Registered by Peter J. Mello

WireGuard® is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPsec, while avoiding the massive headache. It intends to be considerably more performant than OpenVPN. WireGuard is designed as a general purpose VPN for running on embedded interfaces and super computers alike, fit for many different circumstances. Initially released for the Linux kernel, it is now cross-platform (Windows, macOS, BSD, iOS, Android) and widely deployable. It is currently under heavy development, but already it might be regarded as the most secure, easiest to use, and simplest VPN solution in the industry.

Simple & Easy-to-use

WireGuard aims to be as easy to configure and deploy as SSH. A VPN connection is made simply by exchanging very simple public keys – exactly like exchanging SSH keys – and all the rest is transparently handled by WireGuard. It is even capable of roaming between IP addresses, just like Mosh. There is no need to manage connections, be concerned about state, manage daemons, or worry about what's under the hood. WireGuard presents an extremely basic yet powerful interface.

Cryptographically Sound

WireGuard uses state-of-the-art cryptography, like the Noise protocol framework, Curve25519, ChaCha20, Poly1305, BLAKE2, SipHash24, HKDF, and secure trusted constructions. It makes conservative and reasonable choices and has been reviewed by cryptographers.

Minimal Attack Surface

WireGuard has been designed with ease-of-implementation and simplicity in mind. It is meant to be easily implemented in very few lines of code, and easily auditable for security vulnerabilities. Compared to behemoths like *Swan/IPsec or OpenVPN/OpenSSL, in which auditing the gigantic codebases is an overwhelming task even for large teams of security experts, WireGuard is meant to be comprehensively reviewable by single individuals.

High Performance

A combination of extremely high-speed cryptographic primitives and the fact that WireGuard lives inside the Linux kernel means that secure networking can be very high-speed. It is suitable for both small embedded devices like smartphones and fully loaded backbone routers.

Well Defined & Thoroughly Considered

WireGuard is the result of a lengthy and thoroughly considered academic process, resulting in the technical whitepaper, an academic research paper which clearly defines the protocol and the intense considerations that went into each decision.

WireGuard securely encapsulates IP packets over UDP. You add a WireGuard interface, configure it with your private key and your peers' public keys, and then you send packets across it. All issues of key distribution and pushed configurations are out of scope of WireGuard; these are issues much better left for other layers, lest we end up with the bloat of IKE or OpenVPN. In contrast, it more mimics the model of SSH and Mosh; both parties have each other's public keys, and then they're simply able to begin exchanging packets through the interface.

Project information

Licence:
GNU GPL v2

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master series is the current focus of development.

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Version control system:
Git
Programming languages:
C

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