Posted on Friday 11 November 2005 - Popularity: 5%
Lets say you’re working on a multimedia project together with a group of people spread over the whole world. It’s not a paid project and you have to share music, videos and source code with them, sometimes with all of them and they not even use the same OS as you. What do you do? You need something cheap or better free, you need something secure as nobody outside the team should see the files, you need something that works on OS X, Linux and Windows and some in your group sleep when you work. Do you setup a web server to share the files? Do you email the files? Do you send the files with an IM or VoIP client? Think about it, none of those options are really optimal, but don’t worry, there’s a solution.
Shinkuro is a file sharing client that solves all those problems. Shinkuro makes it possible to setup a private and secure group where all members of that group can share files with each other. All messages and files are encrypted and only you decide who has access to them. There’s a folder for shared files on everyone’s system and any files and subfolders in that folder are shared with the other members of the group. Now how secure are your files?
Very. When you installed Shinkuro, we generated a 2048-bit RSA key pair. This key is used as part of the encryption and authentication system. In addition, part of the key is used to uniquely identify you throughout the Shinkuro world. Whenever you connect to another user, you exchange your public keys and from that point on all data is sent encrypted. We use 256-bit AES encryption on all messages.
In addition, it’s worth noting that we actually encrypt the messages themselves, not the connection (so we don’t use SSL). Why? Because this way any messages that are sent through the relay server can’t be read by the relay. So your messages are secure from end to end. This security covers all data transmissions — file transfers, instant messages, and even screen sharing.
As you see, not even the relay server has access to unencrypted messages and files; you can even setup your own relay server if this still isn’t secure enough for you.
Fredi
November 11th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Although there is no Mac OS X client yet, here is a similiar program:
http://www.hamachi.cc/
You can even use to setup a private network to play local games. (comparable to VPN).
I have not used it yet, but it might be something to keep an eye on when a Mac client is released.
November 11th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
“Mac OS/X version is in works.”
Thx. Will have an eye on it.
Fredi
December 14th, 2005 at 8:49 am
“In addition, it’s worth noting that we actually encrypt the messages themselves, not the connection (so we don’t use SSL)”
It just means that they either don’t fully understand SSL or they don’t know how to make it work in relayed setups. Both are poor excuses for re-inventing the wheel.
I agree with Savvy that Hamachi beats this one hands down. In design, functionality and security.