[messaging] fyi: metadata-eliminating tor-based chat program: Ricochet

[zaki at manian.org]

The person who goes the by pseudonym "the grunq" is very knowledgeable
member of the security community based on his excellent blog, twitter
account and social graph. His contribution to and endorsement of this
project seems to be the reason to take it seriously.

I haven't taken a close look at the protocol yet but I expect it would be
reasonably well informed by the prior efforts in this space. Pond's design
seems to indicate that if can assume the directory of contacts->
cryptographic identities doesn't leak metadata and you provide enough cover
traffic to the Tor network you can provide metadata protection of messaging
against a global passive network attacker. From what I've read so far,
Richochet seems to something along the same lines.



On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Tim Bray <tbray at textuality.com> wrote:

> A number of things about this one made me kind of uneasy.  The clichéd
> tone of the article “high-school dropout trumps NSA!”  The complete absence
> of input from anyone who wasn’t a  project insider, and the dissing of
> competitors who are actually shipping working software. I mentioned on
> Twitter that a couple of things about the story made my BS filter twitch,
> and I got slimed by multiple project partisans (nobody I’ve ever heard of)
> for being a hater, etc.   I looked at the github repo and if any
> development is actually happening, it’s not there; no commits to the actual
> code for a couple months.    Now, none of those things in & of itself is
> reason to dismiss Ricochet, but I have to say my BS filter is doing more
> than twitching.
>
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 12:32 PM, =JeffH <Jeff.Hodges at kingsmountain.com>
> wrote:
>
>> this is just fyi/fwiw, I haven't investigated this other than skimming
>> the article..
>>
>> Middle-School Dropout Codes Clever Chat Program That Foils NSA Spying
>> [ricochet]
>> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/new-encrypted-chat-program-
>> thwarts-nsa-eliminating-metadata
>>
>> https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet
>>
>>
>> also mentioned..
>>
>> Wickr
>> Tox
>> TorChat
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> - Tim Bray (If you’d like to send me a private message, see
> https://keybase.io/timbray)
>
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