Having an install script that you paste into the terminal and all it does is download a binary and stick it in a folder is wild.
If your users are savvy enough to be running random scripts they shouldn't need a script to do this and if they're not savvy enough to understand how to do that then the last thing they should be doing on earth is running a random terminal command off a website.
I still have no comprehension of how curl piped into a shell command has become the default installation method for many projects (looking at you, Rust...). It breaks my brain as to how potentially unsafe it is.
Everyone’s eventually going to run a binary they downloaded from the same place, if you’ve already decided to do that, why is a curled install script worse?
Because it normalizes a practice that, while acceptable in context of a well known project with numerous dedicated eyeballs such as Rust language, is not a generally acceptable method of installing software.
The correct way is to have M of N signatures on specific package manager pinned versions. And you trust the auditors to look at each new version, of a well-known package.
We should start a project and get it funded, to do just that. The money can go to LLM tokens for audits, at least, and hosting the multisigs and the package managers.
Anyone want to partner on this? See my profile on HN and email me.
The issue does not have to do with whether the download is a binary or source code. It has to deal with verifying the integrity of the download before installation.
Curl piped into a shell command provides no means to verify that the download is uncorrupted and unmodified before running it. For example, whenever I download software manually I check the downloaded file against the verified checksums to ensure that I have an unmodified version. Ideally I check this with gpg --verify on the signed checksum file (against the source's public key). This is a standard procedure for many organizations [1]. If you just download something and immediately run it without this step, you could potentially run a hacked version of the installation script.
It's because people are too obsessed with providing complete instructions to incorporate any package manager into their instructions.
What we are really missing is an explicit progression from new software to maintained packages across distribution. As it is, each distro expects each package to have a maintainer, and very few people actually want to do that across several distros just to release their software. Generally, the expectation is to instead just wait around for people to make and maintain those packages by virtue of their own interest in your software, but it takes a while, and discoverability isn't automatic.
One thing I seem to struggle to understand is, a simple invite code system is showcased, but how does host Alice in one country know how to contact host Bob in another country with just the invite code? This seems to require a coordination server at least right, or does the invite embed some sort of information that'd allow Bob to directly reach Alice with just the invite code?
I think for this kind of system to work, there has to be SOME kind of public/shared server to do the coordination. If the inviting node is behind a firewall then no amount of information can enable a guest node to connect to it without a node reachable by both.
This is very cool - I will likely see if I can use it in place of tailscale for my local LLM hosting. I feel like not having that required login would be great. Also the direct connect feature seems pretty cool, since that’s usually all I need for my use case.
Hi HN, we built Rayfish, a peer-to-peer mesh VPN written in Rust on top of iroh.
The core idea: every node has a keypair, and its identity on the network is that public key. From the key we derive a stable IPv4 in 100.64.0.0/10 and a stable IPv6 in 200::/7, similar in spirit to yggdrasil. Those addresses are yours for as long as you hold the key, and they don't change when you move networks or your physical IP changes. You still reach peers by IP or by a name.ray DNS name, the difference is that the address comes from the identity rather than from where you happen to be.
"No server to trust" is the part we care about most. There is no central control plane that brokers your traffic or holds the keys to your network. Peers find each other and connect directly over iroh's QUIC stack, with NAT traversal, hole punching, and relay fallback handled underneath. Relays, when used, only forward encrypted packets and never see your keys or decide who is in your network. Membership and trust live with the peers, not with us.
How it works in practice:
- Networks are closed by default. You join with a one-time invite, a reusable key for fleets of servers, or live approval from a member already inside. The room id is only for discovery, it is never an admission credential.
- Any member can be granted the network key and act as a coordinator, so admitting new peers keeps working even if the original creator is offline.
- There is a per-device firewall, directional and scoped by port and protocol, plus Magic DNS so you can reach nodes at name.ray (or just name, no need for the .ray suffix).
- A "ray connect" flow links two people directly with no shared room, like a friend request between keys.
- No ACLs. Networks are logical partitions. Firewall is per-host. You can combine both to have custom ACLs.
It is a single binary with a daemon and a CLI. `ray up`, then `ray create` or `ray join <invite>`, and you have a private network.
Honest limitations: it is early. The mesh protocol is gated at the transport layer, so we break compatibility between releases when we need to. There has been no third-party security audit yet. Mobile is not there. It runs on Linux and macOS today.
Hey, thanks for sharing this, this is a very cool project and one that is the obvious next step with iroh. I'm curious if you plan to make it into a library to be used, or you intend to keep it solely as an application?
Great work. I'm currently using tailscale and would love to have another option!
Hosting my own iroh-relay makes it truely independent then.
Only missing the mobile app now! Keep up the good work!
Having an install script that you paste into the terminal and all it does is download a binary and stick it in a folder is wild.
If your users are savvy enough to be running random scripts they shouldn't need a script to do this and if they're not savvy enough to understand how to do that then the last thing they should be doing on earth is running a random terminal command off a website.
I still have no comprehension of how curl piped into a shell command has become the default installation method for many projects (looking at you, Rust...). It breaks my brain as to how potentially unsafe it is.
Everyone’s eventually going to run a binary they downloaded from the same place, if you’ve already decided to do that, why is a curled install script worse?
Because it normalizes a practice that, while acceptable in context of a well known project with numerous dedicated eyeballs such as Rust language, is not a generally acceptable method of installing software.
Exactly this.
The correct way is to have M of N signatures on specific package manager pinned versions. And you trust the auditors to look at each new version, of a well-known package.
We should start a project and get it funded, to do just that. The money can go to LLM tokens for audits, at least, and hosting the multisigs and the package managers.
