5 ms·

>There's nothing really like it anymore - you can't have anonymous sftp. Strictly speaking there's nothing stopping someone from writing an anonymous sftp serv

>There's nothing really like it anymore - you can't have anonymous sftp. Strictly speaking there's nothing stopping someone from writing an anonymous sftp server that lets anyone log in as a 'guest' user or similar - it's just that nobody has (as far as I'm aware).

derefr 10y ago
"Unauthenticated SSH" is basically what the git:// protocol is. I wonder if you could use git-daemon(1) to serve things other than git repos? Or you could just convert whatever you want to serve into a git repo, I guess.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Please use IPFS instead.
  - derefr 10y ago
    IPFS requires a stateful thick client with a bunch of index data, no? Would it be efficient to, say, build a Debian installer CD that goes out and downloads packages from an IPFS mirror? Because that's the kind of use-case anonymous FTP is for.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Many many years ago I was on the team that managed the compute cluster for the CMS detector at the LHC (Fermilab Tier-1). When we would perform a rolling reinstall of the entire worker cluster (~5500 1U pizza box servers), we would use a custom installer that would utilize Bittorrent to retrieve the necessary RPMs (Scientific Linux) instead of HTTP; the more workers reinstalling at once, the faster each worker would reinstall (I hand wave away the complexities of job management for this discussion). I'm not super familiar with IPFS (I've only played with it a bit to see if I could use it to backup the Internet Archive in a distributed manner), but I'm fairly confident based on my limited trials that yes, you could build a Debian installer CD to fetch the required packages from an IPFS mirror. No need to even have the file index locally. You simply need a known source of the file index to retrieve, and the ability to retrieve it securely.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        And a day or two to wait for the installer to finish fetching packages...
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Such pessimism! Bittorrent started with only a few nodes too. It is now a majority of internet traffic.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    Isn't IPFS not anonymous either? I thought you needed I2P for that.
    - goodplay 10y ago
      Anonymous within this context refers to unauthenticated clients, not communication privacy.
- desdiv 10y ago
  You could, but since git isn't designed for handling large binary files the performance will be poor. That's why there are large file support plugins like (the aptly named) Git LFS[0] and git-annex[1]. [0] https://git-lfs.github.com https://git-lfs.github.com [1] https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > "Unauthenticated SSH" is basically what the git:// protocol is. git:// is usually unencrypted (people have run it over TLS, but not commonly).
  - dorianm 10y ago
    Related: how bundler deals with it: https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/dsl.rb#L253 https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/d...
tekacs 10y ago
With this caveat: https://blog.filippo.io/ssh-whoami-filippo-io/ https://blog.filippo.io/ssh-whoami-filippo-io/ (Granted you can turn you can stop this client-side, but it's worth noting that your SSH client will generally identify you to a server on connect.)
- tomsmeding 10y ago
  That ssh server seems to be down.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
Some public roguelike servers use SSH with a single account and posted private key in place of telnet.
tinus_hn 10y ago
You have to be really careful though because the default is to give users shell access. If you think you can limit that by forcing users to run some command you'll run into trouble because the user can specify environment variables. The user also by default gets allowed to set up tunneling which would allow anonymous users to use your network address.

derefr 10y ago

"Unauthenticated SSH" is basically what the git:// protocol is. I wonder if you could use git-daemon(1) to serve things other than git repos? Or you could just convert whatever you want to serve into a git repo, I guess.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Please use IPFS instead.
- derefr 10y ago
  IPFS requires a stateful thick client with a bunch of index data, no? Would it be efficient to, say, build a Debian installer CD that goes out and downloads packages from an IPFS mirror? Because that's the kind of use-case anonymous FTP is for.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Many many years ago I was on the team that managed the compute cluster for the CMS detector at the LHC (Fermilab Tier-1). When we would perform a rolling reinstall of the entire worker cluster (~5500 1U pizza box servers), we would use a custom installer that would utilize Bittorrent to retrieve the necessary RPMs (Scientific Linux) instead of HTTP; the more workers reinstalling at once, the faster each worker would reinstall (I hand wave away the complexities of job management for this discussion). I'm not super familiar with IPFS (I've only played with it a bit to see if I could use it to backup the Internet Archive in a distributed manner), but I'm fairly confident based on my limited trials that yes, you could build a Debian installer CD to fetch the required packages from an IPFS mirror. No need to even have the file index locally. You simply need a known source of the file index to retrieve, and the ability to retrieve it securely.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      And a day or two to wait for the installer to finish fetching packages...
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Such pessimism! Bittorrent started with only a few nodes too. It is now a majority of internet traffic.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Isn't IPFS not anonymous either? I thought you needed I2P for that.
  - goodplay 10y ago
    Anonymous within this context refers to unauthenticated clients, not communication privacy.
desdiv 10y ago
You could, but since git isn't designed for handling large binary files the performance will be poor. That's why there are large file support plugins like (the aptly named) Git LFS[0] and git-annex[1]. [0] https://git-lfs.github.com https://git-lfs.github.com [1] https://git-annex.branchable.com/ https://git-annex.branchable.com/
JoshTriplett 10y ago
> "Unauthenticated SSH" is basically what the git:// protocol is. git:// is usually unencrypted (people have run it over TLS, but not commonly).
- dorianm 10y ago
  Related: how bundler deals with it: https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/dsl.rb#L253 https://github.com/bundler/bundler/blob/master/lib/bundler/d...

tekacs 10y ago

With this caveat: https://blog.filippo.io/ssh-whoami-filippo-io/ https://blog.filippo.io/ssh-whoami-filippo-io/ (Granted you can turn you can stop this client-side, but it's worth noting that your SSH client will generally identify you to a server on connect.)

tomsmeding 10y ago
That ssh server seems to be down.

JoshTriplett 10y ago

Some public roguelike servers use SSH with a single account and posted private key in place of telnet.

tinus_hn 10y ago

You have to be really careful though because the default is to give users shell access. If you think you can limit that by forcing users to run some command you'll run into trouble because the user can specify environment variables. The user also by default gets allowed to set up tunneling which would allow anonymous users to use your network address.