Running an unfamiliar binary by name should tell you what it does, not bind a
dozen ports and start answering the internet. --serve (or --daemon) now does
that, and a bare invocation prints usage and exits 2 - non-zero on purpose, so a
service manager sees a failure rather than concluding the server ran and
finished cleanly.
The hazard this creates is worth spelling out, because it bites once and
silently: three places started the binary with no arguments - the systemd unit,
the unit template, and the Dockerfile - and --self-update replaces the binary
but never the unit. A routine update would therefore leave a service that cannot
start, discovered whenever the host next rebooted.
So the updater repairs it: after replacing the binary it appends --serve to an
ExecStart that has no flags, but only in a unit this program wrote (identified
by its description). Editing an operator's hand-written unit would be overreach;
leaving ours broken would be negligence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Explaining public vs confidential clients surfaced a gap in my own design: I had
assumed a single client id, but there are two clients here with genuinely
different properties.
the Android app public + PKCE, because an APK cannot keep a secret
the admin UI confidential, because the server can keep one in
/etc/echolot-server.env and weakening it to public buys
nothing
So the audience check now accepts either registered client id - and only those
two. "Any client of this issuer" would let every other application registered
with the same IdP authenticate here, which is the entire reason the check
exists. Either id alone is enough to enable sign-in, since an operator may
register only the app or only the admin UI.
The profile advertises the *app's* client id, since that is what a phone should
authorize as.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
If the IdP is misconfigured, unreachable, or the admin group is a typo, the
operator is locked out of their own server with no way back short of editing
JSON on disk. A fallback that only matters when everything else is broken is
exactly the thing you cannot add later - by then you cannot get in to add it.
Stored as PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 from the standard library (Go 1.24+ has it, so no
dependency), 600k iterations, per-credential salt. A password rather than a
bearer token on purpose: a break-glass credential is the one most likely to end
up in a backup or a config-management repo, and a hash survives that where a
token does not. There is no email reset flow and should not be -
--set-admin-password on the host is the reset, and whoever can run it already
has the machine.
The password is read from stdin, never a flag, so it stays out of shell history
and the process list; piping still works for automation.
Details the tests pin, each for a reason:
- the username is compared in constant time too, or a fast rejection is a
timing oracle for which usernames exist;
- the *stored* iteration count is used, so raising the constant later does not
lock out existing passwords;
- the throttle grows with consecutive failures but stays bounded and forgives
after a quiet minute - a break-glass credential an attacker can lock out is
a denial of service against the one person who needs it;
- sessions are MAC-checked before anything in them is read, and rotating the
secret invalidates every one at once, which is how they are revoked.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Echolot delegates identity to whatever IdP the operator already runs and stores
no passwords - no hashing, no reset flow, no lockout policy, and no credential
database to lose. For a tool people self-host next to other services, that is
the difference between one more service and one more thing that can leak
someone's password.
Verification is stdlib-only, matching the server's no-dependency rule. Longer
than jwt.Parse, and auditable in one sitting. The part that matters is the
algorithm allow-list: taking `alg` from the token is the classic forgery, so it
is fixed in code. Tests cover the real attacks against a genuine signer - a
self-contained IdP with real keys, because a mock that returns success proves
nothing about a verifier:
alg=none, HS256/RS256 confusion, a payload swapped under a valid signature,
a token addressed to another client, a token from another issuer, expired
and future-dated tokens, and discovery that renames the issuer (which would
otherwise have us fetch a stranger's keys believing they were the provider's).
With no admin group configured nobody is an admin. An operator who has not said
who may administer the server has not thereby said "anyone who can log in".
Device and account stay separate concepts: enrollment admits a device (operator's
token), signing in attributes it to a person (POST /v1/account/link, device
credential plus ID token - both required, neither substitutes). uploads=account
now means what it says instead of refusing everyone, and signing in does not
override uploads=off.
The profile advertises the sign-in configuration so the app can offer the button
only when there is something behind it, and drive PKCE without anyone typing an
issuer URL. A discovery failure is reported rather than hidden, so "configured
but the provider is not answering" is distinguishable from "not configured".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A throughput number reports the smallest limit on the path, and the sender's own
ceiling is one of the candidates. If the server was asked for 50 Mbps and 50
Mbps arrived, the network was never the constraint and "50 Mbps" says nothing
about it. So the result always carries limited_by and measures_network, and a
finding is raised only when the path is actually implicated.
