1 This is the README file for tinc version 1.0pre4. Installation
2 instructions may be found in the INSTALL file.
4 tinc is Copyright (C) 1998-2001 by:
6 Ivo Timmermans <itimmermans@bigfoot.com>,
7 Guus Sliepen <guus@sliepen.warande.net>,
10 For a complete list of authors see the AUTHORS file.
12 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
13 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
14 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at
15 your option) any later version. See the file COPYING for more details.
21 In august 2000, we discovered the existence of a security hole in all
22 versions of tinc up to and including 1.0pre2. This had to do with the
23 way we exchanged keys. Since then, we have been working on a new
24 authentication scheme to make tinc as secure as possible. The current
25 version uses the OpenSSL library and does authentication in much the
26 same way as the SSH protocol does.
28 Cryptography is a hard thing to get right. We cannot make any
29 guarantees. Time, review and feedback are the only things that can
30 prove the security of any cryptographic product. If you wish to review
31 tinc or give us feedback, you are stronly encouraged to do so.
37 Since 1.0pre3, we use OpenSSL for all cryptographic functions. So you
38 need to install this library first; grab it from
39 http://www.openssl.org/. We recommend version 0.9.5 or better. If
40 this library is not installed on you system, configure will fail. The
41 manual in doc/tinc.texi contains more detailed information on how to
48 This version of tinc supports multiple virtual networks at once. To
49 use this feature, you may supply a netname via the -n or --net
50 options. The standard locations for the config files will then be
51 /etc/tinc/<net>/. Because of this feature, tinc will send packets
52 directly to their destinations, instead of to the uplink. If this
53 behaviour is undesirable (for instance because of firewalls or other
54 restrictions), please use an older version of tinc (I would recommend
57 In order to force the kernel to accept received packets, the
58 destination MAC address will be set to FE:FD:00:00:00:00 upon
59 reception. The MAC address of the ethertap or tun/tap interface must
60 also be set to this address. See the manual for more detailed
63 tincd regenerates its encryption key pairs. It does this on the first
64 activity after the keys have expired. This period is adjustable in the
65 configuration file, and the default time is 3600 seconds (one hour).
67 This version supports multiple subnets at once. They are also sorted
68 on subnet mask size. This means that it is possible to have
69 overlapping subnets on the VPN, as long as their subnet mask sizes