deadchat
Security and privacy
encrypted group chat
SHOW HN2013
60points
41comments
#424of 1,739 in 2013
Top 25%of 2013 by points
How HN took it
RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical
0 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 8 critical, out of 12 comments about the project. Thread score -0.45.
Idea: 0 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 3 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Interesting learning project
From 1 comment
Learning is fine, just add a disclaimer that it's actually probably not so secure. Oh please don't get me started on FiSH, and PLEASE don't model anything after fish. I had the…
lawl on HN
Objections
Cryptography is flawed: no user authentication, server can swap public keys (MITM)
From 3 comments
Wow. > WARNING: Unable to decrypt. One of you may have changed keys or might be an imposter. Run /idexch if you trust this person. This may very well be the worst advice you…
lawl on HNFrom a very cursory look at the source code, it seems like every user share their public keys and the room keys are encrypted with these keys. So looking at server logs don't…
bajsejohannes on HNIn case people are wondering what stavrosk is referring to, kba wrote: I'm tired of people labeling their applications as "cryptographically secure" with no proof of correctness…
dfc on HN
Hobby crypto projects should carry clear disclaimers, not be overclaimed as secure
From 3 comments
Learning is fine, just add a disclaimer that it's actually probably not so secure. Oh please don't get me started on FiSH, and PLEASE don't model anything after fish. I had the…
lawl on HNIt would be very much easier to ignore hobbyist implementations of crypto if they came with suitably huge warnings. "This is just a proof of concept. It's not secure. It's just a…
DanBC on HNBroken social networking websites and YouTube clones are relatively harmless, so that philosophy makes sense. Broken cryptography can cause loss of money, infrastructure, and…
superuser2 on HN
Trusting the server makes it no more secure than IRC over SSL
From 2 comments
What's more, if you can't vet who joins the channel, then you can still have eavesdroppers listening in. So it's really no more secure than IRC over SSL (in fact probably less so…
laumars on HNIf that's the case, why go through all this hassle? Simply use IRC with SSL and you have exactly the same level of security. As long as you trust the server, you are fine.
RyanZAG on HN
Advice to re-run key exchange on mismatch is unsafe
From 1 comment
Wow. > WARNING: Unable to decrypt. One of you may have changed keys or might be an imposter. Run /idexch if you trust this person. This may very well be the worst advice you…
lawl on HN
Requests
Add a disclaimer that it is not secure
From 1 comment
Learning is fine, just add a disclaimer that it's actually probably not so secure. Oh please don't get me started on FiSH, and PLEASE don't model anything after fish. I had the…
lawl on HN
Add user authentication and SSL with endpoint authentication
From 1 comment
That's fair, I modeled some aspects of the system after FiSH-irssi, which also doesn't have user authentication or MITM attack mitigation. That'll teach me to post to HN…
jeztek on HN
Questions
How can a group chat be end-to-end encrypted when all members read messages?
From 2 comments
I'm a little confused by this. How can it be a group chat with end to end encryption? Surely everyone logged into the chat room would need to read the messages, so it's really no…
laumars on HNI haven't looked at the code itself, but based on the usage section it seems like everyone in the room shares a secret key. I think the concept is that in order to get the secret…
gizmo686 on HN
Why disallow unicode usernames?
From 2 comments
>TODO: Disallow unicode usernames Can anyone explain why this is necessary?
ancarda on HNI think it's just to stop name spoofing using unicode characters. ie pretending to use a registered nick by using characters that look similar. As a non-unicode example: "Bob"…
laumars on HN
Alternatives named
SILC secure group chat protocol
From 2 comments
Don't we already have a secure chat protocol, SILC? Is that not good enough to use? Maybe Cryptocat et al could implement it, rather than creating their own.
StavrosK on HNBy the way, there's an already-existing secure group chat software, SILC, that does something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_%28protocol%29 (see "security" section,…
idupree on HN
OTR off-the-record messaging
From 1 comment
Learning is fine, just add a disclaimer that it's actually probably not so secure. Oh please don't get me started on FiSH, and PLEASE don't model anything after fish. I had the…
lawl on HN
FiSH-irssi
From 1 comment
Hey all, great discussion. Apologies for not chiming in earlier, I posted this to HN in the morning and left for 4th of July activities, certainly not expecting it to make the…
jeztek on HN