[noise] Noise_XR

[Rhys Weatherley]

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Trevor Perrin <trevp at trevp.net> wrote:

> On further thought, XR and SIGMA-R aren't that useful.  They're almost
> the same as if the initiator just asked the responder to initiate an
> XX handshake.
>

Except for the responder identity hiding.  There may be a use for the
responder being able to terminate the session with "Nope - not talking to
you" when the initiator identifies themselves and are not on an approved
whitelist.  For example, a VPN ingress point on a company network for
roving employees.

The responder will often be an unattended server running on a port, subject
to potentially millions of automated hack attempts.  The less the responder
reveals about themselves to unknown entities before aborting the
connection, the better.  XR is the only pattern with this property.

Rather than focusing on the patterns or the SIGMA-whatever, I would focus
on the use cases.  What are the top 5 use cases for Noise and what are the
best patterns to accomplish each with various initiator/responder privacy
trade-offs?  Live chat, VPN's, file encryption, ... ?

I don't in principle have a problem with removing XR, but there may be
other patterns that are equally unhelpful.

Cheers,

Rhys.
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