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Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

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Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#41

Post by blooalien »

_-_-__-_-_- wrote: post #22
gregschlom wrote: post #14

Haven't tried this but I recently started using syncthing.net and I highly recommend it. Like rsync, it only sends the chunks of the file that changed, so it can be extremely fast for small changes in large files. It's able to use a variety of methods to connect including good through relay servers if the machines can't directly talk to each other.

I also use syncthing. It's been working so well that it's magical for sending files and keeping a passwork manager up-to-date between devices. My next step for my homelab, is to run my own announce server and relay on my local network.

Also fun to run yourself a little private wireguard server for easy access to all that your homelab offers from anywhere "outside" your home network.

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#42

Post by eviks »

Bu9818 wrote: post #37
qrv3w wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main advantage that I like croc over many utilities is that it can resume file transfers from where it left off. I'm not sure if wormhole has this yet. Of course torrents do this, but I find sharing via torrenting still not super easy for the layperson.

Torrents also don't provide encryption between peers, unless you use SSL torrents, but it's clearly designed towards sharing between a group, not one-on-one transfers.

How does the group design hurt 1-1

(BitTorrent/Resilio sync uses SSL and seems fine for 1-1 design-wise)

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#44

Post by AequitasOmnibus »

qrv3w wrote: post #30
rurcliped wrote: post #20

a recent audit claims the author "doesn't have enough resources to address" security issues: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/09/08/2 https://github.com/schollz/croc/issues/594 etc.

These issues are pretty recent. I would greatly appreciate sponsorship to address issues faster: https://github.com/sponsors/schollz or just help with PRs.

Just wanted to say that Croc is one of the most reliable and straightforward file transfer tools I’ve ever used. It worked so well that I used it for Android (via Termux) to Windows transfers regularly. I only wish there was a way to use it on iOS but I imagine that’s challenging.

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#45

Post by dennis-tra »

I’m currently working on a new version of pcp [0]. Based on croc, magic-wormhole and the likes it doesn’t require a relay. It uses the IPFS DHT as a discovery point to connect two machines. Haven’t touched the currently released code in two years but the new hole punching capabilities of libp2p show promising result so I’m working on a new version.

[0] https://github.com/dennis-tra/pcp

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#46

Post by forty »

tptacek wrote: post #8

A more popular and, I think, carefully analyzed alternative, from which croc was inspired, is Magic Wormhole; a good Golang implementation that compiles down to a single binary is wormhole-william: https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william/releases I believe croc has some features wormhole doesn't (and some anti-features, like being able to pick curves and hashes). But also just that it's worth knowing that Magic…

It's weird croc doesn't mention magic wormhole in their readme, if only to explain the differences with this well known tool, and why one would use croc rather than wormhole, which people are probably more used to using and that they can apt install, etc

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#47

Post by mrintegrity »

fmajid wrote: post #39
aborsy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a deadly security flaw two years ago, that required a protocol breaking fix (done within a week I believe): https://redrocket.club/posts/croc/ But audits finding vulnerabilities are better than no audit and no known flaw. Do these tools have iOS apps?

My CVE feed just had a raft on croc: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43616 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43617 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43618 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43619 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43620 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-43621 I will stick with wormhole-william, thank you very much.

Perhaps you missed this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37608110 but it has given me fresh, sceptical, eyes with which to read cve reports.

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#48

Post by forty »

forty wrote: post #46
tptacek wrote: post #8

A more popular and, I think, carefully analyzed alternative, from which croc was inspired, is Magic Wormhole; a good Golang implementation that compiles down to a single binary is wormhole-william: https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william/releases I believe croc has some features wormhole doesn't (and some anti-features, like being able to pick curves and hashes). But also just that it's worth knowing that Magic…

It's weird croc doesn't mention magic wormhole in their readme, if only to explain the differences with this well known tool, and why one would use croc rather than wormhole, which people are probably more used to using and that they can apt install, etc

Here is the answer from the project website

"magic-wormhole has most everything (currently its missing capabilities for multiple file transfers and file resuming), but it requires installing lots of the Python ecosystem which is tricky for non-developers (and Windows users)."

For the python part, I guess wormhole-williams works too then.

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#49

Post by mc10 »

dennis-tra wrote: post #45

I’m currently working on a new version of pcp [0]. Based on croc, magic-wormhole and the likes it doesn’t require a relay. It uses the IPFS DHT as a discovery point to connect two machines. Haven’t touched the currently released code in two years but the new hole punching capabilities of libp2p show promising result so I’m working on a new version. [0] https://github.com/dennis-tra/pcp

Does this run a mini IPFS node on the sender and relayer and rely instead on the IPFS network being up to propagate the DHT changes through the network?

Re: Croc: Easily and securely send things from one computer to another

#50

Post by Bu9818 »

eviks wrote: post #42
Bu9818 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrents also don't provide encryption between peers, unless you use SSL torrents, but it's clearly designed towards sharing between a group, not one-on-one transfers.

How does the group design hurt 1-1 (BitTorrent/Resilio sync uses SSL and seems fine for 1-1 design-wise)

It's just a bit more involved to use for this use case, especially if the data is confidential (having to set the private flag so clients don't publish the infohash to DHT, using a built-in tracker in your client, transport layer encryption not provided by default). Things like Resilio are fine, they build on top of the protocol and provide a different UX.
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