ffsend [WIP]

Easily and securely share files from the command line. A fully featured Firefox Send client.

Easily and securely share files and directories from the command line through a safe, private and encrypted link using a single simple command. Files are shared using the Send service and may be up to 2GB. Others are able to download these files with this tool, or through their web browser.

No demo visible here? View it on asciinema.

All files are always encrypted on the client, and secrets are never shared with the remote host. An optional password may be specified, and a default file lifetime of 1 (up to 20) download or 24 hours is enforced to ensure your stuff does not remain online forever. This provides a secure platform to share your files. Find out more about security here.

• Features
• Usage
• Requirements
• Install
• Build
• Configuration and environment
• Security
• Help
• Special thanks
• License

The public Send service that is used as default host is provided by Mozilla.
This application is not affiliated with Mozilla, Firefox or Firefox Send in any way.

Note: this tool is currently in alpha

Features

• Fully featured and friendly command line tool
• Upload and download files and directories securely
• Always encrypted on the client
• Additional password protection, generation and configurable download limits
• Supports old and new Firefox Send server versions
• File and directory archiving and extraction
• History tracking your files for easy management
• Ability to use custom Send hosts
• Inspect or delete shared files
• Accurate error reporting
• Streaming encryption and uploading/downloading, very low memory footprint
• Intended for use in scripts without interaction

For a list of upcoming features and ideas, take a look at the ROADMAP file.

Usage

Easily upload and download:

# Simple upload
$ ffsend upload my-file.txt
Share link: https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url

# Advanced upload
# - Specify a download limit of 20
# - Enter a password to encrypt the file
# - Archive the file before uploading
# - Copy the shareable link to your clipboard
# - Open the shareable link in your browser
$ ffsend upload --downloads 20 --password --archive --copy --open my-file.txt
Password: ******
Share link: https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url

# Upload to your own host
$ ffsend u -h https://example.com/ my-file.txt
Share link: https://example.com/#sample-share-url

# Simple download
$ ffsend download https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url

Inspect remote files:

# Check if a file exists
$ ffsend exists https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url
Exists: yes

# Fetch remote file info
$ ffsend info https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url
ID:         b087066715
Name:       my-file.txt
Size:       12 KiB
MIME:       text/plain
Downloads:  0 of 10
Expiry:     18h2m (64928s)

Other commands include:

# View your file history
$ ffsend history
#  LINK                                        EXPIRY  OWNER TOKEN
1  https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url  23h57m  eea9f544f6d5df8a5afd
2  https://send.firefox.com/#other-sample-url  17h38m  1e9fef63fee3baaf54ce
3  https://example.com/#sample-share-url       37m30s  8eb28bc1bc85cfdab0e4

# Change the password after uploading
$ ffsend password https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url
Password: ******

# Delete a file
$ ffsend delete https://send.firefox.com/#sample-share-url

Use the --help flag, help subcommand, or see the help section for all available subcommands.

Requirements

• Linux, macOS or Windows
• A terminal 😎
• Internet connection for uploading and downloading
• Linux specific:
  • OpenSSL & CA certificates:
    • Ubuntu/Debian: apt install openssl ca-certificates
  • Optional: xclip for clipboard support
    • Ubuntu/Debian: apt install xclip
    • CentOS/Red Hat/openSUSE/Fedora: yum install xclip
    • Arch: pacman -S xclip
• Windows specific:
  • OpenSSL v1.1.0j: » Installer

Install

Because ffsend is still in alpha, only limited installation options are available right now.

It is recommended to build and install ffsend yourself using these fairly easy steps below.

Arch AUR package

» ffsend (binary package)
» ffsend-git (compile from source package)

yaourt -S ffsend
# or
yay ffsend
# or
aurget -S ffsend
# or using any other AUR installer

Prebuilt binaries

A set of prebuilt binaries for Linux and Windows can be found as asset of the latest release.

On Linux, you must mark the binary as executable. And you may want to move it into /usr/bin/ to make the ffsend command globally available:

# Mark binary as executable
chmod a+x ./ffsend

# Move binary into path, to make it easily usable
mv ./ffsend /usr/bin/ffsend

ffsend

If running the binary fails (probably due to some missing dependency), feel free to open an issue.

Build

To build and install ffsend yourself, you meet the following requirements before proceeding:

Build requirements

• Regular requirements
• git
• rust v1.32 or higher (install using rustup)
• OpenSSL or LibreSSL libraries and headers must be available
  • Linux:
    • Ubuntu/Debian: apt install build-essential cmake pkg-config libssl-dev
    • CentOS/Red Hat/openSUSE: yum install gcc gcc-c++ make cmake openssl-devel
    • Arch: pacman -S openssl base-devel
  • Gentoo: emerge -a dev-util/pkgconfig dev-util/cmake dev-libs/openssl
    • Fedora: dnf install gcc gcc-c++ make cmake openssl-devel
    • Or see instructions here
  • macOS:
    • Using brew: brew install cmake pkg-config openssl
    • Or see instructions here
  • Windows:
    • See instructions here here

Compile and install

Then, walk through one of the following steps to compile and install ffsend:

• Compile and install it directly from cargo:

  # Compile and install from cargo
  cargo install ffsend -f
  
  # Start using ffsend
  ffsend --help
  

• Or clone the repository and install it with cargo:

  # Clone the project
  git clone https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend.git
  cd ffsend
  
  # Compile and install
  cargo install -f
  
  # Start using ffsend
  ffsend --help
  
  # or run it directly from cargo
  cargo run --release -- --help 
  

• Or clone the repository and invoke the binary directly (Linux/macOS):

  # Clone the project
  git clone https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend.git
  cd ffsend
  
  # Build the project (release version)
  cargo build --release
  
  # Start using ffsend
  ./target/release/ffsend --help
  

Compile features / use flags

Different use flags are available for ffsend to toggle whether to include various features. The following features are available, some of which are enabled by default:

