Tailscale prepares patches for ‘Tailworm’ security vulnerabilities

Tailscale is preparing to release client updates to address a collection of vulnerabilities dubbed ‘Tailworm’. The flaws, identified in a report by Cyberdione Labs, affect Tailscale version 1.104.2 and headscale version 0.29.5.

The vulnerabilities include 11 findings, six of which are rated as high severity. A significant portion of these flaws impacts Tailscale SSH, which manages access via device identity rather than traditional passwords. Researchers demonstrated that these SSH flaws are ‘wormable’, meaning an automated attack could move between servers in under a second per hop without user interaction, potentially granting root access and allowing the theft of keys to add rogue devices to a network.

Other identified issues affect the client’s relay component, the Serve feature, and an experimental app connector. While the uncoordinated disclosure of these flaws before patches were available drew criticism, Tailscale is expected to release updates to mitigate the risks of remote code execution, server crashes, and credential theft.