Comment by sunshine-o | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sunshine-o | Hacker News Reader

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I was reflecting on the whole chat apps and protocols the other day and felt we might just have trapped ourselves artificially.

If I want to casually keep in touch with a friend, I am supposed to have the following options:

- SMS/RCS: no need for an app but is controlled

- WhatsApp: no good to many reasons

- Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.

- Matrix: great but you need to self host a server, create accounts, etc.

- SimpleX: very interesting, but centralised and I feel it might just be the next Signal. Might be a solution since you can exit at some point by self hosting a server and I guess have alternative implementations.

- Delta chat: great but I guess email fall into the mass surveillance target.

Now most people do not have crazy security requirements and just want to be able to send a simple text message to a friend and be notified instantly without participating in mass surveillance. So why even using a formal Chat app that will be target by a regulation like Chat Control or kicked out of the App store?

Something like Gotify [0] or ntfy [1] are almost enough for most users. It has the whole free from Google and Apple push notification system figured out. You would just need to modify a bit the app to exchange keys with a QR code for individual topics (that you would use as contact or groups).

In a way we just need MQTT servers, a client with reliable push notifications and a manual key exchange mechanism. That would be really hard for govs to target.

- [0] https://gotify.net/

- [1] https://ntfy.sh/

> - Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.

cryptography?

A few corrections: - Matrix does not require you to host a server, even if I'd prefer it - there are multiple public ones in various jurisdictions. - There is XMPP - like Matrix, but older, jankier, much lighter and kind of freer. - Weird to call Simplex "centralized" if you did acknowledge that it's selfhostable... But it's indeed weird that last I've seen, there's not some directory with the public servers like there is for Matrix/XMPP. They seem to be going with adding other servers to defaults instead, like they did with Flux recently.

I don't have a need for secure chat at this moment but if I did ...

I would just find a simple SSH application and give it to all of the chat participants.

Then I would establish a 1U server that I own and control, or even a raspi in my own house, and have everyone log in to run some simple (and old) version of 'talk' - presumably one that has a "wall" feature.

Very simple and very low trust.

Further, the exploit(s) required to infiltrate this are extremely valuable and also hyper specific.

I would have to be an extremely valuable and urgent target for any actor to burn an honest-to-god OpenSSH 0day on ... or a remote root FreeBSD exploit of a system running nothing but OpenSSH.

Bonus points if no ports are open and you have to knock ... which suggests a threat model of remote root vuln on a system with no ports open.

FWIW I have no use for such an edifice.

Yeah agreed but I am just a bit skeptical about the one server as the single point of failure.

Building on your idea, wouldn't using 'talk' over a private yggdrasil mesh (so not connected to public peers) [0] or tinc be an elegant solution ?

What I am not sure is I believe you still need to have at least 1 peer with a fixed IP address (so not a mobile phone) for a yggdrasil to work.

- [0] https://www.complete.org/easily-accessing-all-your-stuff-wit...

> In a way we just need MQTT servers, a client with reliable push notifications and a manual key exchange mechanism. That would be really hard for govs to target.

Go even further: Meshtastic (https://meshtastic.org/). P2P E2EE texting, primarily via LoRa mesh (a mesh of long-range low-bandwidth direct radio connections) plus MQTT backup, with surprisingly nice UX even for non-techies. You can message people directly, or create encrypted groups too.

In effect, you broadcast your message (encrypted) via LoRa (travels a couple of kilometers through apartment blocks in a big city, or up to hundreds of kilometers in open countryside with line-of-sight), and then anybody else with meshtastic rebroadcasts it, up to 3 hops by default. Works OK for local chat through normal nodes, or really well if somebody within a few kilometers has a router on a roof/big hill nearby (map of opted-into-mapping public nodes: https://meshmap.net/ - IME that's about 10% of actual nodes). Optionally uses MQTT when there's any kind of internet connection available so you can chat long-range too (there's a public MQTT server available, or you can run your own) although that's not really the main use case.

No paid intermediaries or services involved, doesn't require a cell plan or internet or anything, even if the whole world collapses, you just keep on texting (for as long as you have battery).

Requires either a tiny radio gateway (e.g. https://lilygo.cc/products/t-echo-meshtastic) that you connect through with your phone via BT, or you can get a standalone device (https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1) but <$100 in either case. Low-bandwidth though: only text & GPS, no pictures or audio. And obviously, this is pretty deep in the weird nerd shit so it might be a hard sell for your grandparents, and by its nature it's mostly useful for the local area chat anyway. Perfect for trips to low connectivity zones though (hiking, skiing, etc).

Agree I love those LoRa devices & Meshtastic, but it requires your contacts to invest and carry additional hardware.

Now the most exiting project in that space IMHO is Reticulum because you can transparently mix transports: any radio (incl LoRa), TCP, UDP, etc. [0]

Their Sideband app [1] is not as polished as Meshtastic but you can start over the standard Internet, or I2P, yggdrasil and slowly introduce LoRa among your group of friends over time and if necessary.

Their LXMF messaging format is also interesting.

Those people are really doing a fantastic work.

- [0] https://reticulum.network/manual/interfaces.html

- [1] https://github.com/markqvist/Sideband

- [2] https://github.com/markqvist/LXMF

See my comment above.

SSH into a UNIX host and 'talk'.

KISS.

> - Signal: how can you believe it is not controlled once it becomes the mandatory app in the US Gov.

Isn't this a good sign? When the US Gov has enough trust to use it internally and officials are already using it for their communications, would this not mean that the service is truly encrypted.

They could have some sort of switch for it, but the frontend is open-source and that's where the encryption happens.

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