| ▲ | TrustTunnel: AdGuard VPN protocol goes open-source(adguard-vpn.com) |
| 150 points by kumrayu 18 hours ago | 48 comments |
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| ▲ | mrbluecoat 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Very cool! Thanks for supporting open source (unlike a half-hearted attempt, like ExpressVPN's Lightway). Quick question: the website animated gif has no arrows from the website to the VPN server. Am I missing something? Update: just followed the quickstart and worked great; speed is virtually line speed - impressive! |
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| ▲ | stefanha 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Link to the protocol specification:
https://github.com/TrustTunnel/TrustTunnel/blob/master/PROTO... It's a thin HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 tunneling protocol for TCP, UDP, and ICMP traffic. It should be easy to write an independent implementation based on this specification provided you already have an HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 library. Pretty neat! |
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| ▲ | dixie_land 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Looks very similar to the HBONE protocol the istio folks created for ambient mesh: https://istio.io/latest/docs/ambient/architecture/hbone/ | |
| ▲ | userbinator 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Basically a CONNECT proxy? That's definitely not a difficult thing to write. | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | More or less, built on top of it with added udp/icmp. When writing server and client a lot of time is consumed by additional features, not on implementing the spec itself. For instance, in order to be truly stealthy we have to make sure that it looks *exactly* like Chromium on the outside, and then maintain this similarity as Chromium changes TLS implementation from version to version. Or here’s another example: on the server-side we need to have an anti-probing protection to make it harder to detect what the server does. | | |
| ▲ | eptcyka 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | QUIC CONNECT supports UDP too now. | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | We support both H2 and H3 and this is necessary. QUIC is not bad, but there are places where it either does not work at all or works too slow. And one more thing, even though the code and spec is only published now, we’ve been using TrustTunnel for a long time, started before CONNECT_UDP became a thing. We’re considering switching to it though (or having an option to use it) just to make the server compatible with more clients. |
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| ▲ | DrBurrito an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I like and use your products, so, first of all, thank you! that the protocol was not open was one of my main issues for not using the vpn service,?it is great to see. i look forward for the upcoming audits. one thing i would like to see more is info about the company. the team, the offices, etc. there have been rumors and contradictory infos over the years, and the blog always have a “stock photo”, shady vibe. putting your address in google maps brings you to a shady alley… improving the image of the company (in my opinion) as it is now would do lots to create and improve trust. |
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| ▲ | ameshkov 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hi, I’m one of the people working on this. One clarification that may not be obvious: open-sourcing this isn’t primarily about signaling or auditability. If that were the goal, a standalone protocol spec or a minimal reference repo would have been enough. Instead, we’re deliberately shipping full client and server implementations because the end goal is for this to become an independent, vendor-neutral project, not something tied to AdGuard. We want it to be usable by any VPN or proxy stack and, over time, to serve as a common baseline for stealthy transports — similar to the role xray/vless play today. Happy to answer questions or clarify design choices. |
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| ▲ | kumrayu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I can't thank Adguard enough for providing so much to the community, they are a BIG part of my privacy-funded lifestyle. Out of the topic — but if you by any chance work on the mobile apps. Do you know why the iOS version is still sub-par compared to Android?
You all add more features for rooted Android but what about Jailbroken iOS devices? I have bought 20+ Adguard licenses and have never regretted buying them. Only if the iOS version could be much better. | | | |
| ▲ | rfv6723 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Does your team have Chinese memebers? GFW has been able to filter SNI to block https traffic for a few years now. | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We do, and from what we know a bigger problem in China is detecting traffic patterns. SNI filtering is not that big of a deal, in order to block your domain it needs to first learn which one you’re using. What for the traffic patterns, people in China prefer to selectively route traffic to the tunnel. For instance, the client apps allow you to route *.cn domains (or any other domains) directly. It makes it harder to detect that you’re using a VPN. | | |
| ▲ | rfv6723 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In Fujian province, all foreign domains which aren't in white list are blocked. This results that proxy server needs to use a fake sni in white list or ditch https. | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 35 minutes ago | parent [-] | | This is actually supported by both the client and the server. To use it in mobile clients you need to specify two domain names like that: fake-sni.com|domain.com where “fake-sni.com” is the domain thay will be in the SNI and “domain.com” is the domain in your TLS certificate (used to check the server’s authenticity) |
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| ▲ | eptcyka 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How do you do this on iOS? | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You mean in TrustTunnel apps? You can create a routing profile there and select which domains/ips are bypassed, and then select that routing profile in the vpn connection settings. |
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| ▲ | gruez 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >GFW has been able to filter SNI to block https traffic for a few years now. SNI isn't really the threat here, because any commercial VPN is going to be blocked by IP, no need for SNI. The bigger threat is tell-tale patterns of VPN use because of TLS-in-TLS, TLS-in-SSH, or even TLS-in-any-high-entropy-stream (eg. shadowsocks). | | |
| ▲ | rfv6723 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > because any commercial VPN is going to be blocked by IP, no need for SNI. Proxy server can hide behind CDN like Cloudflare via websocket tunnel. This is why GFW develops SNI filter, Cloudflare is too big to block. | | |
