cryptgeon/README.md

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About?

cryptgeon is a secure, open source sharing note or file service inspired by PrivNote. It includes a server, a web page and a CLI client.

🌍 If you want to translate the project feel free to reach out to me.

Thanks to Lokalise for providing free access to their platform.

Live Service / Demo

Web

Check out the live service / demo and see for yourself cryptgeon.org

CLI

npx cryptgeon send text "This is a secret note"

For more documentation about the CLI see the readme.

Raycast Extension

There is an official Raycast extension.

Features

• send text or files
• server cannot decrypt contents due to client side encryption
• view or time constraints
• in memory, no persistence
• obligatory dark mode support

How does it work?

each note has a generated id (256bit) and key 256(bit). The id is used to save & retrieve the note. the note is then encrypted with aes in gcm mode on the client side with the key and then sent to the server. data is stored in memory and never persisted to disk. the server never sees the encryption key and cannot decrypt the contents of the notes even if it tried to.

Screenshot

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
REDIS	redis://redis/	Redis URL to connect to. According to format
SIZE_LIMIT	1 KiB	Max size for body. Accepted values according to byte-unit. 512 MiB is the maximum allowed. The frontend will show that number including the ~35% encoding overhead.
MAX_VIEWS	100	Maximal number of views.
MAX_EXPIRATION	360	Maximal expiration in minutes.
ALLOW_ADVANCED	true	Allow custom configuration. If set to false all notes will be one view only.
ALLOW_FILES	true	Allow uploading files. If set to false, users will only be allowed to create text notes.
ID_LENGTH	32	Set the size of the note id in bytes. By default this is 32 bytes. This is useful for reducing link size. This setting does not affect encryption strength.
VERBOSITY	warn	Verbosity level for the backend. Possible values are: error, warn, info, debug, trace
THEME_IMAGE	""	Custom image for replacing the logo. Must be publicly reachable
THEME_TEXT	""	Custom text for replacing the description below the logo
THEME_PAGE_TITLE	""	Custom text the page title
THEME_FAVICON	""	Custom url for the favicon. Must be publicly reachable
THEME_NEW_NOTE_NOTICE	true	Show the message about how notes are stored in the memory and may be evicted after creating a new note. Defaults to true.
IMPRINT_URL	""	Custom url for an Imprint hosted somewhere else. Must be publicly reachable.

Deployment

ℹ️ https is required otherwise browsers will not support the cryptographic functions.

ℹ️ There is a health endpoint available at /api/health/. It returns either 200 or 503.

Docker

Docker is the easiest way. There is the official image here.

# docker-compose.yml

version: '3.8'

services:
  redis:
    image: redis:7-alpine
    # Set a size limit. See link below on how to customise.
    # https://redis.io/docs/manual/eviction/
    # command: redis-server --maxmemory 1gb --maxmemory-policy allkeys-lru

  app:
    image: cupcakearmy/cryptgeon:latest
    depends_on:
      - redis
    environment:
      # Size limit for a single note.
      SIZE_LIMIT: 4 MiB
    ports:
      - 80:8000

    # Optional health checks
    # healthcheck:
    #   test: ["CMD", "curl", "--fail", "http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/live/"]
    #   interval: 1m
    #   timeout: 3s
    #   retries: 2
    #   start_period: 5s

NGINX Proxy

See the examples/nginx folder. There an example with a simple proxy, and one with https. You need to specify the server names and certificates.

Traefik 2

See the examples/traefik folder.

Scratch

See the examples/scratch folder. There you'll find a guide how to setup a server and install cryptgeon from scratch.

Synology

There is a guide you can follow.

YouTube Guides

• English by Webnestify
• English by DB Tech Previous Video
• German by ApfelCast

Written Guides

• French by zarevskaya
• Italian by @nicfab
• English by @nicfab

Development

Requirements

• pnpm: >=9
• node: >=22
• rust: edition 2021

Install

pnpm install

# Also you need cargo watch if you don't already have it installed.
# https://lib.rs/crates/cargo-watch
cargo install cargo-watch

Run

Make sure you have docker running.

pnpm run dev

Running pnpm run dev in the root folder will start the following things:

• redis docker container
• rust backend
• client
• cli

You can see the app under localhost:3000.

There is a Postman collection with some example requests available in the repo

Tests

Tests are end to end tests written with Playwright.

pnpm run test:prepare

# Use the test or test:local script. The local version only runs in one browser for quicker development.
pnpm run test:local

Security

Please refer to the security section here.

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Attributions

• Test data:
  • Text for tests Nietzsche Ipsum
  • AES Paper
  • Unsplash Pictures
• Loading animation by Nikhil Krishnan
• Icons made by freepik from www.flaticon.com