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Retroshare

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Retroshare
File:Retroshare-symbol.png
Original author(s)Robert Fernie
Developer(s)
  • Cyril Soler
  • Gioacchino Mazzurco
Initial release2006; 20 years ago (2006)[1]
Stable release
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Preview release
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Repositorygithub.com/RetroShare
Written inC++
Engine
    Operating systemLinux, Windows, macOS, Android, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Haiku
    PlatformCross-platform
    Available in38 languages[2]
    List of languages
    English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan (Spain), Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician (Spain), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Malayalam, Norwegian Bokmål, Occitan, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
    TypeAnonymous P2P, friend-to-friend, chat, instant messaging, newsgroups, voice over IP, email client and BBS
    LicenseGNU General Public License
    Websiteretroshare.cc

    Search Retroshare on Amazon.

    Part of a series on
    File sharing
    Technologies
    Video sharing sites
    BitTorrent sites
    Academic/scholarly
    File sharing networks
    P2P clients
    Streaming programs
    Anonymous file sharing
    Development and societal aspects
    By country or region
    Comparisons

    Retroshare is a free and open-source peer-to-peer communication and file sharing app based on a friend-to-friend network built by GNU Privacy Guard (GPG).[3] Optionally, peers may exchange certificates and IP addresses to their friends and vice versa.[4][5]

    History

    Retroshare was founded in 2004 by Mark Fernie.[6] There has been an unofficial build for the single-board computer Raspberry Pi, named PiShare, since 2012.[7]

    The website 'PRISM Break' has recommended Retroshare for anonymous file sharing since 2013.[8]

    On 4 November 2014, Retroshare scored 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. It lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit.[9]

    In August 2015, Retroshare repository was migrated from SourceForge to GitHub.[10]

    Design

    Retroshare is an instant messaging and file sharing network that uses a distributed hash table for address discovery. Users can communicate indirectly through mutual friends and request direct connections.[11]

    Features

    Authentication and connectivity

    After initial installation, the user generates a pair of (GPG) cryptographic keys with Retroshare. After authentication and exchanging an asymmetric key, OpenSSL is used to establish a connection, and for end-to-end encryption. Friends of friends cannot connect by default, but they can see each other, if the users allow it. IPv6 support was merged[12] into the master branch and will be released in the next version.

    File sharing

    It is possible to share folders between friends.[13] File transfer is carried on using a multi-hop swarming system (inspired by the "Turtle Hopping" feature from the Turtle F2F project, but implemented differently). In essence, data is only exchanged between friends, although it is possible that the ultimate source and destination of a given transfer are multiple friends apart. A search function performing anonymous multi-hop search is another source of finding files in the network.

    Files are represented by their SHA-1 hash value, and HTTP-compliant file and links may be exported, copied, and pasted into/out of Retroshare to publish their virtual location into the Retroshare network.

    Communication

    The services that Retroshare offers for communication are:

    • a private chat;
    • a private mailing system that allows secure communication between known friends and distant friends;
    • public and private multi-user chat lobbies;
    • a forum system allowing both anonymous and authenticated forums, which distributes posts from friends to friends;
    • a channel system offers the possibility to auto-download files posted in a given channel to every subscribed peer, similar to RSS feeds;
    • a posted links system, where links to important information can be shared;
    • VoIP calls;
    • Video calls (since version 0.6.0);
    • Tor and I2P networks support, for further anonymisation (since version 0.6.0).

    User interface

    The core of the Retroshare software is based on an offline library, to which two executables are plugged:

    • a command-line interface executable which offers nearly no control, but it is useful to run "headless" on a server
    • a graphical user interface written in Qt is the one most users use. In addition to functions quite common to other file sharing software, such as a search tab and visualization of transfers, Retroshare gives users the potential to manage their network by collecting optional information about neighboring friends and visualizing it as a trust matrix or as a dynamic network graph. The appearance can be changed by choosing one of several available style sheets.