| ▲ | eptcyka 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | CDN traffic is quite expensive, don’t believe it would be feasible to provide a VPN product for that. But for individuals, sure. | |
| ▲ | gruez 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Proxy server can hide behind CDN like Cloudflare via websocket tunnel. cloudflare doesn't support domain fronting so any SNI spoofing won't work. |
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| ▲ | vitorsr 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for all impressive work on AdGuard. Any particular reason to adopt Rust for this project instead of Go as many of your other products? Because I think since you have quite extensive Go codebase I would imagine you had to rewrite possibly a significant amount of code. | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Performance reasons aside, TrustTunnel is developed by the team whose main language is C++ (and the client library is actually written in C++) so Rust was a more natural choice for them. | |
| ▲ | rcoder 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Likewise interested in the authoritative answer, but: if I needed to write a decent chunk of code that had to run as close to wire/CPU limits as possible and run across popular mobile and desktop platforms I would 100% reach for Rust. Go has a lot of strengths, but embedding performance-critical code as a shared library in a mobile app isn't among them. | |
| ▲ | eptcyka 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Embedding Go code into other binaries sucks ass. Debugging is worse, it installs some signal handlers. |
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| ▲ | GardenLetter27 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So what are the reasons to use this over Wireguard? |
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| ▲ | denkmoon 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What makes this worth using over something like vless? Work blocked my gatcha game so I've had to set up a xray/vless/xhttp/tls proxy and it works flawlessly. Gets through the corp firewall unscathed at full bandwidth and no appreciable increase in latency. |
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| ▲ | subscribed 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Could you please drop names/links to the magic sauce if there's anything more than the names mentioned? I need to open ssh myself and for now I decided on tunnelling over http/3 terminated somewhere in aws/gcp/cf, but maybe your method is better. | | |
| ▲ | denkmoon 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | https://github.com/XTLS/Xray-core It won't help you get around the endpoint compliance software, I use this for my byod phone (Streisand is a nice ios client). VLESS is the proxy protocol, kinda like SOCKS I guess. It uses xhttp over TLS as the transport. | | |
| ▲ | subscribed 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks a lot. VPNs are forbidden but this might easily slip under the radar (I can even check the signatures on the endpoint protection and our office firewall :)) It's less about breaking the rules, more about getting around the limitations in case I need it and don't fancy waiting 2 days for approval. Might end up with pure http/3, but this tool is fascinating. Thanks! |
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| ▲ | dfadsadsf 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Just use Amnezia VPN - it can masquerade as https. | | |
| ▲ | subscribed 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can't, my endpoint runs software enforcing compliance. "no disallowed VPN software" is one of the rules. Besides, where's fun in it :) |
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| ▲ | mintflow 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s great for you to open source the protocol and implementation, it written in rust which I will definitely consider to learn it add add to my vpn client in the future |
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| ▲ | reader9274 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How does this compare to Obscura |
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| ▲ | nfgrep 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Super cool stuff! Excited to see what p2p between clients might look like, and how it compares on speed with Wireguard. |
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| ▲ | almaight 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does it support the mwss protocol? |
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| ▲ | zx8080 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm surprised that the browser extension to block ads has a proprietary vpn-like protocol. WTF? |
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| ▲ | ameshkov 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that AdGuard means different things in different parts of the world. In some places, people know us primarily as an ad blocker, in others we’re best known for our DNS service and in some regions AdGuard is associated almost exclusively with our VPN. The reality is that AdGuard makes several different products, not just one. | | |
| ▲ | 0x1ch 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm an American. I knew about the VPN service, but mostly associate your brand with the DNS services and lists you provide (thank you!). | |
| ▲ | kidfiji 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And AdGuard Home is a wonderful alternative to Pi-hole :) | | |
| ▲ | ameshkov 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yay, thank you! :) I wish we finish with redesigning it nicely this year and finally after all those years we will finally call it v1.0 | | |
| ▲ | figmert 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wow! Am I about to live to see the day?! I've been following the releases fairly closely, and looking forward to it. |
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| ▲ | jabroni_salad 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | One of my first experiences with adguard was using it to block ads on an unrooted phone. It pipes your connection through a local vpn to do it. |
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| ▲ | sillyfluke 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It would be also nice if they could hold their implicit promise of having the AdGuard extension working on Safari iOS, it's broken for me even when I reinstal it. Anyone else have the same problem? |
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| ▲ | ameshkov 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is not a common issue tbh. What sometimes may happen is that after an iOS update the content blockers in Safari becomes corrupted and the only thing that fixes it is not just a reinstall, but uninstall + reboot + reinstall after that. If even this doesn’t help please contact me at “am at adguard.com”, I will try to help. | | |
| ▲ | sillyfluke 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely try the uninstall-reboot-reinstall flow. I was about to switch browsers on all the elderly devices. |
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