(Fun fact: go-links are so critical to Google ops, that they're expected to be accessible in a "everything is down" scenario.)
Fascinating history of workplace search is that at Google and Stripe if you don't find any relevant document under go/, it will take you to your workplace search portal. Both Google and Stripe has built an internal document + file + people search portal called Moma and Stripe Home respectively.
You can read more about Stripe Home here - https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-home
Source: Former PM for part of Intern
I've seen these at a few companies now. I'm a little surprised they're still called "go"-links, though I suppose the name works everywhere.
caveat emptor
CVE-2022-41924 Severe 9.6
A vulnerability identified in the Tailscale Windows client allows a malicious website to reconfigure the Tailscale daemon `tailscaled`, which can then be used to remotely execute code. In the Tailscale Windows client, the local API was bound to a local TCP socket, and communicated with the Windows client GUI in cleartext with no Host header verification. This allowed an attacker-controlled website visited by the node to rebind DNS to an attacker-controlled DNS server, and then make local API requests in the client, including changing the coordination server to an attacker-controlled coordination server. An attacker-controlled coordination server can send malicious URL responses to the client, including pushing executables or installing an SMB share. These allow the attacker to remotely execute code on the node. All Windows clients prior to version v.1.32.3 are affected. If you are running Tailscale on Windows, upgrade to v1.32.3 or later to remediate the issue.
Published November 23, 2022.
Also how does an attacker "rebind DNS"? What does this even mean?
EDIT: more details here: https://emily.id.au/tailscale
And I'm glad you appreciated f5go's additional features; my personal favorite is the "lists" feature: a single go/ link can become a list of links very easily. Very useful for gathering research on a topic into a single place. I keep wanting to setup a personal f5go server so I can share short mnemonic links that might be lists lke this.
The main painful thing I've found has been cert management. PKI, as usual, is not a solved problem.
I've managed to do some fun stuff using salt + nebula on the hobby side.
GCP's Identity Aware Proxy (IAP) comes free with the load balancer
This is especially valuable when switching cms/erp/ticket systems etc where you may not have a lot of ability to manipulate generated links.
That's the value prop.
A perfect example would be the Scuba and OBS observability UIs. Instead of sharing a gnarly 500-character URL in chat to point someone to a specific query, you click "generate fburl" and get a short link.
More and more commercial/open-source software has built-in support for creating their own short links these days (Grafana and Kibana both do), but having it be ubiquitous -- and easy to integrate into new tools -- was really nice.
No need to find it on Google Drive (where the title may or may not follow consistent patterns) or remember which of the many Google doc links in autocomplete is the correct one.
A tailnet is a true "virtual private network" in the sense that it's a non-physically defined network to which which numerous devices can connect and see each other directly. The underlying physical network, a layer below, is (mostly) irrelevant to the operation of this network, and that's the part that's beautiful about Tailscale's implementation in particular. You could have a Pi Zero in your garage, a VPS in Australia, and your laptop in New York all joining the same private network ('tailnet') and interact as if they were on the same local physical network (in most respects).
Have a look at full mesh VPNs like:
https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns
https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go
https://github.com/gsliepen/tinc
https://github.com/costela/wesher
These build actual mesh networks where every node is equal and can serve as a router for other nodes to resolve difficult network topologies (where some nodes might not be connected to the internet, but do have connections to other nodes with an internet connection — I work with networks like that every day).
Sending data through multiple routers is also possible. They also deal with nodes disappearing and change routes accordingly.
tailscale (and similar solutions like netbird) still use a bunch of "proxy servers" for that. You can set them up on intermediate nodes, but that have to be dealt with manually (and you get two kinds of nodes). You also have to create routes for the node to be able to access the control server.
when im at home i can access it no problem since im connected to my home network and so is the NAS. when im away its not possible to connect to it because im on a completely different network.
with tailscale installed on each device makes it seem like im still on my home network even when im away.
I will give this a spin first thing in the morning.
A few months ago I tried to find a URL shortner that fit the bill, I was reading "Software Engineering at Google" and came across information regarding their internal `go/` URL.
I couldn't find anything, so I threw something together with Rust (using rocket), and gave it the ability to have static and dynamic backends, the dynamic backend would allow you to submit a link very easily.
a working example (with a static backend) is here: https://go.competition.company
I never got access to the real go/ service from google, so I wonder what I'm missing.
Heres the code: https://github.com/dijit/redirector-rs
