Paaster - End-to-end encrypted pastebin

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Imported from #2015:

Sure, obviously these will be somewhat subjective.

Shared

  • Secret transportation.
  • Delete after view.
  • Delete after X amount of time.
  • Syntax highlighting.
  • Deploying via docker.
  • CLI Tool.
  • “Zero trust” end-to-end encryption.
  • Password protection.

Pros

  • Modern encryption algorithm (XChaCha20-Poly1305 using libsodium a audited & battle tested lib).
  • Paste history.
  • PWA support.
  • Modern Javascript, written with Typescript using Svelte. PrivateBin can be a bit of a mess.
  • Frontend & backend code separation (Paaster’s frontend can easily be ran on a separate server then the backend).
  • Arguably a more straightforward interface.
  • Doesn’t expose the format of the paste unlike PrivateBin.
  • Discussions in PrivateBin aren’t encrypted (not a feature of Paaster, but personally think its better not included then included but insecure.)
  • Vercel support.

Cons

  • Currently no i18n support.
  • PrivateBin is more battle tested.
  • PrivateBin supports file uploads.
  • PrivateBin supports theming.
  • PrivateBin has more extensive documentation.
  • Less hosted instances then PrivateBin.
  • Use of IndexedDB, as mentioned here.

I do think PrivateBin is a great project & Paaster does share a lot of similarities with it. But personally I think Paaster has a radically different design, with more of a focus on simplicity & speed of use.

Personally some concerns I have with PrivateBin is how tightly integrated the frontend is with the backend, to the point that it uses PHP templating, making it extremely easy for the host to inject malicious code. I’d like to think the hosted instance at “https://paaster.io” is a bit more transparent being built directly from the public Github repo via Vercel.

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