2y ago

Paaster.io - End-to-end encrypted pastebin.

GitHub - WardPearce/paaster: Paaster is a secure and user-friendly pastebin application that prioritizes privacy and simplicity. With end-to-end encryption and paste history, Paaster ensures that your pasted code remains confidential and accessible.

Privacy Guides @lemmy.one

WardPearce @lemmy.nz

2y ago

Paaster - End-to-end encrypted Pastebin

github.com /WardPearce/paaster

21 comments

How does it differ from PrivateBin?
- I just copy&pasted their README in chatgpt asking for a comparison (so there may be allucinations)
  Both PrivateBin and Paaster are "pastebin" tools that allow users to share snippets of text or code online. Both emphasize privacy and security, encrypting data at the local level in the user's browser before sending it to the server. However, there are several key differences between the two services:
  Design and User Interface: While PrivateBin self-identifies as a minimalist pastebin, Paaster seems to put an emphasis on user experience, offering features like file drag & drop and a paste history.
  Features: Both offer basic features like password protection and the option to delete data after reading, but PrivateBin also offers features like the ability to have anonymous or nicknamed discussions, Markdown formatting support, code syntax highlighting, and the ability to upload files. On the other hand, Paaster offers a paste history feature, PWA support, and i18n.
  Trust: PrivateBin warns users not to blindly trust the server administrator, whereas Paaster advises users to either host their service or use a trusted hosting service.
  Implementation and Maintenance: Paaster seems more developer-oriented, with API documentation, a CLI tool, and support for Vercel and Docker. PrivateBin, however, also has a developer and installation guide.
  Hosting Options: Paaster seems more geared towards self-hosting, with detailed instructions for use with Docker and options for use with external storage services like Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage. PrivateBin does not provide specific hosting details in the provided text.
  Security: Both use end-to-end encryption, but they use different encryption algorithms. Paaster uses XChaCha20-Poly1305, while PrivateBin uses 256-bit AES in Galois Counter mode.
  These are just some of the key differences between the two services. Both have their strengths and unique points, and the choice between the two will depend on the specific needs of the user or organization.
  
  Surprising good comparison from ChatGPT. Some key points is Paaster does support syntax highlighting & Markdown.
  PrivateBin's conversation system isn't encrypted.
- Actually I did a Pros/Cons for Paaster compared to PrivateBin awhile ago here
  https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/issues/2015
  Basically the TL;DR Modern encryption, doesn't expose metadata, modern design (svelte + asyncio python), pwa support, frontend / backend code separation & paste history.
Isn't the point of a pastebin to be publicly accessible, hence encryption seems irrelevant to me? I mean, I've only ever used them to share code or errors or logs with a forum or stack overflow or whatever. I have no reason to add key exchange or password exchange with "everyone who might view the forum / stack overflow". It's effectively public anyway.
Are people using these pastebin services for something else?
- Paaster doesn't assume the users intent for the service. People can share a wide range of data in pastebins and users don't always want this to be public.
  
  This just seems like misunderstanding the point of a pastebin, and also what tools are appropriate. At least to me, depending on privacy demands, you'd use an existing cloud filesharing service like box for basic privacy, or if your correspondent understood encryption and privacy, you'd use something like Signal to share either a compressed image or data, or the actual file.
- That's your use case, but you could also want to share a picture with your family, or some confidential logs with a collegue or support team. However, I wouldn't trust any online service for this use case though. If some information is confidential, you should encrypt it yourself, share it with your peer (you could use a pastebin), then share the key over a trusted channel that's different from this pastebin.
This looks incredible I think since toptal completely ruined hastebin this might be a future favorite if its easy enough to host it has a few issues like it seems to want MongoDB which is a humungous con to all of the pro's with this app and if you can eventually pipe text through the cli to this thing it would be a perfect replacement.
one of my favorite uses for ----bin's is being able to pipe log output to a URL using curl or something to get logs out of a server to a dev somewhere for debugging and foss reporting.
One of the things we used hastebin for was a /debugpaste which would instantly dump debug info and the last 1000 lines of the syslog to a hastebin. would be useful to replicate this using this.

21 comments