Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
vuvuzela.io
Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#2Personally, I found the research section more enlightening. It lists two papers which talk about their approach:
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#3From their research paper at https://vuvuzela.io/static/vuvuzela.pdf:
> Vuvuzela can support 1 million users exchanging text messages (up to 240 bytes each) with an end-to-end latency of 37 seconds, achieving a throughput of 68,000 messages/sec.
Unfortunately, 37 seconds, even for a privacy-aware service, seems too slow to deliver instant messages.
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#4From their research paper at https://vuvuzela.io/static/vuvuzela.pdf : > Vuvuzela can support 1 million users exchanging text messages (up to 240 bytes each) with an end-to-end latency of 37 seconds, achieving a throughput of 68,000 messages/sec. Unfortunately, 37 seconds, even for a privacy-aware service, seems too slow to deliver instant messages.
Huh? I think that's plenty enough for most use cases. Sure, sometimes I want text based realtime communications, so I can't have that, but most of the time it's just semi-realtime where this would be fine. But it has to scale to that point first I guess, and maybe things would already have been refined until then.
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#5[deleted]
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#6Anyone else receive an error when attempting to register?
`Failed to generate new Alpenhorn client: fetching latest dialing config: config expired on `
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#7From their research paper at https://vuvuzela.io/static/vuvuzela.pdf : > Vuvuzela can support 1 million users exchanging text messages (up to 240 bytes each) with an end-to-end latency of 37 seconds, achieving a throughput of 68,000 messages/sec. Unfortunately, 37 seconds, even for a privacy-aware service, seems too slow to deliver instant messages.
While I agree that 37 seconds is slow enough to be noticeable in an intense conversation, I don't think it's a deal breaker.
I don't think all text messaging is equal. If you want a realtime conversation with someone, you probably want to just jump on a call with them anyway.
Furthermore, a system like this, with its extreme level of privacy (and the fact that you, at least at the moment, need a Go toolchain installed locally to even use it), seems to be tailored for a pretty specific kind of audience. That audience is the kind that values, and probably requires for their own personal safety, privacy above all else. 37 seconds of latency seems like a pretty reasonable trade off in that case.
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#8> Vuvuzela is the first system that provides strong metadata privacy while scaling to millions of users. Previous systems that hide metadata using Tor (such as Pond) are prone to traffic analysis attacks.
Pardon my ignorance here, so how is something like my IP hidden from the centralized server? I would assume "strong metadata privacy" would include the most obvious metadata, IP, and keep it from the server like Tor which they compare against.
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#9> Vuvuzela is the first system that provides strong metadata privacy while scaling to millions of users. Previous systems that hide metadata using Tor (such as Pond) are prone to traffic analysis attacks. Pardon my ignorance here, so how is something like my IP hidden from the centralized server? I would assume "strong metadata privacy" would include the most obvious metadata, IP, and keep it from the server like Tor…
> Vuvuzela is secure against adversaries that observe and tamper with all network traffic, and that control all nodes except for one server. Vuvuzela’s key insight is to minimize the number of variables observable by an attacker, and to use
differential privacy techniques to add noise to all observable variables in a way that provably hides information about which users are communicating.
Someone watching all traffic will know that you're using Vuvuzela, but won't be able to figure out who you're communicating with. In Tor, generally if someone can see all traffic they can rapidly trace communication links-- it's encrypted, but the fact that you send packets and induce a chain of a few other packets to the target is a dead giveaway.
Re: Vuvuzela: Metadata-private messaging
#10Cool, but having to give data to Google to create an account is a major detractor.