Loss is computed against the *sender's* count, not the requested rate: the
server reports what it put on the wire, and the gap is the loss. A receiver
alone cannot tell "the network dropped it" from "the sender never sent it", and
guessing turns a healthy server-side limit into a phantom network fault. The
count is stored per action, not per packet — half a million packets of structs
would turn a measurement into memory exhaustion.
Sending is paced rather than flat out. An unpaced burst measures the server's
NIC and the first queue it meets, then collapses into loss that reads as a
network fault. The schedule is absolute rather than sleep-per-packet, which
would accumulate scheduler error and drift the rate down over a ten-second run.
Throughput gets its own grant budget sized from the request, so every other
action stays bounded at 8 MiB. When the byte cap binds before the clock does,
the *duration* is shortened and reported, rather than the run being truncated
halfway: promising thirty seconds and delivering twenty-one is the same
information with a surprise attached, and it keeps "the clock ended the run" as
the normal case — the only case where the rate is a clean property of the path.
That last behaviour came out of a test that failed honestly: 30 s at 100 Mbps
needs 375 MB against a 256 MB cap.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Letting the kernel fragment an oversized datagram answers one question — do
fragments get through. It cannot answer the more interesting one, because the
kernel always emits them in order, first one first.
The classic middlebox fault is exactly about that ordering. Only the first
fragment carries the UDP header, and therefore the ports; a stateful firewall
or NAT that has not seen it has no flow to match the rest against, and many
drop them. That is invisible to any in-order test and shows up in the field as
"large DNS answers fail on this network" or "the tunnel breaks when the MTU
drops" — it works until the network reorders, then fails intermittently, which
is the hardest kind of fault to chase.
So the server now builds the fragments itself (raw socket, IP_HDRINCL) and
controls their order: in_order as a baseline, reversed, and first-fragment-last.
The datagram is assembled and signed whole before being cut up, so what the
client reassembles is indistinguishable from an ordinary packet — otherwise it
would be measuring our sender rather than the path.
Two details that would silently produce wrong answers:
- The UDP checksum is computed rather than left zero. A zero-checksum datagram
is dropped by some middleboxes, and that drop would be recorded as a
fragmentation failure, which is the wrong conclusion entirely.
- Fragment offsets are in 8-byte units, so non-final fragments are rounded to
a multiple of 8. A 100-byte fragment is not an error, it is a datagram no
host will ever reassemble.
frag-send is advertised only when a raw socket can actually be opened — checked
by opening one, since a permission model has more ways to say no than a
capability bit has to say yes.
Fragment header arithmetic is unit-tested (reassembly coverage, MF flags, shared
IP ID, 8-byte offsets, checksum verification), cross-compiled and run on Linux
since the code is build-tagged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The previous commit's edit to the admin handler silently did not apply, so the
endpoint still returned just the token. Caught by deploying and looking at the
response rather than by trusting the build to have picked it up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
POST /admin/enroll-tokens now returns the whole link, not just the token:
echolot://enroll?v=1&u=<control URL>&p=pin-sha256:<b64>&t=<token>
The server is the only party that knows all three parts at once, and the part
an operator gets wrong by hand is the base64 pin — which does not fail loudly,
it just never matches, surfacing days later as an inscrutable TLS error. The
app takes the link from a paste or from an echolot:// deep link (QR scan), and
writes URL, pin and credential together or not at all.
One trap the tests pin: an unencoded "+" in a query string decodes to a space,
so a hand-assembled link arrives with a pin wrong by one character. Base64 has
no spaces, so they are restored — unambiguous, and it cannot damage a correctly
encoded pin.
Also fixes a spec divergence: §2.1 names the field device_credential and the
first implementation shipped "credential". Both are sent now and the client
prefers the spec's; the alias goes once nothing reads it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Both sides now declare what they will talk to, and enforce it. Two axes kept
deliberately separate, because conflating them is the trap:
protocol_version — CAN these builds talk. The correctness axis. Below 1.0.0
the minor is the breaking axis, per SemVer §4.
release window — MAY they, per policy. [min, max), advertised in the
profile, overridable by the operator.
