13 releases (4 stable)

2.3.0 Dec 23, 2021
2.2.0 Apr 10, 2021
2.1.0 Feb 17, 2021
1.0.0 Mar 22, 2019
0.2.0 Nov 28, 2015

#1038 in Network programming

43 downloads per month

GPL-3.0 license

410KB
9K SLoC

Rust 8K SLoC // 0.0% comments Python 494 SLoC // 0.0% comments AsciiDoc 484 SLoC Shell 160 SLoC // 0.1% comments RPM Specfile 41 SLoC

VpnCloud - Peer-to-Peer VPN

Checks Security audit

VpnCloud is a high performance peer-to-peer mesh VPN over UDP supporting strong encryption, NAT traversal and a simple configuration. It establishes a fully-meshed self-healing VPN network in a peer-to-peer manner with strong end-to-end encryption based on elliptic curve keys and AES-256. VpnCloud creates a virtual network interface on the host and forwards all received data via UDP to the destination. It can work on TUN devices (IP based) and TAP devices (Ethernet based).

$> vpncloud -c REMOTE_HOST:PORT -p 'mypassword' --ip 10.0.0.1/24

or as config file:

crypto:
  password: mysecret
ip: 10.0.0.1
peers:
  - REMOTE_HOST:PORT

For more information, please see the Website or the Discussions group.

Project Status

This project is still under development but has reached a somewhat stable state. VpnCloud features the following functionality:

  • Automatic peer-to-peer meshing, no central servers
  • Automatic reconnecting when connections are lost
  • Connecting hundreds of nodes with the VPN
  • High throughput and low additional latency (see performance page)
  • Creating virtual network interfaces based on Ethernet (TAP) and IP (TUN)
  • Strong end-to-end encryption using Curve25519 key pairs and AES methods
  • Support for different forwarding/routing behaviors (Hub, Switch, Router)
  • NAT and firewall traversal using hole punching
  • Automatic port forwarding via UPnP
  • Websocket proxy mode for restrictive environments
  • Support for tunneled VLans (TAP devices)
  • Support for publishing beacons to help nodes find each others
  • Support for statsd monitoring
  • Low memory footprint
  • Single binary, no dependencies, no kernel module

Installing

Compiling from source

Prerequisites: Git, Cargo, asciidoctor

The checked-out code can be compiled with cargo build or cargo build --release (release version). The binary could then be found in target/release/vpncloud.

The tests can be run via cargo test.

Cross-Compiling & packaging

Please see the builder folder.

Contributions welcome

There are several areas in which still some work has to be done and where contributions are very welcome:

  • Linux packages: VpnCloud is stable enough to be packaged for Linux distributions. Maintainers who want to package VpnCloud are very welcome.
  • Help with other platforms: If you are a Rust developer with experience on Windows or MacOS your help on porting VpnCloud to those platforms is very welcome.
  • Security review: The security has been implemented with strong security primitives but it would be great if a cryptography expert could verify the system.
  • Feedback on use cases: Some feedback on how VpnCloud is being used and maybe some tutorials covering common use cases would be nice.

Semantic Versioning

This project uses semantic versioning.

Dependencies

~12–23MB
~415K SLoC