Trusted networks

Trust zones are the only mechanism in EdgeVPN that can exclude a peer holding a valid network token at runtime — everything else, the token itself, ledger ownership and relay ACLs, assumes every token holder is a full member. If your membership is a fixed set of hosts, --static-peertable excludes token holders too, without being experimental; see static peer tables.

Read the security model first either way. It covers what peergating adds, what it deliberately does not add, and the admission gap in the current implementation that you should weigh before relying on it.

Peerguardian

PeerGuardian is a mechanism to prevent unauthorized access to the network if tokens are leaked or either revoke network access.

In order to enable it, start edgevpn nodes adding the --peerguard flag.

edgevpn --peerguard

To turn on peer gating, specify also --peergate.

Peerguardian and peergating has several options:

   --peerguard                                   Enable peerguard. (Experimental) [$PEERGUARD]
   --peergate                                    Enable peergating. (Experimental) [$PEERGATE]
   --peergate-autoclean                          Enable peergating autoclean. (Experimental) [$PEERGATE_AUTOCLEAN]
   --peergate-relaxed                            Enable peergating relaxation. (Experimental) [$PEERGATE_RELAXED]
   --peergate-auth value                         Peergate auth [$PEERGATE_AUTH]
   --peergate-interval value                     Peergater interval time (default: 120) [$EDGEVPNPEERGATEINTERVAL]

When the PeerGuardian and Peergater are enabled, a VPN node will only accepts blocks from authorized nodes.

Peerguardian is extensible to support different mechanisms of authentication, we will see below specific implementations.

ECDSA auth

The ECDSA authentication mechanism is used to verify peers in the blockchain using ECDSA keys.

To generate a new ECDSA keypair use edgevpn peergater ecdsa-genkey:

$ edgevpn peergater ecdsa-genkey
Private key: LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQUklWQVRFIEtFWS0tLS0tCk1JSGNBZ0VCQkVJQkhUZnRSTVZSRmlvaWZrdllhZEE2NXVRQXlSZTJSZHM0MW1UTGZlNlRIT3FBTTdkZW9sak0KZXVPbTk2V0hacEpzNlJiVU1tL3BCWnZZcElSZ0UwZDJjdUdnQndZRks0RUVBQ09oZ1lrRGdZWUFCQUdVWStMNQptUzcvVWVoSjg0b3JieGo3ZmZUMHBYZ09MSzNZWEZLMWVrSTlEWnR6YnZWOUdwMHl6OTB3aVZxajdpMDFVRnhVCnRKbU1lWURIRzBTQkNuVWpDZ0FGT3ByUURpTXBFR2xYTmZ4LzIvdEVySDIzZDNwSytraFdJbUIza01QL2tRNEIKZzJmYnk2cXJpY1dHd3B4TXBXNWxKZVZXUGlkeWJmMSs0cVhPTWdQbmRnPT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFJJVkFURSBLRVktLS0tLQo=
Public key: LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0KTUlHYk1CQUdCeXFHU000OUFnRUdCU3VCQkFBakE0R0dBQVFCbEdQaStaa3UvMUhvU2ZPS0syOFkrMzMwOUtWNApEaXl0MkZ4U3RYcENQUTJiYzI3MWZScWRNcy9kTUlsYW8rNHROVkJjVkxTWmpIbUF4eHRFZ1FwMUl3b0FCVHFhCjBBNGpLUkJwVnpYOGY5djdSS3g5dDNkNlN2cElWaUpnZDVERC81RU9BWU5uMjh1cXE0bkZoc0tjVEtWdVpTWGwKVmo0bmNtMzlmdUtsempJRDUzWT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFVCTElDIEtFWS0tLS0tCg==

For example, to add a ECDSA public key, use the API as such from a node which is already trusted by PeerGuardian:

$ curl -X PUT 'http://localhost:8080/api/ledger/trustzoneAuth/ecdsa_1/LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQVUJMSUMgS0VZLS0tLS0KTUlHYk1CQUdCeXFHU000OUFnRUdCU3VCQkFBakE0R0dBQVFBL09TTjhsUU9Wa3FHOHNHbGJiellWamZkdVVvUAplMEpsWUVzOFAyU3o1TDlzVUtDYi9kQWkrVFVONXU0ZVk2REpGeU50dWZjK2p0THNVTTlPb0xXVnBXb0E0eEVDCk9VdDFmRVNaRzUxckc4MEdFVjBuQTlBRGFvOW1XK3p4dmkvQnd0ZFVvSTNjTDB0VTdlUGEvSGM4Z1FLMmVOdE0KeDdBSmNYcWpPNXZXWGxZZ2NkOD0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFVCTElDIEtFWS0tLS0tCg=='

Now the private key can be used while starting new nodes:

PEERGATE_AUTH="{ 'ecdsa' : { 'private_key': 'LS0tLS1CRUdJTiBFQyBQUklWQVRFIEtFWS0tLS0tCk1JSGNBZ0VCQkVJQkhUZnRSTVZSRmlvaWZrdllhZEE2NXVRQXlSZTJSZHM0MW1UTGZlNlRIT3FBTTdkZW9sak0KZXVPbTk2V0hacEpzNlJiVU1tL3BCWnZZcElSZ0UwZDJjdUdnQndZRks0RUVBQ09oZ1lrRGdZWUFCQUdVWStMNQptUzcvVWVoSjg0b3JieGo3ZmZUMHBYZ09MSzNZWEZLMWVrSTlEWnR6YnZWOUdwMHl6OTB3aVZxajdpMDFVRnhVCnRKbU1lWURIRzBTQkNuVWpDZ0FGT3ByUURpTXBFR2xYTmZ4LzIvdEVySDIzZDNwSytraFdJbUIza01QL2tRNEIKZzJmYnk2cXJpY1dHd3B4TXBXNWxKZVZXUGlkeWJmMSs0cVhPTWdQbmRnPT0KLS0tLS1FTkQgRUMgUFJJVkFURSBLRVktLS0tLQo=' } }"
$ edgevpn --peerguard --peergate

Enabling/Disabling peergating in runtime

Peergating can be disabled in runtime by leveraging the api.

These routes are registered only on nodes started with --peerguard: on a node without it they return 404, because there is no peer gater to query.

Query status

$ curl -X GET 'http://localhost:8080/api/peergate'

Enable peergating

$ curl -X PUT 'http://localhost:8080/api/peergate/enable'

Disable peergating

$ curl -X PUT 'http://localhost:8080/api/peergate/disable'

Starting a new network

To init a new Trusted network, start nodes with --peergate-relaxed and add the neccessary auth keys:

$ edgevpn --peerguard --peergate --peergate-relaxed
$ curl -X PUT 'http://localhost:8080/api/ledger/trustzoneAuth/keytype_1/XXX'