 7y ago
I just started talking to Max at Keybase about this today, actually. It'll require work on both our sides, but we both want to do it.

ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago

So why not Webauthn?