The server refuses out-of-window apps with 426 and a body naming both versions
and the accepted range; the app checks the profile in both directions before a
run rather than discovering mid-measurement that it will be refused.
Three rules that shape the rest:
- GET /v1/profile is never gated. It is where a refused client learns which
version it needs; gating it leaves the user with a network error instead of
an answer, which is precisely the confusion this exists to remove.
- An unparseable or absent version is "unknown", and is allowed. Development
builds report "dev", and a client too old to send the header cannot be
identified anyway.
- Bounds sit at breaking boundaries, not at releases, so shipping a patch
never requires editing a range. The app's server minimum is 0.4.2 for a
stated reason: earlier multi-homed servers mis-addressed granted sends and
the client measured 100% downstream loss that never happened.
The app's versionCode is now derived from its SemVer instead of being a second
number someone has to remember to bump.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
big_send now forces the Don't-Fragment bit for the whole burst by default, so
the largest size that arrives IS the downstream path MTU rather than "fragments
got through" — two different measurements the schema already separates. Sizes
above our own egress MTU (from the startup self-test) are refused up front and
reported as max_df_bytes, because absence caused by our kernel must not be read
as a limit of the client's path.
Uploads: one JSON file per run under the state dir, with the policy the operator
actually cares about — who may upload (off / anonymous / account), how large,
how long to keep, and the least anonymization accepted. The profile advertises
all of it so the app can present the switch honestly instead of discovering the
rules by failing. `account` refuses today rather than falling back to anonymous:
picking the strict setting before OIDC lands must not silently mean the loose one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The grant is the keystone that makes server->client sends safe: created
only by an authenticated control-plane action, bound at creation to the
session's OBSERVED data-plane source (so it can never be aimed at a third
party), and bounded by bytes, average rate and expiry. Sends stop the
moment the budget runs out, so a buggy action cannot become a flood.
Two granted actions on top of it:
- downtrain: N packets at a given size/interval toward the client, with
seq + send-timestamp in the payload — downstream loss/reorder/jitter,
which an upstream-only train cannot measure.
- big_send: one datagram per requested size, echoing the intended size in
the payload — downstream MTU / black-hole evidence the client cannot
produce for itself (only the far end can emit a large packet toward it).
Tests cover the security properties: no grant without a verified
destination, client requests clamped to server limits, byte budget stops
sending exactly, expiry refuses, and the rate ceiling throttles a burst.
Capabilities gain downtrain + big-send.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A connection opening with a TLS handshake (first byte 0x16) and ALPN
elt-echo gets the ClientHello it sent back raw (b64) and as a JA4
fingerprint (sec.clienthello_echo), then a TLS byte-echo; plain
connections are unchanged. One port, multiplexed by a timed peek:
plain echo is server-speaks-first, so a silent client (peek timeout) is
greeted, while a TLS client's immediate ClientHello (0x16) routes to the
TLS path — 500ms tolerates ~1s RTT before misdetection.
JA4 (FoxIO): full ClientHello parser (ciphers, extensions, ALPN,
supported_versions, sig algs) with GREASE exclusion; a_b_c fingerprint,
unit-tested for structure + GREASE invariance. Live-verified: elt-echo
negotiated, JA4 t13d1712eo computed, 1530-byte ClientHello returned.
Capability tls-echo. This completes spec §4.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A measurement server must prove its own host isn't distorting results:
- sysctl audit (/proc/sys): flags accept_ra on a static host, ICMP
redirects, ICMP rate-limiting of the server's own errors, and disabled
TCP options — each a measurement-fidelity hazard, with the "why".
- egress-MTU self-proof: DF PMTUD probe (IP_MTU_DISCOVER + getsockopt
IP_MTU, no root — Linux-only, stub elsewhere) to external anchors. If the
server's own uplink is below 1500, client MTU tests measure THIS server,
so we say so.
Exposed at GET /admin/selftest (full report) and as server_selftest
{mtu_ok, sysctl_ok} in the profile so clients can trust or skip MTU tests.
Recommended deploy/99-echolot-sysctl.conf + README section.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- POST /v1/echo: returns the received request head + body (base64) and the
observed TLS parameters (version, cipher, SNI, ALPN, resumed). The client
diffs against what it sent to detect header injection/stripping,
transparent proxying, or TLS interception (sec.http_echo). http-echo
added to the capability set.
