httpaste - versatile HTTP pastebin

NOTE: httpaste is publicly hosted at httpaste.it and as a hidden Tor service (https://paste77ubkwxy4fqezffsmthxdh3xerwi72tlsw2mch7ecjhw2xn7iyd.onion). Both services are to be considered evaluatory, as long as the source code is in pre-release. Regarding voidance of pre-release status, see Open Issues, for more information.

This program offers an HTTP interface for storing public and private data (a.k.a. pastes), commonly referred to as a pastebin application. It is inspired by sprunge.us and ix.io. It can be hosted through WSGI, CGI, Fast CGI, or as a standalone evaluation server. It offers multiple storage backends, such as a filesystem backend, SQLite backend, or MySQL backend.

Public data can be accessed through an URL, where as private pastes additionally require HTTP basic authentication. Creation of authentication credentials happens on the fly, there is no sign-up process. Public pastes can only be accessed by knowing their paste ids, they are not listed on any index, since it isn’t technically possible (by design).

All pastes are symetrically encrypted server-side with an HMAC derived key and SHA-256 hashing, a server-side salt and a randomly generated password. Public paste’s passwords are derived from their ids. Private paste’s passwords are randomly generated and stored inside a symetrically encrypted personal database, with the encryption key also being derived through the same HMAC mechanism, where the HTTP basic authentication credentials act as the master password.

Paste ids, usernames, and any other identifiable attributes are only stored inside storage backends as keyed and salted BLAKE2 hashes.

The program supports output formatting for syntax highlighting (powered by pygments), as well as MIME type output manipulation, and input encoding. The program can therefore serve as a minimalist, anonymous object storage for small data.

Minute-based and ‘burn-after-read’ paste expiration are also supported.

Getting Started

Install

$ python3 -m pip install httpaste-victorykit
$ httpaste --help

Create Configuration

$ httpaste default-config --dump myconfig.ini

NOTE: The default configuration creates an in-memory SQLite backend, which is not suitable for WWW deployments. Visit backend, for more information on configuring the backend.

Run a Local Evaluation Server

$ httpaste standalone --config myconfig.ini --port 8080

Publish a Private Paste

$ echo 'My first private paste' | curl -F 'data=<-' -u myusername:mypassword http://localhost:8080/paste/private
http://localhost:8080/paste/private/UALUA9

NOTE: If the user does not exist, they will be created upon authentication.

Retrieve a Private Paste

$ curl -u myusername:mypassword http://localhost:8080/paste/private/UALUA9
My first private paste

Publish a Public Paste

$ echo 'My first public paste' | curl -F 'data=<-' http://localhost:8080/paste/public
http://localhost:8080/paste/public/X4L39J

Retrieve a Public Paste

$ curl http://localhost:8080/paste/public/X4L39J
My first public paste

Documentation

The documentation can be found under https://victorykit.bitbucket.io/httpaste/.

Licensing

Copyright (C) 2021 Tiara Rodney (victoryk.it)

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

This program uses licensed third-party software.

More Information

• Architecture

• Contribution Guidelines