Feature	Enabled	Description
send2	Default	Support for Firefox Send v2 servers
send3	Default	Support for Firefox Send v3 servers
clipboard	Default	Support for copying links to the clipboard
history	Default	Support for tracking files in history
archive	Default	Support for archiving and extracting uploads and downloads
no-color		Compile without color support in error and help messages

To enable features during building or installation, specify them with --features <features...> when using cargo. You may want to disable default features first using --no-default-features. Here are some examples:

# Defaults set of features with no-color, one of
cargo install --features no-color
cargo build --release --features no-color

# None of the features
cargo install --no-default-features

# Only history and clipboard support
cargo install --no-default--features --features history,clipboard

For Windows systems it is recommended to provide the no-color flag, as color support in Windows terminals is flaky.

Configuration and environment

The following environment variables may be used to configure the following defaults. The CLI flag is shown along with it, to better describe the relation to command line arguments:

Variable	CLI flag	Description
FFSEND_HISTORY	--history <FILE>	History file path
FFSEND_HOST	--host <URL>	Upload host
FFSEND_TIMEOUT	--timeout <SECONDS>	Request timeout (0 to disable)
FFSEND_TRANSFER_TIMEOUT	--transfer-timeout <SECONDS>	Transfer timeout (0 to disable)
FFSEND_API	--api <VERSION>	Server API version, - to lookup

These environment variables may be used to toggle a flag, simply by making them available. The actual value of these variables is ignored, and variables may be empty.

Variable	CLI flag	Description
FFSEND_FORCE	--force	Force operations
FFSEND_NO_INTERACT	--no-interact	No interaction for prompts
FFSEND_YES	--yes	Assume yes for prompts
FFSEND_INCOGNITO	--incognito	Incognito mode, don't use history
FFSEND_OPEN	--open	Open share link of uploaded file
FFSEND_ARCHIVE	--archive	Archive files uploaded
FFSEND_EXTRACT	--extract	Extract files downloaded
FFSEND_COPY	--copy	Copy share link to clipboard
FFSEND_QUIET	--quiet	Log quiet information
FFSEND_VERBOSE	--verbose	Log verbose information

At this time, no configuration or dotfile file support is available. This will be something added in a later release.

Security

In short; the ffsend tool and the Send service can be considered secure, and may be used to share sensitive files. Note though that the created share link for an upload will allow anyone to download the file. Make sure you don't share this link with unauthorized people.

For more detailed information on encryption, please read the rest of the paragraphs in this security section.

Note: even though the encryption method is considered secure, this ffsend tool does not provide any warranty in any way, shape or form for files that somehow got decrypted without proper authorization.

Client side encryption

ffsend uses client side encryption, to ensure your files are securely encrypted before they are uploaded to the remote host. This makes it impossible for third parties to decrypt your file without having the secret (encryption key). The file and it's metadata are encrypted using 128-bit AES-GCM, and a HMAC SHA-256 signing key is used for request authentication. This is consistent with the encryption documentation provided by the Send service, ffsend is a tool for.

A detailed list on the encryption/decryption steps, and on what encryption is exactly used can be found here in the official service documentation.

Note on share link security

The encryption secret, that is used to decrypt the file when downloading, is included in the share URL behind the # (hash). This secret is never sent the remote server directly when using the share link in your browser. It would be possible however for a webpage to load some malicious JavaScript snippet that eventually steals the secret from the link once the page is loaded. Although this scenario is extremely unlikely, there are some options to prevent this from happening:

• Only use this ffsend tool, do not use the share link in your browser.
• Add additional protection by specifying a password using --password while uploading, or using the password subcommand afterwards.
• Host a secure Send service instance yourself.

A complete overview on encryption can be found in the official service documentation here.

Help

$ ffsend help

ffsend 0.2.14
Tim Visee <timvisee.com>
Easily and securely share files from the command line.
A fully featured Firefox Send client.

USAGE:
    ffsend [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [SUBCOMMAND]

FLAGS:
    -f, --force          Force the action, ignore warnings
    -h, --help           Prints help information
    -i, --incognito      Don't update local history for actions
    -I, --no-interact    Not interactive, do not prompt
    -q, --quiet          Produce output suitable for logging and automation
    -V, --version        Prints version information
    -v, --verbose        Enable verbose information and logging
    -y, --yes            Assume yes for prompts

OPTIONS:
    -H, --history <FILE>                Use the specified history file [env: FFSEND_HISTORY]
    -t, --timeout <SECONDS>             Request timeout (0 to disable) [env: FFSEND_TIMEOUT]
    -T, --transfer-timeout <SECONDS>    Transfer timeout (0 to disable) [env: FFSEND_TRANSFER_TIMEOUT]

SUBCOMMANDS:
    upload        Upload files [aliases: u, up]
    download      Download files [aliases: d, down]
    debug         View debug information [aliases: dbg]
    delete        Delete a shared file [aliases: del]
    exists        Check whether a remote file exists [aliases: e]
    help          Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    history       View file history [aliases: h]
    info          Fetch info about a shared file [aliases: i]
    parameters    Change parameters of a shared file [aliases: params]
    password      Change the password of a shared file [aliases: pass, p]
    version       Determine the Send server version [aliases: v]

The public Send service that is used as default host is provided by Mozilla.
This application is not affiliated with Mozilla, Firefox or Firefox Send.

Special thanks

• to Mozilla for building and hosting the amazing Firefox Send service
• to everyone involved with asciinema and svg-term for providing tools to make great visual demos
• to everyone involved in all crate dependencies used

License

This project is released under the GNU GPL-3.0 license. Check out the LICENSE file for more information.