Comment on Tailscale n00b questions
irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t want to risk any data compromise at some point
What data compromise are you worried about?
- End-to-End Encryption: Tailscale utilizes WireGuard
- No Centralized Servers: Tailscale creates a direct peer-to-peer connection between devices
- Minimal Metadata: Tailscale may collect some metadata to facilitate connections, but this info does not include the content of your data.
- User-Controlled Access: You have control over which devices can connect
- Tailscale does not, and cannot inspect your traffic
I’m not the Tailscale sales person Go with whatever suites your threat model. I am just curious what data compromise you are concerned with. If it’s the metadata aspect, you already blew that away when you made the post here at Lemmy, even assuming you are using a VPN.
meschbach@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Just a heads up: Headscale will use the official Tailscale DERP servers to resolve NAT traversal.
https://tailscale.com/docs/reference/derp-servers
irmadlad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I know you’re trying to tell me something brother, but at this moment in time, I seem more stupid than normal, so if you would, unpack that for me in relation to what I was explaining to OP about Tailscale security.
Toribor@corndog.social 2 weeks ago
DERP is the service that actually relays packets between tailscale connected devices when they are crossing a NAT (leaving one private network and going across the internet to another private network).
If you host headscale (the self-hosted community version of the tailscale control plane) and use it with tailscale, by default it will still use the public Tailscale DERP servers. Your traffic is still encrypted and not visible to them, but it does still rely on their centralized architecture even though you are hosting the control plane yourself.
That being said, you can also just selfhost DERP or use the embedded DERP that ships with headscale, although there are some other considerations when doing that because it will need to be publicly on the internet, probably with a proper domain name and publicly trusted certificate.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thanks for explaining. I really didn’t mean it as a Headscale v Tailscale. kind of thing as far as data security goes. I’ve heard a lot of great things about Headscale. OP was just worried about his data being compromised, and I was just pointing out that it’s pretty tight.
Toribor@corndog.social 2 weeks ago
Headscale includes and embedded DERP server but you need to run it. Their example yaml does have it disabled by default though.