Simple Bridge Panel Offers Self-Hosted Management for Xray and AmneziaWG Connections
A developer tired of unreliable mass-market VPN services and the growing administrative burden of managing multiple personal VPS instances has created Simple Bridge Panel (SBP), a self-hosted web interface for controlling Xray and AmneziaWG connections.
After years of renting individual servers to avoid shared-IP fraud scoring by systems such as Scamalytics, the author found that manual configuration files multiplied quickly once family members and friends requested access. The resulting tool, also playfully called Suspiciously Big Pizza, installs on a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 amd64 server and centralizes deployment, user management, and traffic accounting behind a single interface.
Supported connection types
SBP currently offers three primary protocols. Xray TCP uses VLESS over TCP with REALITY and XTLS Vision on port 443. Xray XHTTP runs in a separate container and has demonstrated higher throughput in the author’s tests. AmneziaWG provides a stable UDP-based WireGuard-compatible tunnel using amneziawg-go inside Docker. Additional whitelist-bypass routes based on work by kulikov0 are also supported for networks that filter UDP.
The interface displays groups, devices, server status, component health, and traffic statistics on a single screen. Each group can be assigned an expiration date; when the date passes, the panel automatically adjusts the corresponding container configurations and routing rules.
Architecture and security considerations
The application is split into an unprivileged web frontend and a local agent that executes only pre-approved operations over a Unix socket. State is stored in SQLite, and runtime changes to Xray are applied via its API rather than container restarts. Update verification includes SHA-256 checks and automatic rollback if the new version fails health checks. Historical logs and traffic archives are deliberately minimized; only the current calendar month’s data is retained.
The project is limited to clean Ubuntu 24.04 installations to reduce the chance of conflicting with existing Docker setups, sysctl rules, or third-party containers. Source code is available under the Apache 2.0 license at the official GitHub repository.
Related articles
Home Lab Guide: Deploying Active Directory, Windows 7 Client and ELK Stack for Security Logging
A detailed tutorial walks readers through building an isolated VirtualBox lab featuring a Windows Server 2019 domain controller with DNS and DHCP, a Windows 7 client joined to the domain, and an ELK stack running Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana 9.4.2. The guide covers creation of organizational units, Group Policy Objects for advanced auditing, and configuration of Winlogbeat 7.17 to forward Security, System and Application logs to Logstash. Special attention is given to common pitfalls such as missing GPO extension attributes that prevent audit policies from applying and memory constraints when running the full ELK stack on limited RAM. The author emphasizes that Windows 7 is unsupported and should only be used in isolated lab networks. All steps are provided with exact PowerShell commands, netplan configurations, and Logstash pipeline examples suitable for a 192.168.100.0/24 NAT network.
Building Your First Home Network Lab: Essential Tools and Experiments to Understand Corporate Networks
A cybersecurity professional without network knowledge resembles a guard without a building blueprint, spotting alarms but unable to trace the intruder. Setting up a personal lab on a standard computer bridges this gap through virtualization and hands-on practice with protocols and attacks. The guide recommends GNS3 for topology emulation, VirtualBox or VMware for running Windows and Linux workstations, Cisco Packet Tracer for quick simulations, Wireshark for traffic analysis, and draw.io for diagramming. Key experiments include configuring Cisco IOS routers with IP addressing, testing default gateways, observing ARP requests and replies, triggering broadcast storms via switch loops, and enabling STP to prevent loops. The lab demonstrates how legacy protocols like ARP expose networks to spoofing and why segmentation with VLANs and firewalls matters. Resources from CyberED provide demo access to courses on SOC analysis, penetration testing, and AI applications in security to extend learning.
PSLC and Agent-Ops: From Product Support to Infrastructure Transformation
Sergey Zhitinsky, founder of Git in Sky, attended the OPS Talk by Sber meetup on October 19 and discussed the PSLC methodology with architect Alexander Shapovalov. PSLC, or Product Service Lifecycle, outlines two loops for restoring services immediately and improving reliability to prevent recurrence through teams, knowledge, and platform support. Agent-Ops focuses on eight detailed steps for individual infrastructure tasks: intention, evidence collection, diagnostics, planning, approval, controlled change, verification, and lessons learned. The article illustrates their complementary use in a scenario where post-release log growth fills a database disk, requiring both service restoration and root-cause fixes. Both approaches emphasize knowledge retention, action control, and human accountability, though Agent-Ops v0.5.1 mandates explicit human approval and separate execution for production changes. PSLC suits larger organizations with shared platforms, while Agent-Ops targets smaller teams handling infrastructure operations with AI agents.
Russian Organizations Allocate 4.5 Trillion Rubles to Innovation Spending in 2025
Large and medium-sized Russian organizations directed a total of 4.5 trillion rubles toward innovation activities during 2025. Nearly half of the expenditure originated from the services sector, while information technology and telecommunications accounted for 860.9 billion rubles. The Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge at HSE University published the figures based on Rosstat data, showing an innovation intensity rate of 2.7 percent. Services companies alone contributed approximately 2.3 trillion rubles, including 882.7 billion rubles for research and development. Astra Group IR Director Vladislav Anshakov outlined major spending areas such as product development, cloud and AI hardware, and acquisitions of technologies and teams. The group expanded its portfolio with the Perseus DBMS and a 26 percent stake in AI developer AIB. More than one-third of organizations cited high costs and insufficient internal funds as key barriers to further innovation.