many times I find myself in situations where I’m on some computer which is totally isolated - friends computer, completely newly installed (VM), some corporate remote desktop where I can’t install anything — and I need to transfer some information to this computer.

Ideally what I would have is:

  • some sort of web chat
  • self hosted (so that I can spin it up only when I need it, and that I can “destroy” all the data after each session)
  • simple URL where you specify a room name edit it (eg.: domain.com/qck-321)
  • on open you specify username (no other authentication)
  • first person who joins needs to confirm all the others (so people can’t just “drop in”)
  • no fancy technology (web sockets,…)

what I found so far:

  • https://tlk.io/ - quite close but not all points
  • https://chitchatter.im/ - this one is quite promising but unfortunately it failed me on first windows remote machine (probably due to some firewall rule)

I’m more that prepared to develop something my self but first I would like to check if there is really nothing out there to solve this.

Bonus question- do you have any other approach - how do you transfer (potentially sensitive) information to a “isolated” machine?

  • @JASN_DE
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    71 month ago

    Apart from the world of trouble you might get yourself into when doing such things on secured systems, why are you going at it in such a complicated way?

    Why not simply use a self hosted file/document storage and sharing solution like Nextcloud or Pydio Cells or something like that? Reachable through standard HTTP(S), which is a lot easier to reach than most other protocols.

    • @mwalker789OP
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      -11 month ago

      let’s just assume thatI know what security risks are.

      now let’s follow you idea- so what would be first step? I need to keep running whole instance of nextcloud for a few minutes where I transfer data. what would be the URL I need to access on remote machine? If it some domain with additional parameters in it - I’m trying it, and even if I do…, do I need to TYPE my username and password then? I don’t remember when I lost time type my password somewhere… not to mention that usually systems have some weird keyboard layout and I’m spending hours finding & sign on it :/ not ideal at all