All joking aside, this looks great. Is there a plan to allow for "custom checks" with custom rules users create? Think of "never should happen" access from a to z, etc.
Else you’re just adding risk imo
No, not only should Tailscale offer a point in time report (click button in GUI, scan queued and report created, report link is preserved in GUI, any user with sufficient access can retrieve the report), they should expose whatever is needed via API to make these attestations available to automated GRC evidence collection systems (Vanta and Anecdotes, for example). Think continuous compliance monitoring of the software defined network tenant/control plane, similar to what you would get out of a CNAPP but scoped for this use case and more geared towards audit and compliance.
I would be somewhat surprised if their enterprise users haven't or are not asking for this to be honest.
I always have this low-level anxiety that I accidentally left a tag too open or messed up a source/destination rule in the HuJSON. Anyone else? The fact that this can run in CI/CD is a huge win.
[1] https://headscale.net/ | https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
The tailscale daemon definitely knows which user it is making the connection, as it publishes that info into the journal and I've seen people scrape it out of there, but I'd much rather it go through a structured reporting pipeline. AFAICT, tailscale itself provides several things that look like they're this, but aren't quite the right thing, for example https://tailscale.com/kb/1203/audit-logging is about logging changes to the tailnet itself (eg adding nodes), and https://tailscale.com/kb/1246/tailscale-ssh-session-recordin... is recording the ssh sessions rather than simple events for XYZ logged in / XYZ session idle / XYZ disconnected.
(And yes, I know people have opinions about common admin accounts, but tailscale is another route into what FB described as far as everyone accessing the same root account but doing so with their own credentials [good!] rather than a shared key [very bad!]: https://engineering.fb.com/2016/09/12/security/scalable-and-...)
At the same time, when something is left in a bad state, you want to know how it got that way and when; not even necessarily just to punish people, but so that the right people are in the room to explain the full circumstances of what they did and why.
https://goteleport.com/compare/tailscale-alternative/
OTOH, a lot of people who think they need a VPN really just need tunneling and authenticated access, so I can see the pitch for why Teleport's offering is a fit for many users who would otherwise consider tailscale.
I just use the free version at home. The mere existence of this tool feels a bit like validation of my skepticism.
How am I supposed to work with user devices (laptop/phone) then if not tags? Because from the Laptop I want the user (me) to be able to use e.g. the SSH ports on my servers, but from the phone I don't want SSH enabled.
I currently assign the tag SSH to the phone/laptop which either enables or disables SSH, now I am unsure because without tags I can only assign the user the tag?
mrbluecoat•1d ago
thesubtlety•1d ago