NAME¶
onionshare - a tool for anonymously sharing files over a temporarily set up Tor
Hidden service.
SYNOPSIS¶
onionshare [
options] filename
DESCRIPTION¶
OnionShare lets you anonymously share files. You host the file on your
own computer and use a Tor hidden service to make it temporarily accessible
over the Internet. OnionShare sets up this hidden service up for you. It then
generates an unguessable URL to access and download the file.
Before you can share a file, you need to open Tor Browser in the background.
This will provide the Tor service that OnionShare uses to start the hidden
service. All Tor hidden services (any website that's accessed through a .onion
domain) are automatically end-to-end encrypted.
In the case of OnionShare, the crypto key lives in
/tmp/onionshare_XXX/private_key. The .onion URL address itself is a
fingerprint of the key, which lets the Tor network look up the public key and
start an encrypted session. So as long as you transmit the OnionShare URL
successfully, the recipient who loads it in Tor Browser gets an end-to-end
encrypted session with the server.
The person you want to share the file with just needs to use the Tor Browser to
download the file from you, using the URL you sent to them over another,
possibly encrypted, channel like encrypted e-mail or a chat using OTR.
It takes around 30 seconds until the hidden service is available over the Tor
network.
OnionShare's default behaviour is to shut down the hidden service and to stop
once the file has been downloaded. You can prevent this behaviour by invoking
the --stay-open option. This can be useful if you want multiple people to
access the same file.
OPTIONS¶
- -h
- display a short help message and exit
- --local-only
- don't run a public hidden service, just run on localhost
- --stay-open
- don't exit after file has been successfully downloaded
- --debug
- enable more verbose output
AUTHOR¶
Manual page by Ulrike Uhlig <u at 451f dot org>