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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

#71
post #67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that application, Web Wormhole is unbeatable: https://webwormhole.io/

But here you download the source code every time you use it. It's not end-to-end anymore, as the person who designed the website can deliver malicious code, unless you pin the JS somehow. I wish magicwormhole or croc came with every major OS preinstalled.

You can apt install magic-wormhole on Debian.

I'm not aware of any other major OS ;)

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

#72
About relying on the developer to provide the relay server (this was early 2022):

The cost of croc is mostly bandwidth - over 8 terabytes of data is sent every month through croc! That's amazing to me since I started this project just as a way for me to share files with friends. Four years ago, the public relay server only costed $5/month, but now it is costing me $40-50/month. The higher cost is enabling file transfers for thousands of people all around the world.

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

#73
post #29

Which public server does it use by default? I'm surprised the docs don't mention it. More generally, it feels like in 2023 that connecting two computers via a public relay ought to be a solved problem, on the level of, like, DNS. Or maybe it is and I haven't heard?

Where I live ISPs give static IPs with subscription, so, at least sending files from office home is a non-issue.

In principle IPv6 should've solved this problem a long time ago... without a need for third parties.

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

#74

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

Here is my feedback about the pcp's main GitHub page, if you don't mind:

    - Move "Motivation", "Project Status", "How Does It Work?" somewhere else
    - Add "What is It?" and "Encryption" sections and place them just before the "Usage" section. Keep them reasonable small, the smaller the better
I believe that it will help the project to have a much better resonance with the target audience.

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

#75
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if GitHub stars are anything to go off of, croc is several orders of magnitude more popular. Also croc is written in Go and compiles to a single binary, but there are some helper scripts in the repo for a few things. I really don't know why they said all that in their comment.

Wormhole-william is a Go port of Magic Wormhole. Github stars are not anything to go off of. If you're unaware of Magic Wormhole but have strong opinions about croc, we're not speaking the same language and there's little point in us irritating ourselves by trying fruitlessly to hash things out.

[deleted]

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

#76
post #72

About relying on the developer to provide the relay server (this was early 2022): The cost of croc is mostly bandwidth - over 8 terabytes of data is sent every month through croc! That's amazing to me since I started this project just as a way for me to share files with friends. Four years ago, the public relay server only costed $5/month, but now it is costing me $40-50/month. The higher cost is enabling file transf…

Isn't it possible to use the relay to initiate a direct connection between the two clients, instead of transferring the data itself?

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

#77
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…

An even more popular alternative is Resilio Sync. I still use it because somehow sharing with the tech savvy isn't a big problem, but with the unsavvy is. A GUI and a single string is on the edge of the possible, and I share much more (large, noncode, files) with this group.

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

#78
Can someone EIL5 this for me. I don't understand how this works. If I have my computer on my home network and the person I was to share a file with is on their home network, how does this work out where it's sending the file/folder? The examples seem to suggest it magically knows based just on a passphrase. I have to be missing something. I'm aware this is a stupid question but I can't, based on what I've read so far, work out how this transfers stuff without more details.

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

#79

Can someone EIL5 this for me. I don't understand how this works. If I have my computer on my home network and the person I was to share a file with is on their home network, how does this work out where it's sending the file/folder? The examples seem to suggest it magically knows based just on a passphrase. I have to be missing something. I'm aware this is a stupid question but I can't, based on what I've read so far…

The application has a default parameter that points to a relay server, when you want to share something, you tell to the server "hey I want to connect" and the server gives you back a passphrase, now the receiver connects to the same server and has to use the same passphrase to get the files you are sharing

Then the server tries to make your and the receiver clients connect directly to each other, if this doesn't work (mostly because of firewalls) it also Relais the parts of the file, which by the way are encrypted so that only your receiver client can decrypt

That's my understanding of how it works

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

#80
post #72

About relying on the developer to provide the relay server (this was early 2022): The cost of croc is mostly bandwidth - over 8 terabytes of data is sent every month through croc! That's amazing to me since I started this project just as a way for me to share files with friends. Four years ago, the public relay server only costed $5/month, but now it is costing me $40-50/month. The higher cost is enabling file transf…

Isn't it possible to use the relay to initiate a direct connection between the two clients, instead of transferring the data itself?

It depends on the topology of the clients network, if they are both behind a specific kind of firewall (don't remember the details) no connection can be established from outside

When connection is possible, is my understanding that croc connects directly

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