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Definitely looks interesting, but difficult to trust based on how it's been pseudo-anonymously dumped onto github in one commit.

raesene4 11y ago
Good point, it's becoming harder to know how to establish trust in projects. Particularly things like security-related software, and software which opens network ports on your systems, where there's increased impacts if it turns out to be malicious/insecure.
laumars 11y ago
This was my concern too. I was hoping another HN'er might be able to shed some light on the reputation of the authors.
ssfdeveloper 11y ago
Thanks for the interest you've shown for this project. About the yet-single push : the project was not initially meant to be OpenSourced. Next commits will be more frequent, with more details. About your concerns regarding trust: that's one of the strongest motivation for developing and OpenSourcing this project. Pre-built binaries can be tested against your own build. A lot of work was done to make the build a really straightforward process. Most of the complexity of building and linking third-party libraries (e.g OpenSSL or Boost) is contained (local to the project) and automated. By the way, SSF-Cmake scripts are really useful, and could be used by anyone, in any project. More details : http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#how-to-build-linux http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#how-to-build-lin... The cryptographic part is entirely based on OpenSSL (latest version), and depends on sources only. SSF only supports latest TLS-1.2 and default cipher suite is DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (RSA based authentication, perfect forward secrecy enabled, AES 256 based symmetric cipher in Galois Counter Mode). The RSA key sizes depends on you. More details : http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#security-features http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#security-feature... Not being famous does not necessarily means being suspicious. We are open to any suggestion regarding the project, build-system or trust issues.
- bsaunder 11y ago
  Could you be more specific on who "we" is (anonymous user created 3 hours ago)? Rather than asserting trust is gained from simply open sourcing the project.
  - ssfdeveloper 11y ago
    The code is OpenSource so that anyone can review it. IMHO, that's one of the best way to gain trust. But since you asked, "we" are two Belgian C++ enthusiasts happy to contribute to OpenSource community that gave us so much. We have been working on this project for a couple of years and we are very excited to release it.
    - bscanlan 11y ago
      Open source is definitely important part. The "trust" I was referring to was deliberately ambiguous. There's not just leap of faith that potential users have to make to ensure that there are no deliberate backdoors or flaws in this software - there's also trust that this project will be cared and maintained for over time: bugs will be acknowledged (and even fixed :) ), builds for new platforms will work, security issues will be dealt with... I'm not suggesting that bugs won't be fixed or there are backdoors, and this is definitely a really interesting project. However there's just very little to convince me that I should trust this project for anything more than a throw-away experiment right now. "the project was not initially meant to be OpenSourced" Sounds like an interesting backstory - what's the motivation to open source it so? "Not being famous does not necessarily means being suspicious." It's not being famous that matters here. Publishing software anonymously is unusual (I'm sure there are exceptions here, however they're definitely exceptions). Whenever I read of a new web service or software I generally dig into who is behind it and why they're doing it. Code on its own does not convince you to use it.
      - ssfdeveloper 11y ago
        We are eager to receive reviews and improvements. We have been working on this project for a while and we have no intention to stop now. A motivation for opensourcing it was to get feedbacks and even contributors from community. Every contribution (bug reports, feature requests) will help us to improve the software and that's exactly what we are looking for at this point. We know that trust is a long term process and we invite you to follow the project and give us any feedback that could help us to make the software better. We are currently planning and working on new features. Right now, we are focusing on making the networking part even more modular and extendible (e.g. a transport layer based on UDP rather than TCP). Moreover, an other goal we would like to reach is to make the global framework simpler so that contributors could add to SSF their own features quickly and easily.

raesene4 11y ago

Good point, it's becoming harder to know how to establish trust in projects. Particularly things like security-related software, and software which opens network ports on your systems, where there's increased impacts if it turns out to be malicious/insecure.

laumars 11y ago

This was my concern too. I was hoping another HN'er might be able to shed some light on the reputation of the authors.

ssfdeveloper 11y ago

Thanks for the interest you've shown for this project. About the yet-single push : the project was not initially meant to be OpenSourced. Next commits will be more frequent, with more details. About your concerns regarding trust: that's one of the strongest motivation for developing and OpenSourcing this project. Pre-built binaries can be tested against your own build. A lot of work was done to make the build a really straightforward process. Most of the complexity of building and linking third-party libraries (e.g OpenSSL or Boost) is contained (local to the project) and automated. By the way, SSF-Cmake scripts are really useful, and could be used by anyone, in any project. More details : http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#how-to-build-linux http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#how-to-build-lin... The cryptographic part is entirely based on OpenSSL (latest version), and depends on sources only. SSF only supports latest TLS-1.2 and default cipher suite is DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (RSA based authentication, perfect forward secrecy enabled, AES 256 based symmetric cipher in Galois Counter Mode). The RSA key sizes depends on you. More details : http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#security-features http://securesocketfunneling.github.io/ssf/#security-feature... Not being famous does not necessarily means being suspicious. We are open to any suggestion regarding the project, build-system or trust issues.

bsaunder 11y ago
Could you be more specific on who "we" is (anonymous user created 3 hours ago)? Rather than asserting trust is gained from simply open sourcing the project.
- ssfdeveloper 11y ago
  The code is OpenSource so that anyone can review it. IMHO, that's one of the best way to gain trust. But since you asked, "we" are two Belgian C++ enthusiasts happy to contribute to OpenSource community that gave us so much. We have been working on this project for a couple of years and we are very excited to release it.
  - bscanlan 11y ago
    Open source is definitely important part. The "trust" I was referring to was deliberately ambiguous. There's not just leap of faith that potential users have to make to ensure that there are no deliberate backdoors or flaws in this software - there's also trust that this project will be cared and maintained for over time: bugs will be acknowledged (and even fixed :) ), builds for new platforms will work, security issues will be dealt with... I'm not suggesting that bugs won't be fixed or there are backdoors, and this is definitely a really interesting project. However there's just very little to convince me that I should trust this project for anything more than a throw-away experiment right now. "the project was not initially meant to be OpenSourced" Sounds like an interesting backstory - what's the motivation to open source it so? "Not being famous does not necessarily means being suspicious." It's not being famous that matters here. Publishing software anonymously is unusual (I'm sure there are exceptions here, however they're definitely exceptions). Whenever I read of a new web service or software I generally dig into who is behind it and why they're doing it. Code on its own does not convince you to use it.
    - ssfdeveloper 11y ago
      We are eager to receive reviews and improvements. We have been working on this project for a while and we have no intention to stop now. A motivation for opensourcing it was to get feedbacks and even contributors from community. Every contribution (bug reports, feature requests) will help us to improve the software and that's exactly what we are looking for at this point. We know that trust is a long term process and we invite you to follow the project and give us any feedback that could help us to make the software better. We are currently planning and working on new features. Right now, we are focusing on making the networking part even more modular and extendible (e.g. a transport layer based on UDP rather than TCP). Moreover, an other goal we would like to reach is to make the global framework simpler so that contributors could add to SSF their own features quickly and easily.