Anyone want to partner on this? See my profile on HN and email me.
The issue does not have to do with whether the download is a binary or source code. It has to deal with verifying the integrity of the download before installation.
Curl piped into a shell command provides no means to verify that the download is uncorrupted and unmodified before running it. For example, whenever I download software manually I check the downloaded file against the verified checksums to ensure that I have an unmodified version. Ideally I check this with gpg --verify on the signed checksum file (against the source's public key). This is a standard procedure for many organizations [1]. If you just download something and immediately run it without this step, you could potentially run a hacked version of the installation script.
[1] https://www.debian.org/CD/verify
Doesn't curl still validate ssl certificates? So long as I'm curling an https url from a trusted domain, don't I still have a chain of trust?
It's all about lowest friction + domain-name trust.
Depending on third party packaging (distribution-validated install) is much higher friction.
It's because people are too obsessed with providing complete instructions to incorporate any package manager into their instructions.
What we are really missing is an explicit progression from new software to maintained packages across distribution. As it is, each distro expects each package to have a maintainer, and very few people actually want to do that across several distros just to release their software. Generally, the expectation is to instead just wait around for people to make and maintain those packages by virtue of their own interest in your software, but it takes a while, and discoverability isn't automatic.
What would be your preferred solution?
so how did you install npm or docker?
Using a package manager usually
How did you install that package manager?
So it's effectively a clone of Nebula minus the need for a lighthouse.
One thing I seem to struggle to understand is, a simple invite code system is showcased, but how does host Alice in one country know how to contact host Bob in another country with just the invite code? This seems to require a coordination server at least right, or does the invite embed some sort of information that'd allow Bob to directly reach Alice with just the invite code?
I think for this kind of system to work, there has to be SOME kind of public/shared server to do the coordination. If the inviting node is behind a firewall then no amount of information can enable a guest node to connect to it without a node reachable by both.
This is very cool - I will likely see if I can use it in place of tailscale for my local LLM hosting. I feel like not having that required login would be great. Also the direct connect feature seems pretty cool, since that’s usually all I need for my use case.
Looks like no support for Windows :(
> and membership is a signed record they each carry, not a question they ask a server.
Sigh..
I like the project though. It looks very similar to something I vibed up recently, must be in the air
What’s the sigh to, out of curiosity, just because this makes revocation hard?
The grandparent comment is correctly pointing out the sentence is an LLM tell.
"Membership is a question they ask a server" is a bogus sentence. "membership" is not a "question". It's syntactically valid semantic nonsense.
"Membership is dictated by a server" is one of several human sentences saying what that one is trying to.
I don't know why your post was autoflagged but what makes your product unique from the rest?
Hi HN, we built Rayfish, a peer-to-peer mesh VPN written in Rust on top of iroh.
The core idea: every node has a keypair, and its identity on the network is that public key. From the key we derive a stable IPv4 in 100.64.0.0/10 and a stable IPv6 in 200::/7, similar in spirit to yggdrasil. Those addresses are yours for as long as you hold the key, and they don't change when you move networks or your physical IP changes. You still reach peers by IP or by a name.ray DNS name, the difference is that the address comes from the identity rather than from where you happen to be.
"No server to trust" is the part we care about most. There is no central control plane that brokers your traffic or holds the keys to your network. Peers find each other and connect directly over iroh's QUIC stack, with NAT traversal, hole punching, and relay fallback handled underneath. Relays, when used, only forward encrypted packets and never see your keys or decide who is in your network. Membership and trust live with the peers, not with us.
How it works in practice:
- Networks are closed by default. You join with a one-time invite, a reusable key for fleets of servers, or live approval from a member already inside. The room id is only for discovery, it is never an admission credential. - Any member can be granted the network key and act as a coordinator, so admitting new peers keeps working even if the original creator is offline. - There is a per-device firewall, directional and scoped by port and protocol, plus Magic DNS so you can reach nodes at name.ray (or just name, no need for the .ray suffix). - A "ray connect" flow links two people directly with no shared room, like a friend request between keys. - No ACLs. Networks are logical partitions. Firewall is per-host. You can combine both to have custom ACLs.
It is a single binary with a daemon and a CLI. `ray up`, then `ray create` or `ray join <invite>`, and you have a private network.
Honest limitations: it is early. The mesh protocol is gated at the transport layer, so we break compatibility between releases when we need to. There has been no third-party security audit yet. Mobile is not there. It runs on Linux and macOS today.
Code: https://github.com/rayfish/rayfish
Happy to get into the addressing scheme, the iroh transport, the admission and coordinator model, or anything else.
With IPv6 it's plausible that you can avoid collisions as long as you use an expensive hash function, but for v4 how do you avoid IP collisions?
With only 22 bits of entropy in your v4 addresses, you'll get accidental collisions with only ~2000 users.
Hey, thanks for sharing this, this is a very cool project and one that is the obvious next step with iroh. I'm curious if you plan to make it into a library to be used, or you intend to keep it solely as an application?
Great work. I'm currently using tailscale and would love to have another option! Hosting my own iroh-relay makes it truely independent then. Only missing the mobile app now! Keep up the good work!
could a MITM/poison-well attacks work here or susceptible ?
im also afraid of exploits disseminating from a mesh network it would be impossible to stop
great work
If you have any previous experience in this domain and/or other relevant credentials it would help to mention them here as well.
> Honest [...]
> Happy to get into the addressing scheme
I truly loathe how all of the HN spambots promoting shovelware include a stupid call-to-action for feedback/discussion.
> Happy to get into ...
No reply to various questions an hour later. I guess they're not really watching.