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79 lines
4.5 KiB
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79 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 654
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Title: HPR0654: Offline Filesharing
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0654/hpr0654.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:27:27
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---
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Howdy y'all, this is J-Boo 92 with Hacker Public Radio.
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This is my first podcast for HPR, so let me know what you think.
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What I'd like to talk to you about, what I'd like to talk about today is offline
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peer-to-peer networks, offline file sharing.
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Now, the first question that probably comes to mind is what exactly is offline file sharing?
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How does it work? Basically, I'll be talking about two types of offline sharing.
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Dead drops and off-the-grid hubs. Dead drops, as you've probably heard about,
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are flash drives left around in semi-random places.
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For instance, recently someone in New York, I believe, invented some flash drives
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into walls and buildings, thus creating an offline file sharing network.
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Now, basically, to use it, you would simply walk up,
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plug in your laptop, and see what's there.
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Now, of course, the limitations of this sort of system are quite obvious.
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Someone could upload some sort of malicious code onto the device,
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and have it auto-run, or replace the flash drive altogether with something like a
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teensy programming board, program to type in Windows R,
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CMD, WACK, format C, which it can do in less than a tenth of a second,
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because, hey, let's face it, that's how that works.
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Sorry. So, dead dropping data on flash drives that are in known static locations
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is one way to set up an offline period-to-peer network.
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Another, and, in my opinion, better method, is to set up some sort of self-contained
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portable Wi-Fi server. One of the best ways I've seen to do this is in a project
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called Pirate Box. Basically, it's a small server, wireless router,
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and a power supply, all jammed into a launch box.
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Of course, you could use any sort of enclosure or hardware that you like,
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but what they used was a dock star running Debian,
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and a small Python-based server known as Droopy,
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which they made some modifications to, links in the show notes,
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and a small ASUS router with DDWRT.
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Basically, what this allows for is a portable server that anyone can connect to
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and share their files. Of course, the speed here is limited by the transfer speed
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of the router you use, and various other things.
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Now, what the Pirate Box basically is is a no-log easy-to-brow, easy-to-upload server.
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Personally, what I would do is add some sort of authorization page
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with something aligned to the lines of a disclaimer that says,
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don't upload anything that could get the owner of this driver arrested or anything,
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nor will I upload anything nefarious,
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and I do understand that the server doesn't log any personal information,
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and accept that the file here may be offensive, illegal, potentially harmful,
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et cetera, you know, basic disclaimers,
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which would, of course, A, safeguard me, the person owning the drive,
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and B, give the user some sort of idea what wouldn't be acceptable.
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And more importantly to me,
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would allow you to assign them some sort of unique number to each user,
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so that you could do a basic yet still anonymous log of, say,
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user32 uploaded file 123.xyz, which was Y megabytes.
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User 83 downloaded 123.xyz, which was Y megabytes,
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and file 123.xyz has been downloaded X times,
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which I think would be an interesting thing to keep track of.
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And not to think about it, it probably adds something about promising not to add,
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not to hog network resources or track other users and stuff like that to that disclaimer page,
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but I digress.
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And the thing I'd probably change about the pirate box would be to add some sort of
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antivirus scan program, just to add a bit of security to that.
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So the benefits of this sort of off-the-grid sharing hub over say a dead drop network
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would be portability, scalability, and perhaps even legality,
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because I'm sure there are very few people who would let you embed flash drives in their walls.
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Now, of course, this sort of setup can be done with just some laptop setup with an ad hoc network
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and a little bit of redirection.
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And I plan to try something like this at a security competition,
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I'll be attending in April.
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So watch for my cover to that and I'll update on this little project around then.
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So that about wraps this up.
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This has been JBoo92 with hacker public radio.
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Let me know what you think in the comments, or if the comments still suck as bad as I used to,
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I'll put some sort of contact info in the show notes.
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Thank you for listening to hacker public radio.
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Thank you all for watching by caro.net.
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So head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-N-C for all of us here.
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