WireGuard Could Soon Be On Its Way To The Linux Kernel

Announced last summer by Jason Donenfeld was the "WireGuard" project as a next-generation secure network tunnel for the Linux kernel. It's looking like this network addition could soon be reaching the mainline Linux kernel.

Back in January they talked of their mainline kernel ambitions and while it might not be ready for merging in 2017 as it doesn't look like it will make it for the 4.15 merge window, it's sounding like it will be here soon enough.

If you haven't read up on WireGuard or missed out on our past coverage of this Linux VPN tunnel, see Donenfeld's FOSDEM 2017 presentation for more information regarding the project. There is also plenty of information on the project's website at WireGuard.com.

The latest for WireGuard is kernel veteran Greg Kroah-Hartman praising the work done on this modern and secure Linux VPN tunnel.

Greg KH wrote on Google+, "It's been great to see Wireguard mature over the years into something that works really well. This past week it survived the LinuxCon/ELCE/Kernel Summit traffic thanks to Konstantin Ryabitsev and packet.net setting up a server for us to use...Hopefully after the networking conference next week there will be a clearer roadmap for merging it into the kernel tree. The crypto code in the kernel module will probably have to play nicer with the in-kernel crypto apis, which is to be expected, but really, the current in-kernel crypto apis do need a serious revamp one of these days, no wonder Jason wrote his own interface..."

He also added that several kernel developers did a multi-hour code walkthrough of WireGuard this week. He's also trying a commercial VPN offering WireGuard nodes and found that it's "much simpler to configure and run than any OpenVPN client so on that point alone it's worth it."