Sending files with wormhole

I saw this tweet this morning:

Use Signal for messages.

Use Tarsnap for backups.

Use Magic Wormhole for file transfers.

Use age for file encryption (but make sure file encryption is actually what you need). https://t.co/Ih5D5dNa6x
— Thomas H. Ptacek (@tqbf) May 18, 2021

I've heard of the other things, but what is magic wormhole? Its a way to send files from one computer to another using a magic phrase. The idea is that you are on the phone with someone, you send them a file, say a phrase over the phone, and they use that phrase to get the files to their computer.

Let's try it. On Debian:

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sudo apt install magic-wormhole

Or OSX

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brew install magic-wormhole

Sending a file

To send a file

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  $ md5sum Anarchist\ Design\ Book.pdf
  bb30cdf2185d40cff0e269a954f05d8e  Anarchist Design Book.pdf

  $ wormhole send Anarchist\ Design\ Book.pdf
  Sending 26.7 MB file named 'Anarchist Design Book.pdf'
  Wormhole code is: 1-glossary-neptune
  On the other computer, please run:

  wormhole receive 1-glossary-neptune

Receiving a file

And then on the other side:

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  $ wormhole receive 1-glossary-neptune
  Receiving file (26.7 MB) into: Anarchist Design Book.pdf
  ok? (y/N): y
  Receiving (<-209.133.79.248:9245)..
  100% 26.7M/26.7M [00:11<00:00, 2.27MB/s]
  Received file written to Anarchist Design Book.pdf

  $ md5sum Anarchist\ Design\ Book.pdf
  bb30cdf2185d40cff0e269a954f05d8e  Anarchist Design Book.pdf

Fast and easy, at least once you have it installed!