A third party is rebooting troubled Firefox Send file transfer service
Wormhole may introduce paid plans in order to monetize the free service
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A new web service has decided to build upon the discontinuedFirefox Sendservice to provide a more secure and end-to-end encrypted alternative to popularcloud serviceproviders.
Firefox Send was anopen sourceweb service that enabled users to upload, encrypt, andtransfer filesto others via URLs. It was shuttered as it was being constantly abused to spreadmalware.
A startup called Socket has now spun up a functionally similar cloud-based service namedWormholethat will send files up to 10 GB for free, while making sure they can’t be read by any intermediary, including themselves.
“Wormhole uses super fast P2P transfer when possible, which comes in extra handy when both devices are on the same network (since data transferred over the local network is much faster than going out and back to the internet),” explained Socket’s co-founder and prolific open source developer Feross Aboukhadijeh.
Privacy and more
Wormholeencrypts all filesbefore they are uploaded to Socket’s servers, and spits out a URL that can be sent to the recipient by any means. All download links automatically expire after 24 hours.
Speaking to The Register, Aboukhadijeh shared that offering a secure service isn’t enough these days to attract users, which is why they’ve built some interesting features into the service, especially to make Wormhole faster than popular file transfer platforms likeDropbox,Google Drive, andWeTransfer.
Wormhole’s instant streaming presents you a URL even before your files have been fully uploaded. And thanks to its use of P2P, your recipients can also download the files even before they have been completely uploaded.
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To tackle abuse, Aboukhadijeh wants to borrow a page from the page of other products that offer end-to-end encryption likeSignal and WhatsApp. For starters, Wormhole might enforce client-side virus scanning in order to protectdownloadersfrom malware.
The startup also plans to open source Wormhole’s code for analysis by the security community along with a bug bounty program with rewards of up to $1,000.
Aboukhadijeh also discussed plans to monetize the service by introducing a Pro plan which offers larger file limits, customizable link expiration times, and a few more additional features. There’s also talks of an enterprise version that adheres to industry-specific security standards in order to pitch Wormhole to business users.
Via:The Register
With almost two decades of writing and reporting on Linux, Mayank Sharma would like everyone to think he’sTechRadar Pro’sexpert on the topic. Of course, he’s just as interested in other computing topics, particularly cybersecurity, cloud, containers, and coding.
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