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Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

bitmessage.org

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Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#11

Post by richardlblair »

synctext wrote: post #5
benregenspan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whitepaper proposes to handle this by having nodes join separate clusters once their databases reach a certain size.

Please consider this a security review by a tenured P2P professor: The whitepaper describes a simple and focused system relying on partitioning in an attempt to preserve scalability. Bitmessage has many architectural similarities to Usenet and also offers no valid response to spam. Using a proof-of-work system to combat spam is proposed, but to-date science has not yet seen a working approach anywhere. Details are mi…

I appreciate the write up, it's why I popped into the thread.

That said, at least these folks are trying to protect against the NSA. What do you purpose we all do? Lay down and accept that they watch everything we do? Fuck that. Let's continue to build tools as a community. They may have a lot of people, but our community is bigger. So, fuck them.

People should continue to experiment, and try new things until we come up with various way to protect against the god damn NSA.

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#12

Post by slashdotaccount »

infruset wrote: post #10

I just installed it. How do you give an address to people without disclosing it to the whole world if they don't have PGP? This is one of my addresses, I feel lonely HN :-) BM-2cUHuH7sJdt3GchrqSikvzWP4w7Vm2cjhK (so much for not disclosing to the whole world, but this is just for fun)

Bitmessage addresses aren't secret. They are even being broadcasted to the P2P network when you create them. Of course, one can keep in secret (by not announcing it) that he/she owns a particular Bitmessage address but the addresses themselves are not secret.

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#13

Post by synctext »

richardlblair wrote: post #11
synctext wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider this a security review by a tenured P2P professor: The whitepaper describes a simple and focused system relying on partitioning in an attempt to preserve scalability. Bitmessage has many architectural similarities to Usenet and also offers no valid response to spam. Using a proof-of-work system to combat spam is proposed, but to-date science has not yet seen a working approach anywhere. Details are mi…

I appreciate the write up, it's why I popped into the thread. That said, at least these folks are trying to protect against the NSA. What do you purpose we all do? Lay down and accept that they watch everything we do? Fuck that. Let's continue to build tools as a community. They may have a lot of people, but our community is bigger. So, fuck them. People should continue to experiment, and try new things until we come…

Indeed, we should not roll over and declare privacy an illusion.

A lot of people are experimenting with designs that will never work. It's just wasting programming resources, while projects like Tor starve for volunteers. My research team is currently merging Tor and Bittorrent (http://forum.tribler.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5128&p=8585#p85...).

Clear designs (and lots of them) are more important then experimental code I believe.

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#14

Post by Natanael »

synctext wrote: post #5
benregenspan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whitepaper proposes to handle this by having nodes join separate clusters once their databases reach a certain size.

Please consider this a security review by a tenured P2P professor: The whitepaper describes a simple and focused system relying on partitioning in an attempt to preserve scalability. Bitmessage has many architectural similarities to Usenet and also offers no valid response to spam. Using a proof-of-work system to combat spam is proposed, but to-date science has not yet seen a working approach anywhere. Details are mi…

What do you think of Bote mail in I2P, which uses DHT for relaying mail? It is set to hold mail in the DHT for 100 days or until fetched by the recipient. It also uses public keys as addresses (ECDSA and NTRU are the options), and all mail is encrypted. I2P provides traffic anonymization, and Bote mail supports letting mails be relayed with random delays to further anonymize the sender by removing time correlation.

https://www.i2p2.de and http://i2pbote.i2p.us (remove .us if you have I2P installed).

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#16

Post by Natanael »

synctext wrote: post #13
richardlblair wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the write up, it's why I popped into the thread. That said, at least these folks are trying to protect against the NSA. What do you purpose we all do? Lay down and accept that they watch everything we do? Fuck that. Let's continue to build tools as a community. They may have a lot of people, but our community is bigger. So, fuck them. People should continue to experiment, and try new things until we come…

Indeed, we should not roll over and declare privacy an illusion. A lot of people are experimenting with designs that will never work. It's just wasting programming resources, while projects like Tor starve for volunteers. My research team is currently merging Tor and Bittorrent ( http://forum.tribler.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5128&p=8585#p85... ). Clear designs (and lots of them) are more important then experimental co…

Doesn't I2P fit better, considering the design requirements? Tor would require very significant changes to scale better for high volume traffic, but I2P already handles it reasonably well.

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#18

Post by slashdotaccount »

Natanael wrote: post #16
synctext wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, we should not roll over and declare privacy an illusion. A lot of people are experimenting with designs that will never work. It's just wasting programming resources, while projects like Tor starve for volunteers. My research team is currently merging Tor and Bittorrent ( http://forum.tribler.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5128&p=8585#p85... ). Clear designs (and lots of them) are more important then experimental co…

Doesn't I2P fit better, considering the design requirements? Tor would require very significant changes to scale better for high volume traffic, but I2P already handles it reasonably well.

I wonder why I2P is getting so small amount of love. I've read somewhere that for some reason it's popular only in Russia. It has two working email systems, working Bittorrent and much more. Maybe it lacks a native (C or C++) implementation?

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#19

Post by infruset »

slashdotaccount wrote: post #12
infruset wrote: post #10

I just installed it. How do you give an address to people without disclosing it to the whole world if they don't have PGP? This is one of my addresses, I feel lonely HN :-) BM-2cUHuH7sJdt3GchrqSikvzWP4w7Vm2cjhK (so much for not disclosing to the whole world, but this is just for fun)

Bitmessage addresses aren't secret. They are even being broadcasted to the P2P network when you create them. Of course, one can keep in secret (by not announcing it) that he/she owns a particular Bitmessage address but the addresses themselves are not secret.

Yes, that's what I meant, thanks for the clarification!

I'm receiving messages from HN, this is awesome! I guess if people want to keep using my address to test it, I don't mind.

[edit]: Judging from the success, I should have put a bitcoin address as well: 12CM3uBur4wxsj46BoMgoLqMMyUHqcPEWH :-)

Re: Bitmessage – Send messages without leaking metadata

#20

Post by infruset »

Paperweight wrote: post #15

Have a messaging system that implements per-MB fees in order to support the network. The transaction has to be signed by the sender, receiver, and burdened nodes. BOOM no spam.

then couldn't we just use the Bitcoin protocol for sending messages?
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