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I'm still not seeing the point sadly. If you're running on a system you don't administrate that has ports under 1024 set as privileged, there's no way(with or

I'm still not seeing the point sadly. If you're running on a system you don't administrate that has ports under 1024 set as privileged, there's no way(with or without your cli) to have a userspace program receive TCP or UDP packets coming into the kernel from external devices for these ports(unless I'm completely mistaken). What can you accomplish with "user-mode TCP/IP" that you can't from userspace with system calls?

tptacek 2y ago
You are completely mistaken. You can do literally anything you want with TCP/IP provided you can talk UDP on any port, by running a user-mode TCP/IP stack over WireGuard on that port.
- Xelynega 2y ago
  I don't think you understand, and based on your reply it doesn't sound like I'm mistaken. With this CLI I am able to listen for external packets to port 80 from userspace without any elevated permissions and intercept traffic that's going to an application that's bound to that port on the OS? Edit: I think I understand what you're trying to do, but if I do then traffic is going from the kernel UDP stack to the userland TCP stack, back to the UDP kernel stack. Not sure how that avoids sending the packet to the kernel. If it's to get around the port restrictions, why can you not just use unprivileged ports?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I'm not sure I can make this any simpler for you or easier to get your head around. If it helps: the idea here is giving an invocation of your program its own IP address. It can then do whatever it likes with TCP/IP for that address; its own routing, arbitrary protocols, whatever. The Go standard library makes it extremely easy to integrate. To the OS, it's all just ordinary socket code.
    - taeric 2y ago
      I think it is a valid question on why not use unprivileged ports, though? Or am I also missing something?
      - tptacek 2y ago
        "Unprivileged ports" is just a case in point for everything you would need privileges to do, from binding arbitrary ports to adding arbitrary addresses and running local servers on them, etc, etc, etc. The point is: turning "complicated" network features that require privilege into simple unprivileged socket code.
        taeric 2y ago
        Right, per my other thread below, my understanding was the "privileged" ports were mainly ones that were allowed for off machine communication by standard policy/convention long time ago. As such, using higher number ports should be just as easy in the code as using lower ports, outside of the discovery that was implied by following the other conventions. But, introducing new network addresses seems to have already side stepped the discovery affordances? I'll offer the same caveat here, btw, I am not trying to torpedo the idea of trying this. I'm genuinely curious why you would need to do this. Not necessarily why you would want to.
        tptacek 2y ago
        We did it because we run WireGuard gateways to the public cloud we operate, and our CLI wants to talk to things on customer networks (like remote Docker server instances to build new versions of apps). Our options were: * Do user-mode WireGuard (and thus TCP/IP) and talk "natively" to the infrastructure deployed on our platform. * Write case-by-case application gateways for each of those pieces of infrastructure tunneled somehow through HTTP.
      - baq 2y ago
        Number one reason is if you can't. Number two is if you don't want to. You can't if your organization prevents you to, for example. You don't want to if you follow strict rules which are not enforced by the OS, again for example.

tptacek 2y ago

You are completely mistaken. You can do literally anything you want with TCP/IP provided you can talk UDP on any port, by running a user-mode TCP/IP stack over WireGuard on that port.

Xelynega 2y ago
I don't think you understand, and based on your reply it doesn't sound like I'm mistaken. With this CLI I am able to listen for external packets to port 80 from userspace without any elevated permissions and intercept traffic that's going to an application that's bound to that port on the OS? Edit: I think I understand what you're trying to do, but if I do then traffic is going from the kernel UDP stack to the userland TCP stack, back to the UDP kernel stack. Not sure how that avoids sending the packet to the kernel. If it's to get around the port restrictions, why can you not just use unprivileged ports?
- tptacek 2y ago
  I'm not sure I can make this any simpler for you or easier to get your head around. If it helps: the idea here is giving an invocation of your program its own IP address. It can then do whatever it likes with TCP/IP for that address; its own routing, arbitrary protocols, whatever. The Go standard library makes it extremely easy to integrate. To the OS, it's all just ordinary socket code.
  - taeric 2y ago
    I think it is a valid question on why not use unprivileged ports, though? Or am I also missing something?
    - tptacek 2y ago
      "Unprivileged ports" is just a case in point for everything you would need privileges to do, from binding arbitrary ports to adding arbitrary addresses and running local servers on them, etc, etc, etc. The point is: turning "complicated" network features that require privilege into simple unprivileged socket code.
      - taeric 2y ago
        Right, per my other thread below, my understanding was the "privileged" ports were mainly ones that were allowed for off machine communication by standard policy/convention long time ago. As such, using higher number ports should be just as easy in the code as using lower ports, outside of the discovery that was implied by following the other conventions. But, introducing new network addresses seems to have already side stepped the discovery affordances? I'll offer the same caveat here, btw, I am not trying to torpedo the idea of trying this. I'm genuinely curious why you would need to do this. Not necessarily why you would want to.
        tptacek 2y ago
        We did it because we run WireGuard gateways to the public cloud we operate, and our CLI wants to talk to things on customer networks (like remote Docker server instances to build new versions of apps). Our options were: * Do user-mode WireGuard (and thus TCP/IP) and talk "natively" to the infrastructure deployed on our platform. * Write case-by-case application gateways for each of those pieces of infrastructure tunneled somehow through HTTP.
    - baq 2y ago
      Number one reason is if you can't. Number two is if you don't want to. You can't if your organization prevents you to, for example. You don't want to if you follow strict rules which are not enforced by the OS, again for example.