webcat
Mad science p2p pipe across the web using webrtc that uses your Github private/public key for authentication and a signalhub for discovery
We also want to support other key hosts beyond Github. If you have suggestions or want to help implement this check out this issue.
npm install -g webcat
If you have trouble getting it to compile try following the wrtc install instructions
Usage
webcat lets you establish a p2p pipe to other github users over the web. Let's say I wanted to connect to @maxogden
First I need to configure webcat once
webcat --configure
Enter your github username: mafintosh
Then on my machine I run
webcat maxogden
hello max
On Max's machine he runs
webcat mafintosh
hi mathias
webcat will create a p2p pipe between connect me and max by using a signalhub to exchange webrtc metadata and Github private/public keys to authenticate that Max is actually @maxogden and that I am actually @mafintosh
On my machine my prompt now looks like
webcat maxogden
hello max
hi mathias
And on Max's machine it now looks like
webcat mafintosh
hi mathias
hello max
How it works
webcat works the following way
- First you sign a message that says you want to connect to another user using your Github private key
- You post this message to a known signalhub in the channel /{another-username}
- The other user does the same thing only they posts it to the channel /{my-username}
- One of you receives the connect message and verifies that it came from the right person by looking up the other users public key using https://github.com/{another-username}.keys (and this will work in the browser if Github adds CORS GET to this API!)
- You then create a webrtc signal handshake, sign it and post it to the other user's lobby
- The other user receives this and posts back a signed version of their signaling data
- You use this data to establish a secure webrtc connection between eachother that is encrypted using DTLS
- You are now connected :)
warning. we invented the first 6 parts of this scheme. it has not been properly peer reviewed so use at your own risk :)
we use the following crypto dependencies:
- openssl from node core (rsa signing and https for fetching public keys)
- dtls from webrtc
Use cases
You can use webcat to pipe files across the internet!
On my machine
webcat maxogden < some-file
On Max's machine
webcat mafintosh > some-file
Pipe to yourself
Assuming you have your github key on two different machines you can also open and pipe between them by using the same username.
On one machine connected to the internet that has your Github key
echo machine one | webcat mafintosh
On another machine connected to the internet that has your Github key
echo machine two | webcat mafintosh
Programmatic usage
You can use webcat from node as well.
var webcat = require('webcat')
var stream = webcat('mafintosh') // put in the name of the person you want to talk to
process.stdin.pipe(stream).pipe(process.stdout)License
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