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White Noise – secure and private messenger

whitenoise.chat

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Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#41

Post by jimmydoreornot »

rendaw wrote: post #31
shark_laser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This criticism of Nostr is quite outdated. I haven't looked into the White Noise code, but Gift Wrapping is just one way this issue was solved a long time ago: https://nips.nostr.com/59

How does gift wrapping address what GP brought up? I read through and AFAICT it obscures explicit metadata in the message, but not external stuff such as source/dest ip that logging any shared relay could give you. AFAIK the only real ways to get metadata privacy are onion routing (increase the chance of a non-compromised node) and N-anonymity (decrease the value of a discovered connection).

As for nostr layer privacy, the giftwrap is written by an anonymous key, but sent to a person's public key. So you know they received something, but you don't know who from.

IP layer privacy is left to a lower layer. VPN or Tor or whatever. Trying to re-implement onion or garlic routing in nostr is IMHO not a great idea. Why tie such functionality together in the same layer?

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#42

Post by bravesoul2 »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #20
heavyset_go wrote: post #4

> White Noise stands out by merging Nostr’s decentralized network with advanced encryption. How does White Noise address criticisms surrounding Nostr's implementation[1]: > While nostr offers the ability to send encrypted DMs to user pubkeys, the metadata of these messages are broadcast publicly via relays. This is the same as a bitcoin transaction being viewable on the public ledger. The contents of the direct messa…

There was a project called Bitmessage which solved this problem by not having a recipient field. Your client would just try to decrypt everything, and when it succeeds, that means the message is for you. The then immediate issue is routing becomes very inefficient since every node now needs to receive and attempt to decrypt every single message. Which they solved by having channels to split up the network and only re…

That sounds easy to DoS.

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#43

Post by netsharc »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #20
heavyset_go wrote: post #4

> White Noise stands out by merging Nostr’s decentralized network with advanced encryption. How does White Noise address criticisms surrounding Nostr's implementation[1]: > While nostr offers the ability to send encrypted DMs to user pubkeys, the metadata of these messages are broadcast publicly via relays. This is the same as a bitcoin transaction being viewable on the public ledger. The contents of the direct messa…

There was a project called Bitmessage which solved this problem by not having a recipient field. Your client would just try to decrypt everything, and when it succeeds, that means the message is for you. The then immediate issue is routing becomes very inefficient since every node now needs to receive and attempt to decrypt every single message. Which they solved by having channels to split up the network and only re…

Can an adversary detect who's sending a message, though? If they can observe 2 parties alternately sending messages into the network, they can probably assume these 2 parties are talking to each other.

The next step would be nodes sending random fake messages into the network at random intervals, to obfuscate who's talking to whom.

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#44

Post by EGreg »

ikawe wrote: post #23
rendaw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does sealed sender work? I couldn't find details. The explanations I saw seemed to start from the assumption that Signal doesn't keep logs of messages moving through their system.

https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ The short version is: Traditionally, Bob needed to “log in” to be able to send a message to Alice’s inbox. With Sealed Sender, Alice gives Bob a credential that allows him to message her from now on without logging in. Only Alice can tell that the message she received is from Bob. There’s some subtlety around bootstrapping these credentials and preventing abuse which means that…

What messages can’t be sent as sealed sender?

I arrange to tell Alice in an encrypted chat that I will be doing a drop on X url after Y time and to watch it.

Alice comes picks up the drop. Done.

PS: This is another great use for cryptocurrency. When you don’t want to use account-based charging, then you allow anyone to prepay for the resources with crypto.

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#45

Post by ikawe »

EGreg wrote: post #44
ikawe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ The short version is: Traditionally, Bob needed to “log in” to be able to send a message to Alice’s inbox. With Sealed Sender, Alice gives Bob a credential that allows him to message her from now on without logging in. Only Alice can tell that the message she received is from Bob. There’s some subtlety around bootstrapping these credentials and preventing abuse which means that…

What messages can’t be sent as sealed sender? I arrange to tell Alice in an encrypted chat that I will be doing a drop on X url after Y time and to watch it. Alice comes picks up the drop. Done. PS: This is another great use for cryptocurrency. When you don’t want to use account-based charging, then you allow anyone to prepay for the resources with crypto.

