docs: scope the loopback bind to remote reach (#33) - #35
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…he identity gate §6 called the loopback bind load-bearing without saying against whom. It bounds remote callers; locally it bounds nothing, because a TCP port is shared by every uid in the netns while herdr's socket is uid-bounded by file permissions. An agent deliberately run under another uid to contain it can therefore still drive the whole herd through the port — installing Collie silently removes that boundary. Say so, and point at the device gate, which is the one write gate that doesn't rest on "local means trusted". Also correct two claims. §6 said the owner login is asserted and other tailnet users rejected; checkAccess only rejects a *mismatching* Tailscale-User-Login and passes an absent one — safe under tailscale serve, which always injects it, and not safe behind anything that stops. The README's "reject anyone but you" had the same gap. Records that the device gate fails closed as of 0.15.0, and that device ids are proxy-asserted names rather than secrets. Reported by @simonallfrey. Fixes #33 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Variants C and E each re-derived the same mechanism in different words, and neither said which way it fails. It fails *open*: with no injector the login is absent, and checkAccess only rejects a *mismatching* Tailscale-User-Login (bridge/server.ts:890), so every request passes the check. State that once in Variant C and have Variant E point at it, per the docs rule against restating what lives elsewhere. Both now mention the startup warning that fires for exactly this case (startupWarnings, bridge/server.ts:338).
The heading is "##⚠️ Security — …". github-slugger strips the ⚠ and the em dash but keeps the U+FE0F variation selector, so the real anchor is "<U+FE0F>-security--read-before-you-run-it". Verified against the rendered page: id="user-content-\357\270\217-security--read-…". Two of the three links omitted that codepoint and silently didn't scroll — including the top-of- README Contents entry. The third had it as a raw invisible character. All three now use the percent-encoded form GitHub itself emits, so the source shows what it means.
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Closes the documentation half of #33.
ARCHITECTURE.md§6 called the loopback bind load-bearing without saying against whom. It boundsremote callers; locally it bounds nothing, because a TCP port is shared by every uid in the network
namespace while herdr's socket is uid-bounded by file permissions. So an agent deliberately run under
another uid to contain it can still
curl 127.0.0.1:$COLLIE_PORTand drive any pane in the herd —installing Collie silently removes the boundary an operator running untrusted diffs is most likely to
have reached for. §6 now says that, and points at the device gate as the one write gate that doesn't
rest on "local means trusted".
Two claims also corrected:
checkAccessonlyrejects a mismatching
Tailscale-User-Loginand passes an absent one — fine undertailscale serve, which injects it on every request; not fine behind anything that stops. TheREADME's "reject anyone but you" had the same gap.
that device ids are proxy-asserted names rather than secrets.
Reported by @simonallfrey.
Added after rebase onto 0.16.0 + #37
Reconciled the identity-gate wording across variants. Variant E (added in 0.16.0, after this
branch was cut) and Variant C each re-derived the same mechanism in different words, and neither said
which way it fails. It fails open: with no injector the login is absent, and
checkAccessonlyrejects a mismatch, so every request passes the check. That is now stated once in Variant C, with
Variant E pointing at it; both cite the startup warning that fires for exactly this case
(
startupWarnings,bridge/server.ts:338).Variant A's "rejects anyone else" was left alone — it is accurate there, since
tailscale servealways injects the header.
Fixed two broken links to the Security heading. github-slugger strips the ⚠ and the em dash but
keeps the U+FE0F variation selector, so the real anchor is
<U+FE0F>-security--read-before-you-run-it(verified against the rendered page:
id="user-content-\357\270\217-security--read-…"). Two of thethree links omitted that codepoint and silently didn't scroll, including the top-of-README Contents
entry; the third carried it as a raw invisible character. All three now use the percent-encoded form
GitHub itself emits. Pre-existing on main, unrelated to #33 — separate commit.
Doc-only — no version bump per CLAUDE.md. All internal anchors re-validated against github-slugger's
actual behaviour; CI green.
Fixes #33
🤖 Generated with Claude Code