In the next article we are going to take a look at OnionShare 2. About the first version of this tool it was already talked about in this blog some time ago. It is a open source GUI tool for securely sending and receiving files of any size and anonymous using Tor Onion services. It is available for Gnu / Linux, Windows, and macOS.
The application starts a web server on the user's computer and will generate a TOR URL to upload files to your computer or download files from your computer using OnionShare 2 and secure end-to-end encryption. What we will have to do is pass the generated URL to the person with whom we want to share. This is done without the need to register an account or use a third-party service to exchange files. These shared files will be hosted on the users' computers. In order to download shared files, or send files to someone who is running OnionShare 2 in receiver mode, you will need to have the tor browser.
Some of the new features in OnionShare 2
- When OnionShare opens, a Tor process in the background. This Tor process will not interfere with other processes on the user's computer, so you can run the Tor browser or use a Tor system in the background.
- It adds support for Onion V3 services. These are much more secure than the V2 version.
- OnionShare addresses use HTTP and not HTTPS because this is not necessary as Let's Encrypt does not sign HTTPS certificates for onion sites. Tor Onion services already use end-to-end encryption.
- The person who wants to download the files you have shared must open the OnionShare web address using the Tor Browser.
- In OnionShare 2 we will find new receiver mode. This will allow users to both send and receive files, instead of just sending them as was the case in its previous version.
- It is going to be able select a language from a drop-down menu and add new translations. Currently the translations into the following languages have been completed: Bengali, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
It can be obtained traditional information about OnionShare 2 at the wiki from OnionShare.
Install OnionShare 2 on Ubuntu
OnionShare can be found available for Windows, macOS and Gnu / Linux systems. For Ubuntu and distributions based on this operating system, you can find official binaries precompiled from OnionShare version v2 thanks to an official PPA. At the moment, I think that still cannot find snap or flatpak packages for OnionShare 2.
If you are interested in installing the latest version of OnionShare on Ubuntu, you can add the necessary PPA and install it from there. You just have to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and write the following line:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:micahflee/ppa
After adding the PPA, if you use Ubuntu 18.04 or higher, the update of the software available in the repositories will start automatically. After this update, in the same terminal you can now install OnionShare V2 typing:
sudo apt install onionshare
If you don't want to add any repository to your team, you can also compile source code. This code can be download from GitHub page of the project.
The new receiver mode in OnionShare 2 will turn the user's computer into a free, anonymous dropbox that runs on any OnionShare-compatible operating system, no need for any configuration.
Uninstall OnionShare 2
It is going to be able delete repository that we use for the installation by opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and typing in it:
sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:micahflee/ppa
For uninstall OnionShare 2 from Ubuntu, in the same terminal you just have to write:
sudo apt remove onionshare && sudo apt autoremove
This is maybe one of the best tools to share files safely over the Internet. If you dig a little deeper into it, you will see that OnionShare meets most of the requirements that are usually needed in these types of applications. If someone wants to know more about this project, you can get more information at project website.