Search, access, and both uploading and downloading of these files is made by "routing" through a series of friends. The degree of anonymity may be improved further by deactivating the DHT and IP/ certificate exchange services, making the RetroShare network a real Darknet.įriends of friends may not connect directly with each other however, the possibility exists of anonymously sharing files with friends of friends, if enabled by the user. The friend-to-friend structure of the RetroShare network makes it difficult to intrude and hardly possible to monitor from an external point of view. The appearance can be changed by choosing one of several available style sheets. In addition to functions quite common to other file sharing software, such as a search tab and visualization of transfers, RetroShare gives users the potential to manage their network by collecting optional information about neighbour friends and visualizing it as a trust matrix or as a dynamic network graph. a graphical user interface written in Qt 4, which is the one most users use.
a command-line interface executable, that offers nearly no control, but it useful to run on a server 'headless'.
The core of the RetroShare software is based on an offline library, to which two executables are plugged:
It lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit. On November 4, 2014, RetroShare scored 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. The web site 'PRISM Break' has recommended RetroShare for anonymous file sharing since 2013. There has been an unofficial build for the single-board computer Raspberry Pi, named PiShare, since 2012. It is not strictly a darknet since optionally, peers may communicate certificates and IP addresses from and to their friends. RetroShare is open source software for encrypted filesharing, serverless email, instant messaging, online chat, and BBS, based on a friend-to-friend network built on GNU Privacy Guard (GPG).