10 ms·

OnionShare: securely and anonymously share a file of any size

131 points by sygma 12y ago

lucb1e 12y ago
Cool project. It shows the power of Tor hidden services here: you can have peer to peer communication regardless of either side's network topology. It just needs to connect to the Tor network and you're good to go. (And yes, Tor can connect through "fascist" firewalls, as the configuration itself puts it[1].) If you think about it, it's dead simple to make: run the tor binaries, run a netcat binary that listens on a certain port, and configure tor (two lines of config) to run a hidden service connecting to that netcat port. Then read the generated hostname file for the .onion address and display it to the user. Reverse thing on the other side. nc -l 1111 < super_secret.rar echo 'HiddenServicePort 1112 127.0.0.1:1111' >> /etc/tor/torrc echo 'HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/' >> /etc/tor/torrc service tor restart cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname # share w/ friend I don't mean to say that OnionShare is not useful, OnionShare to the above script is what Firefox is to Lynx (to take an example). I just mean to say that it's interesting how easily this can be done with just five commands. [1] https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en#FascistFirewall https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en#FascistFi...
- thegeomaster 12y ago
  Without HTTP, it'll be a little clumsy. The downloader won't be able to pause and resume the download, and won't know what is the progress of the download (unless you tell her the exact file size beforehand, which might be tricky sometimes, especially in automated circumstances). You will also need to resort to this for sharing the metadata such as the MIME type of the file. I think using HTTP for this is more robust, even if it requires you to download and spin up OnionShare. Btw, the fascist firewall evasion is great. In my dorm, the only allowed ports were 80 and 443, and I was able to connect to Tor effortlessly.
  - swixmix 12y ago
    http has overhead. i recommend zmodem.
  - stingraycharles 12y ago
    As a friendly reminder to other Tor entry node operators: this firewall evasion only works if you have your tor node running on port 80/443. Please consider doing so.
shawnz 12y ago
Would it be worthwhile to combine this with a service like tor2web, even if it means there won't be end-to-end encryption? I could think of quite a few situations where the anonymity of the downloader is not nearly as important as that of the uploader.
- revelation 12y ago
  You are already free to use tor2web. However, if the downloader is exposed, that still puts the uploader at great risk because the link needs to be shared over a (likely less-secure) sidechannel.
RachelF 12y ago
Great idea. The main problem with TOR is the lack of nodes, so transferring any file will be very slow.
- hnha 12y ago
  Tor is not very slow, it is just not very fast (and has high latency). you can easily get download speeds of 1-2mbit/s.
- gst 12y ago
  Not the lack of nodes, but the lack of exit nodes. It doesn't look like OnionShare requires/uses any exit nodes.
dan_bk 12y ago
RetroShare [0] does this, too, and covers many other communication needs (mailing, chatting, forum, etc.) while being p2p/decentralized/public-key-encrypted/open source. [0] http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
- davorak 12y ago
  It does not look like retroShare uses tor however, or at least I could not find mention of it with a cursory search.
  - synchronise 12y ago
    Yes, it rolls it's own DHT to connect users and encrypts all communications between them end-to-end, but makes no attempt at anonymity for direct friend-to-friend connections once authenticated IIRC.
- runn1ng 12y ago
  Retroshare has quite different use case. Also, it has terrible GUI and just too many features.
  - junto 12y ago
    I think the word 'terrible' is an understatement.
ecma 12y ago
Who decided it was a good idea to publish the signing key on the same domain as the software and not link to any other trustworthy source?
- handsomeransoms 12y ago
  It's also on the keyservers: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0xEBA34B1C&op=index http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0xEBA34B1C&op=index
- hngiszmo 12y ago
  it's most likely important to check the signatures of the key. But yeah, this is one aspect where I always look confused about the security theater. You need a closed chain of trust (which can include a trusted root CA). Else it's all worthless. Two servers are almost as easy to MITM-attack as one if you are the oppressive government that has back doors to the common pre-installed ssl certs.
Cowicide 12y ago
FYI, crashes without fully opening on Mac 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.
- caryhartline 12y ago
  Is that 32 bit or 64 bit?
  - unsignedint 12y ago
    Looks like it's just Python script, so it should work either of those...
  - Cowicide 12y ago
    64 bit
- lectrick 12y ago
  I hate to be that guy, but Snow Leopard is 3 full OS versions ago. That is like complaining that something doesn't run on Windows 2000.
  - vectorpush 12y ago
    OS version numbers are a pretty arbitrary metric. A more accurate comparison is complaining about software that doesn't run on Windows 7, considering Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were released the same year.
    - akerl_ 12y ago
      Except that Apple has put out 3 major updates since then, and 2 of them are free. Version numbers are a valid metric, even Debian doesn't support 3 versions back. For Apple systems, it's pretty clear that folks more than a version back are signing up for rough waters, which I suspect is a large reason that they dropped the price tag from OS upgrades in the first place.
      - 12y ago
mk00 12y ago
Isn't the Man in the Middle attack warning useless considering the attacker they describe could easily remove it or modify the PGP key they provide?
- handsomeransoms 12y ago
  It is not useless if you have some other way to verify the key, such as the Web of Trust.
dublinben 12y ago
Posted and criticized a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7958598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7958598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780488 Please don't anyone who needs security and anonymity rely on this program. It has far too many inherent weaknesses.
- chii 12y ago
  the first link seems to be wrong.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    Psh, you're right. This is a time when HN's cryptic URLs really show their drawbacks.
- rdl 12y ago
  I'm not against this thing existing, I just think people need to be fully aware of the security model and risks.
alextingle 12y ago
I still don't understand why Greenwald didn't get his friend to courier a giant one time pad on a handful of memory sticks. Then he could just swap unbreakably encrypted files using Mega or Dropbox or whatever to his heart's content.
EGreg 12y ago
This is cool... but you should check out http://maidsafe.net http://maidsafe.net

