Crypton is a framework for creating zero-knowledge applications with JavaScript.

Zero-Knowledge applications offer meaningful privacy assurance to end users because the servers running the application cannot read the data created and stored by the application.

To learn more, check out the Crypton website.

"The suggested way of installing Redis is compiling it from sources as Redis has no dependencies other than a working GCC compiler and libc. Installing it using the package manager of your Linux distribution is somewhat discouraged as usually the available version is not the latest." - Redis documentation

wget http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz
tar xvzf redis-stable.tar.gz
cd redis-stable
make
make test
sudo make install

Configuring and setting up redis to run is an environment specific problem and left as an exercise for the user. You may now be able to just simply do redis-server &

PostgreSQL supports a variety of Linux versions. One of these install commands may work for you:

• Red Hat: yum install postgresql-server

• Debian: apt-get install postgresql-9.4

• Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

• SuSE: See the official instructions for more detail

These installation instructions were run on a system running OS X El Capitan (version 10.11) and all dependencies were installed using the latest software versions available from Homebrew at the time this was written (10/2015). These instructions assume you have git and homebrew already installed.

brew install redis

After installation follow the instructions to copy the launchd plist file and setup Redis to launch at boot time.

brew install postgresql

After installation follow the instructions to copy the launchd plist file and launch PostgreSQL at boot time.

createuser is installed as part of the postgresql install. This command will create a new user called postgres that has superuser role permissions and can create roles.

createuser --superuser --createrole postgres

See the nvm website for detailed installation instructions. Crypton currently expects Node.js version 4.2.2 to be installed which is the most current LTS release.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.30.2/install.sh | bash

nvm install 4.2.2

# optional - set this as your default node install
nvm alias default v4.2.2

Verify your node installation:

$ which node
~/.nvm/versions/node/v4.2.2/bin/node

$ which npm
~/.nvm/versions/node/v4.2.2/bin/npm

git clone https://github.com/SpiderOak/crypton.git
cd crypton
nvm use

Important : If you are using nvm enable the use of the correct Node.js version after you enter the crypton directory by typing nvm use which will reference the .nvmrc file which is already present in the root of the repository. This will setup the correct version of node and npm.

You need to do this every time you cd into the crypton dir in every terminal shell you open.

npm install -g karma-cli

You need to configure your environment specific config files for crypton to use the postgres database user that has superuser permissions. Edit the following files:

server/config/config.development.json
server/config/config.test.json

# create as needed from a copy of the other config files:
server/config/config.production.json

In those files you need to change the postgres_user and postgres_user_password keys as appropriate for your environment. The user you configure must have postgres superuser permissions.

e.g.

"database": {
   "type": "postgres",
   "postgres_user": "postgres",        <-- CHANGE AS NEEDED
   "postgres_user_password": "",       <-- CHANGE AS NEEDED
   "user": "crypton_development_user",
   "password": "crypton_development_user_password",
   "database": "crypton_development",
   "host": "localhost",
   "port": 5432
 },
 ...

The default is username postgres with an empty password.

NOTE: If you are on Ubuntu Linux please note that you must have a username and password set for a postgres superuser and you need to ensure you can connect to the DB with psql -U username. You need to be able to do this without using sudo to first shell out to the postgres user that is created by the default installation scripts on Ubuntu. This page might be of interest.

./check_dependencies.sh

If the output is OK then continue.

cd crypton/client
npm install
./compile.sh --once

compile.sh will place a crypton.js file in the crypton/client/dist/ directory, this is the JavaScript file you'll use in your client applications.

The db:init command creates a crypton_ENVIRONMENT_user DB user, crypton_ENVIRONMENT database, and the appropriate DB schema in PostgreSQL based on your NODE_ENV.

cd crypton/server
npm install
npm link
NODE_ENV=development crypton-server db:init
NODE_ENV=test crypton-server db:init

Mocha + PhantomJS Tests

cd crypton/client
make test

Mocha + Browser Tests

You may first want to edit crypton/client/karma.conf.js to specify which (or all) of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari to test. When you run karma it will launch all of the selected browsers and run the tests in each.

cd crypton/client
karma start --single-run

Mocha Tests

cd crypton/server
make test

The default server configurations can be found in crypton/server/config/config.test.json.

NODE_ENV=development crypton-server run

Use Control-c to exit.

The default server configurations can be found in crypton/server/config/config.test.json.

export NODE_ENV=development
crypton-server start
crypton-server status
crypton-server tail
crypton-server stop

The full set of commands can be seen with crypton-server -h

$ crypton-server -h

  Usage: crypton-server [options] [command]

  Commands:

    run                    Run the server
    db:init                Initialize the database
    db:drop                Drop the database
    status                 Print the status of the daemonized server
    start                  Daemonize the server
    stop                   Stop the daemonized server
    restart                Restart the daemonized server
    logs                   Print the latest server logs
    tail                   Tail the server logs to STDOUT
    cleanlogs              Remove the server logs

  Options:

    -h, --help           output usage information
    -V, --version        output the version number
    -c, --config [file]  Specify a custom configuration file [default config]
    -d, --docker         Enable Docker mode to use environment variables instead of a config file [default false]

Verify the server is running with curl or a browser. You may need to use --insecure mode which skips self-signed TLS certificate checks. Crypton ships with a self-signed certificate for testing purposes only. You will definitely want to use your own real TLS certificates!

curl --insecure -i https://localhost:1025

cd client/examples/items
NODE_ENV=development crypton-server run

Open your browser to the URL https://localhost:1025/ and register a new account via the form. Since the server uses a self-signed certificate by default you may need to instruct your browser to accept and trust this localhost only certificate. You can find the instructions for Safari here.

Once you are registered and logged in, open the JS console in your browser. See the original version of these instructions here. The following is just a quick smoke-test that things are working as expected. You should continue to the Crypton docs for more info and examples.

This creates an empty Item called 'myitem'

app.session.getOrCreateItem('myitem', function callback(err, item) {console.log(arguments)});

Add values to this Item. This will save the item immediately, no callback required.

app.session.items.myitem.value = {foo: 1, bar: 2};