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docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing - #409

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docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing#409
luvs01 wants to merge 20 commits into
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codex/propose-fix-for-tailscale-identity-vulnerability

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@luvs01

@luvs01 luvs01 commented Sep 3, 2026

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Motivation

  • Close a header-trust/confusion gap in the remote-hub deployment guide that allowed a generic TLS proxy to forward attacker-controlled Tailscale-User-* headers and thus let an attacker mint long-lived GUI sessions.

Description

  • Default the remoteGui.allowedTailscaleUsers allowlist to an empty list in the remote-hub guide and the container/Compose examples so no remote identity can mint a session by default.
  • Require operators to enable the allowlist only when the topology is actually served by Tailscale Serve (i.e. the Serve process is the forwarding endpoint).
  • Strengthen guidance for operator-owned TLS proxies to explicitly remove or reject all incoming Tailscale-User-* headers before forwarding and to prefer the origin-bound pairing flow for generic frontends.
  • Record the generic-proxy trust invariant in the management architecture document so deployments must either keep the allowlist empty or ensure header sanitization is performed by a trusted forwarder.
  • Files changed: docs-site/src/content/docs/guides/remote-hub.md and structure/05_gui-and-management-api.md.

Testing

  • git diff --check (no whitespace or diff-check issues detected).
  • ✅ Documentation build: cd docs-site && bun install --frozen-lockfile && bun run build completed successfully.
  • ✅ Typecheck and privacy scan: bun run typecheck and bun run privacy:scan both passed.
  • ⚠️ bun run test was started but the full test run surfaced unrelated pre-existing failures in some Lab and routing test suites; the focused validation steps above and the docs build passed and were used to verify the documentation and formatting changes.

Codex Task

lidge-jun and others added 20 commits August 25, 2026 10:36
release: promote dev into main for v2.32.1
# Conflicts:
#	package.json
[WRONG BRANCH] merge dev into main for the v2.33.0 release
Promotes the dev integration line onto main. The resulting tree is byte-identical
to origin/dev, including package.json at 2.34.0.

The package.json conflict is resolved to dev's side, NOT to main's stale 2.33.0.
Earlier promotions (lidge-jun#2553, lidge-jun#2507) kept the target's version so the release bump
would land on its own "release: vX.Y.Z" commit. That is no longer legal: this very
delta adds tests/release-version-line.test.ts, which fails when the in-tree version
sits behind the highest release tag. With v2.34.0-preview.20260827 now published,
2.33.0 orders behind it, so a promotion carrying the stale line turns CI red on
every shard that runs the suite.

The consequence for the release step is that scripts/release.ts skips the bump
(release.ts:568, currentVersion === version), so v2.34.0 gets tagged on this merge
commit rather than on a separate release commit. The workflow creates the tag itself
after publishing and validates expected-sha against the checked-out commit, so the
tag still names exactly the audited tree.
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev onto main for v2.34.0
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev onto main for v2.35.0
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev onto main for v2.36.0
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev to main for the v2.37.0 release
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev onto main for v2.38.0
[WRONG BRANCH] promote dev onto main for v2.39.0
…rkflow call (lidge-jun#3262)

Both v2.40.0 release dispatches (33615174183 preview, 33615177849 main) died
at startup_failure: a workflow_call cannot grant its callee more than the
calling job holds, and dev-version-bump.yml's job declares contents+pull-
requests write. lidge-jun#3129 wired the call but never dispatched a release, so this
is its first live run. The caller job now declares exactly the callee's two
permissions; no other job in release.yml gains anything.

Co-authored-by: jun <jun@lidge.dev>
(cherry picked from commit 7ce0ba5)
…400-relfix

release: carry the release.yml permissions fix onto main for v2.40.0
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📝 Code Review Completed 2026-09-03T05:51:00.782688Z bae0674 PR opened
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Deterministic PR hygiene checks passed.

@github-actions github-actions Bot added the documentation Improvements or additions to documentation label Sep 3, 2026
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@github-actions github-actions Bot changed the title docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing [WRONG BRANCH] docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing Sep 3, 2026
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💡 Codex Review

Here are some automated review suggestions for this pull request.

Reviewed commit: bae06747bb

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  • Comment "@codex review".

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Comment on lines +148 to +151
`127.0.0.1:10101`. A generic TLS proxy does not supply trustworthy Tailscale identity. Keep
`remoteGui.allowedTailscaleUsers` empty, and configure the proxy to remove or reject every incoming
`Tailscale-User-*` header before forwarding. Preserving client-supplied identity headers is unsafe;
do not merely avoid adding new ones. Use the single-use, origin-bound pairing flow instead.

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P1 Badge Apply the spoofing fix to localized guides

The French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese guides/remote-hub.md pages still set remoteGui.allowedTailscaleUsers before Tailscale Serve is established and tell generic-proxy operators only not to fabricate identity headers, without requiring removal of client-supplied headers. Users following any localized guide therefore remain exposed to the header-spoofing path this change is intended to close; update every directly affected translation with the empty-by-default allowlist and header-stripping requirement.

AGENTS.md reference: docs-site/AGENTS.md:L7-L10

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management ingress:

```bash
ocx config set remoteGui.allowedTailscaleUsers '["operator@example.com"]'

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P2 Badge Restart the hub after enabling the allowlist

In the documented systemd/launchd sequence, ocx service install starts the hub while this setting is still empty, and this later ocx config set only persists config.json; startServer captures the configuration once at startup in src/server/index.ts:645, with no live reload for remoteGui. Consequently the allowed Tailscale user still cannot mint a session and the positive dashboard step fails until the service is restarted. Add ocx service restart after this command, or establish Serve and set the allowlist before installing the service.

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@luvs01 luvs01 changed the title [WRONG BRANCH] docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing docs(security): harden remote-hub guidance to avoid Tailscale header spoofing Sep 3, 2026
@luvs01
luvs01 changed the base branch from main to dev September 3, 2026 06:21
@github-actions
github-actions Bot marked this pull request as ready for review September 3, 2026 06:27
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