131 points by sygma 12y ago

Cool project. It shows the power of Tor hidden services here: you can have peer to peer communication regardless of either side's network topology. It just needs to connect to the Tor network and you're good to go. (And yes, Tor can connect through "fascist" firewalls, as the configuration itself puts it[1].) If you think about it, it's dead simple to make: run the tor binaries, run a netcat binary that listens on a certain port, and configure tor (two lines of config) to run a hidden service connecting to that netcat port. Then read the generated hostname file for the .onion address and display it to the user. Reverse thing on the other side. nc -l 1111 < super_secret.rar echo 'HiddenServicePort 1112 127.0.0.1:1111' >> /etc/tor/torrc echo 'HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/' >> /etc/tor/torrc service tor restart cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname # share w/ friend I don't mean to say that OnionShare is not useful, OnionShare to the above script is what Firefox is to Lynx (to take an example). I just mean to say that it's interesting how easily this can be done with just five commands. [1] https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en#FascistFirewall https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en#FascistFi...

thegeomaster 12y ago
Without HTTP, it'll be a little clumsy. The downloader won't be able to pause and resume the download, and won't know what is the progress of the download (unless you tell her the exact file size beforehand, which might be tricky sometimes, especially in automated circumstances). You will also need to resort to this for sharing the metadata such as the MIME type of the file. I think using HTTP for this is more robust, even if it requires you to download and spin up OnionShare. Btw, the fascist firewall evasion is great. In my dorm, the only allowed ports were 80 and 443, and I was able to connect to Tor effortlessly.
- swixmix 12y ago
  http has overhead. i recommend zmodem.
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  As a friendly reminder to other Tor entry node operators: this firewall evasion only works if you have your tor node running on port 80/443. Please consider doing so.

shawnz 12y ago

Would it be worthwhile to combine this with a service like tor2web, even if it means there won't be end-to-end encryption? I could think of quite a few situations where the anonymity of the downloader is not nearly as important as that of the uploader.

revelation 12y ago
You are already free to use tor2web. However, if the downloader is exposed, that still puts the uploader at great risk because the link needs to be shared over a (likely less-secure) sidechannel.

