Operations
The relay trust model
What the relay can and cannot see, and how to remove it from your traffic path entirely.
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In the default relay mode, your browser's HTTPS connection terminates at the HipnoType relay, which forwards requests to your VPS over the outbound tunnel. This is the same trust position as a CDN or Cloudflare Tunnel: the relay operator can technically observe traffic.
What the relay stores
- Only hashes: sha256 of your access token, tunnel secret and install nonce.
- No panel passwords, no sessions, no request bodies — the reference implementation is public in the repository (
relay/).
What the relay protects against
- Token enumeration — unknown tokens get a byte-identical 404 with normalised latency.
- Abuse — per-IP rate limits and temporary bans for repeated unknown-token hits.
- Your VPS exposure — zero inbound ports; the tunnel is outbound-only.
Removing the relay from the path
If the relay's trust position is not acceptable, switch to direct mode: the panel serves its own ACME certificate on port 443 at a domain you control, keeping the secret-path model (panel.example.com/server/panel/<token>/). You lose the shared-domain convenience and take over DNS + TLS for the panel host yourself.