GHOSTNECTOR
I coded a network masker for Linux in Rust.
This one was different.
I coded a network masker for Linux in Rust. Someone might ask, "A VPN?", and I'd simply answer: "No, Ghostnector isn't a proxy that one can configure. It's a kernel policy that can't be opted out of by a misbehaving app."
During evaluation of which approach to take for this kind of problem, I saw that the Linux operating system was the most appropriate one, as it gave us much more control over the kernel and stability than Windows did.
What made this different was the coding language I chose: Rust.
The dangerous code here is exactly the code holding CAP_NET_ADMIN/CAP_SYS_ADMIN and parsing untrusted IPC. A use-after-free or buffer overflow in netd/appd is a policy bypass, not a crash, so eliminating that bug class where it matters most is worth a lot.
Rust removes buffer overflows, use-after-free, double-free, and data races at compile time.
But there was a problem: I was Rust-literate, yes, but couldn't code in Rust!
Either this was going to be a really working project and new knowledge about the real-life functionality of this idea, or an incomplete one. I never deliver an incomplete project.
I meticulously wrote a prompt: explaining every detail, choice, how to code them, and how to test them. I split the whole plan into 10 different modules with multiple checkpoints for each, and asked AI to give me detailed reports on implementation, testing, and whether it worked.
It was the first time an AI was going to code the whole project, and I was going to hold the supervisory/debugger position!
Thankfully, this worked out.
After four days of intensive work, I didn't sleep for two nights, by the way, we finally had v1.0.0.
Additional information regarding benchmarks: leakage tests gave us a clean score of 30/0/0 on the VM side, and 0 violations/0 ambiguous results on external leakage tests.
I also made HTTP-latency optimizations and improved it by 54.6%! With around 524.6 ms HTTP latency, Ghostnector gives no leakage with, in my opinion, quite a good HTTP-latency rate.
I want to mention that Ghostnector doesn't guarantee 100% safety, as nothing can guarantee total safety in the cybersecurity world.