For example, before you have Alice’s sealed sender authorization credential, you cannot send Alice Sealed Sender.

This happens upon initial contact and after Alice revokes her credential (which can happens if she blocks someone).

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#46

Post by heavyset_go »

abhsag wrote: post #35
heavyset_go wrote: post #4

> White Noise stands out by merging Nostr’s decentralized network with advanced encryption. How does White Noise address criticisms surrounding Nostr's implementation[1]: > While nostr offers the ability to send encrypted DMs to user pubkeys, the metadata of these messages are broadcast publicly via relays. This is the same as a bitcoin transaction being viewable on the public ledger. The contents of the direct messa…

Lol, nostr metadata leak was a criticism of NIP-04 , which has long been considered obsolete NIP-17 messages addressed this long time ago, but it was not scalable to large groups. MLS solves this problem so we finally have, scalable, private, decentralized messeging on the internet, all these specs are public, the very fact that you did not understand this, means no one will be able to make you understand with a comm…

Thanks for your insight

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#47

Post by heavyset_go »

hugs wrote: post #13
heavyset_go wrote: post #4

> White Noise stands out by merging Nostr’s decentralized network with advanced encryption. How does White Noise address criticisms surrounding Nostr's implementation[1]: > While nostr offers the ability to send encrypted DMs to user pubkeys, the metadata of these messages are broadcast publicly via relays. This is the same as a bitcoin transaction being viewable on the public ledger. The contents of the direct messa…

(fwiw, I'm not the creator of this, but am a casual user of Nostr...) tl;dr: the answer you're looking for is probably in the explainer doc [1]. At its core, Nostr is simple: it's "just" JSON over WebSockets. But there are dozens of optional proposals to add additional functionality. And a few of those proposals are related to encrypted DMs, specifically, NIP-04 [2], and NIP-17 [3]. Most of the online criticism of en…

Thanks for the detailed post with citations, I'll have to give them a look

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#48

Post by SchemaLoad »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #42
SchemaLoad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a project called Bitmessage which solved this problem by not having a recipient field. Your client would just try to decrypt everything, and when it succeeds, that means the message is for you. The then immediate issue is routing becomes very inefficient since every node now needs to receive and attempt to decrypt every single message. Which they solved by having channels to split up the network and only re…

That sounds easy to DoS.

You're right, which is why they used Proof of Work as a requirement of sending a message. Problem is it made sending messages on mobile kind of bad since any PoW which would stop a desktop GPU from spamming is too much for a phone SoC.

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#49

Post by SchemaLoad »

netsharc wrote: post #43
SchemaLoad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a project called Bitmessage which solved this problem by not having a recipient field. Your client would just try to decrypt everything, and when it succeeds, that means the message is for you. The then immediate issue is routing becomes very inefficient since every node now needs to receive and attempt to decrypt every single message. Which they solved by having channels to split up the network and only re…

Can an adversary detect who's sending a message, though? If they can observe 2 parties alternately sending messages into the network, they can probably assume these 2 parties are talking to each other. The next step would be nodes sending random fake messages into the network at random intervals, to obfuscate who's talking to whom.

If you controlled almost the entire network you could see where a message showed up first, but you wouldn't know where it was going. And since the app was mostly desktop only and kind of slow to deliver it would be used more like email where it could be hours before you see a response.

So maybe kinda but you don't have a lot to work on. And nodes don't have persistent IDs so if they were on a VPN, CGNat, dynamic IP, you'd have a hard time tracking them over time.

Re: White Noise – secure and private messenger

#50

Post by averageRoyalty »

globalnode wrote: post #7

i admit i havent looked at the app, but i assume is centrally run. firstly: i think the only way secure p2p messaging can work is if its decentralised. no 3rd parties to communication, how this would be done i have no idea. maybe like email but without the server? secondly: you'd need to ensure a secure os on each end that you can trust to not take screenshots and send to hq before transmission or after reception. si…

> i admit i havent looked at the app, but i assume is centrally run.

I don't mean to be rude, but why comment then? Your core premise was incorrect, which could have been resolved within 5 seconds of reading the headings on the page linked.

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