RetroShare, software that offers encrypted network communications

By Damian A. 

ubunlog.com

April 1, 2021

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In the next article, we are going to take a look at RetroShare. This program establishes encrypted connections between the user and his friends to create a network of computers, and also provides various distributed services: forums, channels, chat, mail ... It is a free and open source program that is fully decentralized and designed to provide maximum protection and anonymity of its users. It is available for Gnu/Linux, Android, MacOS and Windows. the RetroShare source code is written in C++ using the Qt toolkit and is licensed under AGPLv3.

RetroShare is software that provides encrypted P2P network communications, a decentralized e-mail system, instant messaging, a BBS , and a peer-to-peer network file sharing system using an encryption tool for all of this GPG .

How does RetroShare work?

RetroShare will allow us to create a network of computers ( called nodes ). Each user has his own node. The exact location ( IP address ) of the nodes is known only to neighboring nodes . We can invite a person to become a neighbor by exchanging RetroShare certificates with them.

Connections between nodes are authenticated using strong asymmetric keys ( PGP format ) and encrypted using Perfect Forward Secrecy . In addition to the network mesh, this application provides services for secure and anonymous data exchange with other network nodes, in addition to our own friends.

RetroShare is provided free of charge and is the result of a lot of hard work that goes into the sole purpose of providing a censorship evasion tool. The only downside is that you will need to create your own network. To use RetroShare, we must recruit friends and exchange certificates with them or join an existing network of friends .

General features of RetroShare

With this program we can use:

• chat to send text and images. We will be able to discuss with several people in decentralized chats ( like IRC ). We can use a set of emoticons in them.
• This will give us the opportunity to share files with our friends or with the entire network. RetroShare uses a BitTorrent-like swarm to speed up transfers. Privacy and anonymity are guaranteed except for direct friends with anonymous tunnels.
• The which will allow us to read and write posts offline. It's perfect when traveling. When we have an Internet connection available, RetroShare automatically synchronizes the forums with our friends. Decentralized forums are not censored by design.
• Tableros in which you can share your favorite images or links. We'll be able to vote and discuss them using the built-in comment system.

• Mail to send encrypted messages to other network members.
• Protect our IP with Tor / I2P . RetroShare can additionally be used on Tor and I2P networks. By doing this, even friendly nodes will not be able to see your IP, allowing you to connect securely and anonymously with unknown people.
• Voice and Video (Experimental Prototype) that will allow us to make free and secure calls using the VoIP add-on.

These are just some features. They can consult all of them in the project website .

Install RetroShare

Like AppImage

To download this file, we can go to the download page from the web browser and download the AppImage file from there, or we can also open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run wget as follows to download the latest version released today :

wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/retroshare/AppImage/retroshare-gui-latest-x86_64.AppImage

After downloading, we will have to give permissions to the downloaded file :

sudo chmod +x retroshare-gui-latest-x86_64.AppImage

Go this far, we can run the program by double-clicking on the file or typing in the same terminal:

./retroshare-gui-latest-x86_64.AppImage

Like Flatpak

Another option to install this program, with which we can establish encrypted communications between us and our friends, will be through the corresponding package flat pak . If you are using Ubuntu 20.04 and this technology is still not enabled, you can follow the guide that a colleague wrote on this blog some time ago to enable it.

When we have the opportunity to install the flatpak packages, we can open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run the following command to start the installation :

flatpak install flathub cc.retroshare.retroshare-gui

to run the program , you only need to write in one terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

flatpak run cc.retroshare.retroshare-gui

From the repository

We can also get RetroShare for Ubuntu through the OBS repository. To add a repository, we need to open the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and write the commands in it:

source /etc/os-release

wget -qO - https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/retroshare/xUbuntu_${VERSION_ID}/Release.key | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/retroshare/xUbuntu_${VERSION_ID}/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/retroshare_OBS.list"

When we add storage, we'll start by updating the list of available software, and then we'll install the app :

sudo apt update

sudo apt install retroshare-gui

Once installed, we can only find the app launcher on our computer.

To learn more about this project, users can consult its site O official documentation .

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