- GET /v1/tls-reference: the served leaf-first DER chain + pin, so the app
can compare an out-of-band copy against its own handshake (sec.tls_reference).
Always available, no auth — public handshake info.
- Optional CLEARTEXT http-echo listener (ECHOLOT_HTTP_ECHO_LISTEN, default
off) exposing only /v1/echo for the plaintext-path tampering test.
Live-smoke-tested (HTTPS echo reflected an injected header + observed
TLS1.3; cleartext variant reports tls:none); httptest unit tests added.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Stdlib DNS responder (no external deps): parses single-question queries
with EDNS OPT (bufsize, DO, ECS), serves the spec's frozen reference
records (ttl-{5,60,3600,86400} A/AAAA/TXT, many-rr 8×A in order, big-txt
~1800B), and per-query <nonce>.<session>.<zone> answers in 192.0.2.0/24.
UDP truncation sets TC past 512 (or the EDNS bufsize); TCP never
truncates — the EDNS-bufsize / TCP-fallback test. Every query is logged
(qname, resolver, transport, EDNS, ECS, case) and surfaced per session
prefix in GET /v1/sessions/{id}/observations as dns_canary. Profile gains
canary_zone + the canary-dns capability when configured.
Wire format validated against an independent client (correct rcodes,
answer counts, TC behavior, full EDNS response); unit tests cover
references, truncation-vs-EDNS, logging, NXDOMAIN.
Versioning: patch-first convention recorded in CLAUDE.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- stun: RFC 5389 binding responder + RFC 5780 attributes (OTHER-ADDRESS,
RESPONSE-ORIGIN, CHANGE-REQUEST) on a primary/alt-port socket grid per
address; advertises stun-5780 with >=2 same-family addrs, else
stun-basic. Unmodified framing for tooling interop. Tested.
- tcpecho: JSON greeting with observed src + TCP_INFO MSS/options
(Linux getsockopt; zeroed elsewhere via build tags), then byte echo.
- session: per-packet UDP observations + connect-back results, ByID lookup.
- control: GET /v1/sessions/{id}/observations, POST .../actions
(delayed_echo → DELAYED_ECHO at the observed data-plane source;
connect_back → dial the control-plane source, record connected/refused/
timeout+rtt). Capabilities computed from what is actually wired.
- config/main: comma-separated STUN listeners; all planes bind explicit
addresses; graceful shutdown of the new listeners.
Full flow smoke-tested; go test green (stun binding/change-port,
dataplane wire format).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Comma-separated ECHOLOT_{CONTROL,UDP,TCP}_LISTEN; one listener/socket per
address. Explicit binds matter on multi-IP hosts (a wildcard would also
claim the SSH-only management address) and per-address UDP sockets are
the substrate stun-5780 needs.
- systemd unit reads /etc/echolot-server.env (seeded once, never
overwritten); --install-systemd with --self-update-api also installs a
daily randomized update timer that try-restarts the service.
- selfupdate: SHA256SUMS verification is now mandatory before the atomic
replace (integrity, not authenticity — signing still TODO).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Pure stdlib. Implements the spec's core: enrollment (single-use tokens),
profile (SPKI pin, only real capabilities advertised), sessions with the
§2.4 HKDF-SHA256 key schedule; UDP data plane with the 32-byte ELT1
header, 4-byte HMAC gate, 1024-wide anti-replay window, ECHO_RESP with
observation block, TIMESYNC, and the §3.4 anti-amplification cap. Wire
format has tests (roundtrip + silent-drop cases); enroll→profile→session
smoke-tested live.
Modes: container (autodetect /.dockerenv|/run/.containerenv|cgroup, or
--docker/ECHOLOT_DOCKER=1; config via ECHOLOT_* env; distroless image;
network_mode host required — Docker NAT would falsify observed sources)
and native (--install-systemd/--uninstall-systemd with a hardened unit,
opt-in --self-update from Gitea releases; refused in containers).
CI: tests on any server/ push; server-v* tags build+push the image to the
Gitea registry and attach linux amd64/arm64 binaries + SHA256SUMS to a
release — the artifact self-update consumes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
