Hi,

I've been thinking about this issue as well and I agree it's an
important one to solve. However, Wireguard's key selling points are its
performance, simple configuration and minimal code size and I don't
think we can compromise this. So I was wondering if a userspace program
which obfuscates outgoing Wireguard packets and de-obfuscates incoming
packets might solve the problem, without impacting Wireguard's key
features.

The userspace daemon would:
- 'Clean' Wireguard handshake packets,
* Randomise the packet type field
* Convert the ephemeral key to Elligator encoding
* Randomise the mac field if unused
* Random padding to alter packet lengths
- 'Clean' Data packets
* The header is exactly 16 bytes and non-repeating so
transform with AES-ECB
* The key could be derived from a PSK and the public
keys used in the handshake (ensuring keys don't
repeat)
* Or Wireguard could provide a hook for a "post-master
secret" which might be useful for many extensions
- The resulting stream would (hopefully) be uniformly
distributed which can either be transmitted directly or
passed to a pluggable transport.
- On the receiving end the daemon reverses the transformation
and delivers the packets to Wireguard.

Outcome:
+ Clear separation between codebases
+ No matter how badly implemented, the userspace daemon can't
compromise authenticity or confidentiality.
+ Easily extensible
+ Wireguard doesn't need to know about the transformation, it
just sends its packets to a listener on the loopback
interface.
- Performance hit from the packet indirection, ECB encryption
etc
- Still needs Wireguard to disable cookies, add timing jitter
on handshake / keep-alive packets.

I'm sure there are alternatives/better solutions. This is just a
sketch to show it is possible without altering Wireguard's codebase or
functionality. If you have any comments or criticism, I'd be interested
in refining the idea further.

Kind regards,
Dennis

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 10:06:07 +1000
StarBrilliant <coder@poorlab.com> wrote:

Hi,

(TL;DR: Please seriously consider preventing WG from being blocked,

for 2/3 of the world's Internet users. No need to break compatibility,

be friendly to PT plugins is a possible solution.)

I have been using WG for months. I understand the fact that Wireguard

wants to keep its protocol simple and easy to audit. I also understand

that we have talked about this topic back in 2016. [1]

## The problem: way too easy to block

I propose this issue again, because Wireguard has recently become a

hot topic in Chinese community with the most strict

<del>Internet</del> Intranet censorship in the world. Chinese

Wireguard users succeeded in access the Internet temporarily, but we

know Wireguard never tries to prevent itself from being blocked.

It is indeed very easy to completely block Wireguard protocol with

iptables:

iptables -A FORWARD -p udp -m length --length 120 -m u32 --u32 "0

22 & 0x3c @ 8 = 0x2000000" -j DROP

(Yes, from prior experience of blocking TLS and OpenVPN, usually

Message ID 2 is blocked instead of Message ID 1, probably for the

intention to consume server resources.)

It is also possible to interfere with the keep-alive packet, since it

is "always on time like a bus" and exactly 32 bytes:

iptables -A FORWARD -p udp -m length --length 60 -m u32 --u32 "0 >>

22 & 0x3c @ 8 = 0x4000000" -m statistic --mode random --probability

0.4 -j DROP

## But it's unrelated to WG's security model!

I heard someone saying something like below:

On Sat Jul 9 17:49:47 CEST 2016, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to>

wrote:

Given the design goals of wireguard, I don't think it is something

that would be particularly good to combine with steganography. We

need real net neutrality, with ISPs not allowed to block traffic

based on content. We need governments not passing laws to make

people compromise their own security. Using strong unbreakable

encryption when communicating, should be the norm, not something

you need to hide.

I interpret those sentences as identical to "Do not use Wireguard if

you live in a country where unlicensed VPN is illegal. Go and ask for

net neutrality instead." But the fact is that 2/3 of the world's

Internet users [2] live in censorship. For most of them, unlicensed

VPN is their only weapon to fight for net neutrality.

The undoubted top-1 encrypted proxy software [3] in China was not

written by a crypto professional and even started with RC4-MD5, not

until 5 years later (2017) did it have AEAD cipher.

People love Wireguard because of its security, flexibility and

efficiency, but only when it can work. It is useless to talk about

security if it does not work.

## Can we solve the problem easily?

What makes Wireguard easy to detect?

- Fixed first 4 bytes

(0x01000000 through 0x04000000)

- Plaintext nounce counter

(Could XChaCha20 solve the problem?)

- Fixed sender & receiver ID

(Two-pass encrypt might work, see below)

- Fixed length handshake & keep-alive

(148, 92, 32. can we pad them longer?)

- Punctual rekey & keep-alive

(Can we delay them randomly as IPsec do?)

How can we solve the problem?

- Embed steganography inside Wireguard?

(Not realistic. Big codebase, potential bugs.)

- Two-pass encrypt so no more plaintext handshake?

The outer layer could be PSK and does not need to be PFS.

(Possible but slow. PSK can be shared among sessions, like

L2TP/IPsec do.)

- Remain plaintext, but fix padding and timing problem,

relying Pluggable Transport [4] plugins to do the remaining work.

(I really recommend this solution.)

I read the tech whitepaper multiple times. I think it is possible

solve the problem in Method 3 without breaking any compatibility. For

Message ID = 1, 2, 3, we can add random data at the end of the packet.

For Message ID = 4 and Length = 0 (keep-alive packet), we can add more

zeros in the encapsulated packet. For the timing problem, we can give

rekey and keep-alive a little bit randomness.

In conclusion, I think we do not need to break the compatibility or

bloat the code base to make Wireguard immune to being detected. We

could either two-pass encrypt the packet, or solve the padding and

timing problem so PT plugins can run on top of it. I hope to see

Wireguard run anywhere without worries, not only on devices owned by

1/3 of the Internet's population.

## Notes

[1] https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2016-July/000184.html

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13596974/

[3] https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks (Please switch git

branch to see the actual code)

[4]

https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html.en#list-of-pts

Best regards.

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