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(Tailscale CEO) You have posted here multiple times that "none of the code has had a security audit" and that the SOC2 audit "is not the same thing."

It's true that those two audits aren't the same thing. However, the SOC2 auditor confirms, in the published report, that Tailscale has regular and ongoing security audits including penetration tests and many kinds of code reviews.

The security audit report, which you perhaps imagine to be a long list of vulnerabilities... doesn't look like that. It says we don't have a long list of vulnerabilities. The security bulletins are all here: https://tailscale.com/security-bulletins

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<s>Read</s> Skimmed the report (and cheers for not gating it behind request-to-obtain) and I'm a bit surprised to not see any mentions of pentests which I'd expect given the large surface you host. What gives?
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The majority of your security bulletins are as the result of third-party reports to you.

Which, by definition, means they are not done by you, which means you don't know when they will be done or how much of your code base they are looking at.

I think you know full well what I mean by a security audit. If you don't, go look at, for example, the ones that Mullvad publish for their software https://mullvad.net/en/blog/tag/audits.

Please do not try to portray SOC2 as being the same thing as a code audit.

And IF you have regular code audits, then please publish suitably redacted reports in public on your website. Just like everyone else does !

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(Tailscale CEO) I don't know what to tell you. The problems that are found internally, or via security reviews and pentests we pay for, are ones that we fix before releasing. They don't need bulletins.

Bugs that are found by other people are found, by definition, after release. They are therefore more likely to need a bulletin.

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But why should insecure argument handling bugs (as per your recent SSH bulletin) be found after release ?

Those are an ancient class of bugs that should be picked up by any competent security review.

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Is your theory that "any competent security review" will find every security hole in a product? Because that sure would be great if it were true. Unfortunately it does not match my experience.
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Every security hole ? No, of course not.

But things like insecure argument handling are low-hanging fruit for security auditors.

Insecure argument handling is not like the more advanced subtle vulnerabilities that we are seeing in some LLM-assisted reports these days. Insecure argument handling is 1990's security.

The fundamental problem remains that Tailscale has too many new "features" being added to it the whole time. New features means a whole bunch new code. Which increases bloat and exponentially increases the attack surface.

It would be really nice if you could stop shoehorning in every new feature you can think of. Remove some of the existing ones that don't really need to be there. And get your codebase back to a more focused state, get back to your roots as a VPN product.

Stop trying to be all things to all men, as the old saying goes.

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That link is a list of incidents while the parent comment is referring to security audits of the code.
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It does too many things, and the product has got too complex. I saw a year ago they were looking for someone just to help with complexity.

I use it but feel uncomfortable, that it has large attack surface and LLMs will find exploits in it.

Without taillock it makes no sense. Anyone on their coordination servers will be able to connect to your network.

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The large attack surface is a good point. I started using it initially and the ease of setting up a vpn was nice, but then I came across few security vulnerability postings which led to concern so I went to Wireguard. I think they should reign in the features and treat it as a secure vpn first and foremost and remove unnecessary features to minimize the attack surface.
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> I use it but feel uncomfortable, that it has large attack surface and LLMs will find exploits in it

Doesn't this apply to any application you use? How would it be different with plain wireguard?

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> How would it be different with plain wireguard?

Seriously ?

You do realise that of all the security tools on the planet, plain wireguard most likely has the smallest attack surface of them all, right ?

The problem here is as the other poster said. Tailscale is a security tool and yet the guys at Tailscale seem to be insistent on dumping everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink into it as a "feature".

That sort of attitude is not going to end well. You end up with a large bloated code base, which equals large attack surface.

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I am talking especially about the LLM part.

Also a kinder tone in your comments would be more appreciated.

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I think if you put more thought and effort into your comments kindness will follow. Equating what the OP said to "isn't this like every application ever?" misses the point entirely.
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