    Anonymity

    The friend-to-friend structure of the Retroshare network makes it difficult to intrude and hardly possible to monitor from an external point of view.[citation needed][14] The degree of anonymity may be improved further by deactivating the DHT and IP/certificate exchange services, making the Retroshare network a real dark net.[15]

    Friends of friends may not connect directly with each other; however, a user may enable the anonymous sharing of files with friends of friends. Search, access, and both upload and download of these files are made by "routing" through a series of friends. This means that communication between the source of data (the up-loader) and the destination of the data (the down-loader) is indirect through mutual friends. Although the intermediary friends cannot determine the original source or ultimate destination, they can see their very next links in the communication chain (their friends). Since the data stream is encrypted, only the original source and ultimate destination are able to see what data is transferred.

    Caveats

    It is important to remember that while Retroshare's encryption makes it virtually impossible for an ISP or another external observer to know what one is downloading or uploading, this limitation does not apply to members of the user's Retroshare circle of trust; adding untrusted people to it may be a potential risk.[16]

    In 2012, a German Court granted an injunction against a user of Retroshare for sharing copyrighted music files. Retroshare derives its security from the fact that all transfers should go through “trusted friends” whom users add. In this case, the defendant added the anti-piracy monitoring company as a friend, which allowed him to be traced through aggregation of bad Opsec.[17]

    See also

    References

    1. ↑ "Retroshare aims to be a private F2F social network | SourceForge Community Blog". Sourceforge.net. 11 May 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
    2. ↑ "Retroshare localization". Transifex.com. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
    3. ↑ Amato, Alba, Beniamino Di Martino, Marco Scialdone, and Salvatore Venticinque. "A negotiation solution for smart grid using a fully decentralized, P2P approach". Ninth International Conference on Complex.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
    4. ↑ "Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming". TorrentFreak. 3 March 2012. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
    5. ↑ Shen, Xuemin; Yu, Heather; Buford, John; Akon, Mursalin, eds. (2010). Handbook of Peer-to-Peer Networking | Xuemin (Sherman) Shen. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-09751-0. ISBN 978-0-387-09750-3. Retrieved 4 December 2016. Search this book on
    6. ↑ Alkhulaiwi, Rakan; Sabur, Abdulhakim; Aldughayem, Khalid; Almanna, Osama (December 2016). "Survey of secure anonymous peer to peer Instant Messaging protocols". 2016 14th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST). IEEE: 294–300. doi:10.1109/pst.2016.7906977. ISBN 978-1-5090-4379-8. Unknown parameter |s2cid= ignored (help)
    7. ↑ "PiShare download". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
    8. ↑ Peng Zhong (16 July 2003). "Projects". PRISM Break. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
    9. ↑ "Secure Messaging Scorecard. Which apps and tools actually keep your messages safe?". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 4 November 2014.
    10. ↑ Community, Retroshare. "History - Retroshare Docs". retroshare.readthedocs.io. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
    11. ↑ M, Rogers; S, Bhatti (2007). "How to Disappear Completely: A Survey of Private Peer-to-Peer Networks". discovery.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 28 January 2018.[permanent dead link]
    12. ↑ "IPv6 support by G10h4ck · Pull Request #1191 · RetroShare/RetroShare". GitHub.
    13. ↑ Alkhulaiwi, Rakan, Abdulhakim Sabur, Khalid Aldughayem, and Osama Almanna. "Survey of secure anonymous peer to peer Instant Messaging protocols". 14th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust.CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
    14. ↑ Alkhulaiwi, Rakan, Abdulhakim Sabur, Khalid Aldughayem, and Osama Almanna (2016). "Survey of secure anonymous peer to peer Instant Messaging protocols". 2016 14th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust: 294–300. doi:10.1109/PST.2016.7906977. ISBN 978-1-5090-4379-8. Unknown parameter |s2cid= ignored (help)CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
    15. ↑ "Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming - TorrentFreak". TorrentFreak. 3 March 2012. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
    16. ↑ "Increase online privacy with Retroshare". Doug Vitale Tech Blog. 29 July 2013. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
    17. ↑ ""Anonymous" File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal by German Court - TorrentFreak". TorrentFreak. 23 November 2012. Retrieved 28 January 2018.

    External links


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