GitHub - privapps/notebook: private notebook end to end encryption

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Privapp :: Notebook

A Simple End-to-End Encrypted Notebook / Website & Builder

Privacy is a fundamental right, an irrevocable entitlement held by all human beings from the moment of birth. However, this boundary has been crossed systematically over and over again, and a large population still lives under heavy monitoring and censorship.

This application is an end-to-end encrypted notebook that can only be viewed, edited, or shared by authorized users. Unless the E2E key or your device is compromised, no one can view the content.

Use Cases

  • Use it as a personal private notebook. For example, for daily notes, family secrets, etc.
  • Personal lockbox. You can store private information such as passport numbers, etc.
  • Share your notes with some of your friends for a limited time.
  • Many more possibilities not listed here.

App Demo

Tips

  • There is a View All button, which shows all pages together. You can use your browser's search feature there to find the information you need.
  • If you want to make a link to another notebook, sometimes the browser won't refresh due to routing issues. You can add another / in front of /index.html to work around that.

How It Works

  • You create or modify the notebook in your browser on your local computer. Then you can choose to save it as a file or publish it to the web.
  • If you save to a file, you can choose plain text or encrypted. If you choose to publish to the web:
    • The E2E key is used for end-to-end encryption or decryption of the content. If you don't set that, it would function as a regular notebook. Note that even without an E2E key, the system administrator or network monitor cannot decrypt the content because encryption and decryption occur in your browser. We strongly recommend setting a password for better protection.
  • This notebook is fully integrated and compatible with PrivateBin. You can save the data in PrivateBin and then decrypt and view it from this app.

Using Files as Storage

You can read or write a notebook and then save or load from a local file.

  • The E2E key is strongly recommended as it provides better protection.
  • Once you load the content, you can modify the note or save it with a different E2E key.

Using It from the Web

  • When creating it, you can start writing a notebook from scratch or load it from a pre-saved file.
  • There are two ways to share the notebook:
    1. If this app is configured with PrivateBin, you can directly save it from the app. Then the shareable URL will appear at the top right of your screen.
    2. You can also gather the note data and publish it to a publicly available PrivateBin. This app can load from the public URL and translate it into another URL that you can share. Here is a list of publicly available PrivateBins: https://github.com/PrivateBin/PrivateBin/wiki/PrivateBin-Instances-Directory

Sample Notes

Demo Sites

Here are a few notebook sites publicly available. They are mainly for demo purposes.

No Backend

https://privapps.github.io/notebook/

There are two types of No Backend:

  1. Relays the notes to remote third-party PrivateBin sites. If the third-party storage dies or recycles, data will be wiped out.
  2. All your data is in your URL.

Docker

You can also find Docker images at https://hub.docker.com/u/privapps

See build details at https://github.com/privapps/notebook-docker-nginx-fpm-alpine-privatebin

Feedbacks and Suggestions

We would love to hear your opinions. Please let us know via our Feedback Form.

Configuration

The configuration is located at assets/config.json.

Server Side / Editable

You can use PrivateBin as a backend. Additionally, there is a custom-built backend that allows editing existing notebooks, making it like a wiki/blog. See details at: https://github.com/privapps/notebook-docker-nginx-fpm-alpine-privatebin/

Developer Guide

This project was generated with Angular CLI version 13.1.1.

  1. In the root folder, do: npm ci
  2. Launch the PrivateBin Docker container (note: using port 9080): docker run -d --restart="always" --read-only -p 9080:8080 -v c:/temp/php:/app privatebin/nginx-fpm-alpine
  3. Check the following two files, one for Angular proxy and the other for the app configuration: 
    \proxy.conf.json
\src\assets\config.json
  4. Start developing the app as a regular Angular one: ng s --proxy-config proxy.conf.json
  5. Release: ng build --aot --configuration production

Note

To accomplish copying the URL and sharing it with others, some characters are replaced in the address bar after #:

  • / is replaced by ___
  • = is replaced by ,
  • ? is replaced by ---

If you have an encrypted file on your machine and don't want to or can't launch a web server, you can do:

inlinedata=$(cat "<encrypted_file>" | base64 -i - | sed 's'/\//./g')
# URL should be
# <prefix>#/notes/0/type,inline&symmetric,<key>&base64,<inlinedata>

Wish List

  • Implement editable backend, so existing notebooks can be modified
  • All your data in your URL
  • Code highlight
  • Mermaid URL

Please Donate:

bitcoin:bc1qmyewq7mh03a3sd5zgvvg3y5sqgm5un3e7eayhq?time=1614371109

Thank you for helping with the maintenance and further development of the app. Please stand up to protect privacy, promote freedom of speech, and fight against censorship.