RachelF 12y ago

Great idea. The main problem with TOR is the lack of nodes, so transferring any file will be very slow.

hnha 12y ago
Tor is not very slow, it is just not very fast (and has high latency). you can easily get download speeds of 1-2mbit/s.
gst 12y ago
Not the lack of nodes, but the lack of exit nodes. It doesn't look like OnionShare requires/uses any exit nodes.

dan_bk 12y ago

RetroShare [0] does this, too, and covers many other communication needs (mailing, chatting, forum, etc.) while being p2p/decentralized/public-key-encrypted/open source. [0] http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

davorak 12y ago
It does not look like retroShare uses tor however, or at least I could not find mention of it with a cursory search.
- synchronise 12y ago
  Yes, it rolls it's own DHT to connect users and encrypts all communications between them end-to-end, but makes no attempt at anonymity for direct friend-to-friend connections once authenticated IIRC.
runn1ng 12y ago
Retroshare has quite different use case. Also, it has terrible GUI and just too many features.
- junto 12y ago
  I think the word 'terrible' is an understatement.

ecma 12y ago

Who decided it was a good idea to publish the signing key on the same domain as the software and not link to any other trustworthy source?

handsomeransoms 12y ago
It's also on the keyservers: http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0xEBA34B1C&op=index http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0xEBA34B1C&op=index
hngiszmo 12y ago
it's most likely important to check the signatures of the key. But yeah, this is one aspect where I always look confused about the security theater. You need a closed chain of trust (which can include a trusted root CA). Else it's all worthless. Two servers are almost as easy to MITM-attack as one if you are the oppressive government that has back doors to the common pre-installed ssl certs.

Cowicide 12y ago

FYI, crashes without fully opening on Mac 10.6.8 Snow Leopard.

caryhartline 12y ago
Is that 32 bit or 64 bit?
- unsignedint 12y ago
  Looks like it's just Python script, so it should work either of those...
- Cowicide 12y ago
  64 bit
lectrick 12y ago
I hate to be that guy, but Snow Leopard is 3 full OS versions ago. That is like complaining that something doesn't run on Windows 2000.
- vectorpush 12y ago
  OS version numbers are a pretty arbitrary metric. A more accurate comparison is complaining about software that doesn't run on Windows 7, considering Snow Leopard and Windows 7 were released the same year.
  - akerl_ 12y ago
    Except that Apple has put out 3 major updates since then, and 2 of them are free. Version numbers are a valid metric, even Debian doesn't support 3 versions back. For Apple systems, it's pretty clear that folks more than a version back are signing up for rough waters, which I suspect is a large reason that they dropped the price tag from OS upgrades in the first place.
    - 12y ago

mk00 12y ago

Isn't the Man in the Middle attack warning useless considering the attacker they describe could easily remove it or modify the PGP key they provide?

handsomeransoms 12y ago
It is not useless if you have some other way to verify the key, such as the Web of Trust.

dublinben 12y ago

Posted and criticized a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7958598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7958598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780488 Please don't anyone who needs security and anonymity rely on this program. It has far too many inherent weaknesses.

chii 12y ago
the first link seems to be wrong.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Psh, you're right. This is a time when HN's cryptic URLs really show their drawbacks.
rdl 12y ago
I'm not against this thing existing, I just think people need to be fully aware of the security model and risks.

alextingle 12y ago

I still don't understand why Greenwald didn't get his friend to courier a giant one time pad on a handful of memory sticks. Then he could just swap unbreakably encrypted files using Mega or Dropbox or whatever to his heart's content.

EGreg 12y ago

This is cool... but you should check out http://maidsafe.net http://maidsafe.net