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Show HN: A decentralized social network with end-to-end encryption

167 points by mschultheiss 11y ago

twiceaday 11y ago
> https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme#why-am-i-not-allowed-to-loose-the-passphrase https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme#why-am-i-not-allowed-... One 'o' in "lose".
beatpanda 11y ago
I want this to work so much. So many people have tried this, and I have signed up for, or self-hosted, every single one of these things, and even convinced my friends to join a few. None of them ever take off. How is this different?
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  Yes, this. It seems like there are far more programmers creating back-end for this kind of thing than there are designers working on good concepts and front-ends.
  - pjbrunet 11y ago
    I'd build it on top of WordPress as a plugin. Then most of the interface decisions are done, the community is already there, and installation takes about 3-4 clicks.
- Animats 11y ago
  Yes. There's Diaspora and Frendica already, with maybe a few hundred users. To launch something like this, you need to figure out some way to get a user base, a user base that people will want to connect with. Something like - Ivy League students (hey, it worked for Facebook.) - VC, angels, investors, and startup CEOs. (They might like something with more security, especially since they might be planning to take a bite out of Facebook or Google.) - Political groups, where there are communities of fund-raisers and lobbyists, people trying to get things done together and concerned with others not listening in. Consider targeting groups that involve people working together to do something. They need to-do lists, spreadsheets, scheduling tools, and other collaboration support. Basically Box.net's feature set, but without Box, Inc.
  - eellpp 11y ago
    Its a big leap to jump from a centralised social network to a truly distributed self hosted network. The missing link seems to be the semi-central ones, like having few central hosts which allow users to flow between them. Get the protocol to evolve and user adoption to happen on this and subsequently allow anyone to plugin their self hosted server, if they want to and still allow full network discovery across the hosts all over world.
  - jaywink 11y ago
    diaspora* and Friendica have a combined 80K active users, at least: http://the-federation.info http://the-federation.info
erikbigelow 11y ago
Nice. Keep working on it. We need a solution. What's your stack?
zitterbewegung 11y ago
How do you handle discovery is it location based or in person like a darknet?
Swizec 11y ago
This is a serious question, because it's the situation I'm in: Why would somebody who is techy enough to use a decentralized social network, not just use IRC? I have a group of techie friends. We started a "private" IRC channel in 2010-ish and so far have been unable to find something better. Modern clients embed images, embed video links, and so on. We have bots that handle upvotes and offline messaging and a few other things. We even have a thingy that shows history (and most modern clients do that anyway) None of us would be willing to self-host anything. Too much effort. Am I misunderstanding how decentralization works for Charme? Is it more like hosting my own website, or more like using git? I like the idea. I worry about moving my existing social capital.
- grandcat 11y ago
  In my opinion, IRC does not have the features that Charme can offer right now (not looking at the security perspective right now): It allows smart ways to filter your friend's messages. For example, you could filter for people driving from point A to point B. Considering some hundred friends within one group (like in FB), you could handle the massive amount of messages manually any more. So, these context things in Charme look very promising. For hosting I agree that it might be a problem. But normally, you always know one of these techy guys :) However, I completely agree with the last part: moving a user base is very tough or even impossible.
- Quiark 11y ago
  How do you run the bots if you don't self-host them?
benwerd 11y ago
Discovery is crucial. A social network can be thought of as a kind of search engine: you're trying to find people, posts and resources that are relevant to your interests. On the other hand, a social communication app works by allowing you to connect to your existing friends. So for example, with an app like Peach, finding new people or searching for posts matters less. The really hard question for the first case is: how do you combine searchability with end-to-end encryption?
- unepipe 11y ago
  There have to be things that are explorable and things that are not. Your messages, your "wall" (to non-friends) etc - those can be encrypted. your name, your city, your public posts, posts made by companies - you could design this so those are not encrypted/are available for search.
tptacek 11y ago
The cryptography in this system does not appear to be safe. Apart from the fact that it's browser Javascript, which can only be as secure as the server's verified TLS key anyways (and thus doesn't add any security TLS doesn't), it's also using outdated RSA crypto constructions that are vulnerable to attacks. I think you should find an expert to work on this project with you and provide the cryptographic design for you. Cryptography in a social network is like cryptography in a messaging application: it has to work. It's irresponsible to offer someone a solution for sharing secrets (with peers or with their network of close friends) if you can't keep those secrets. Thankfully, you're not doing that yet; I think it was good judgement for you to include the "NOT SECURE" warning in the Readme. Good luck!
- mschultheiss 11y ago
  Yes, as written on top this is a technology preview, so it is not safe yet. Furthermore the production version will use the web crypto api. The client software must be shipped packaged as a standalone application (Apache Cordova etc.) with integrity protection or hosted on your own server and served via https. Yeah, the goal is actually to get some feedback about the crypto design and improve it :)
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Unfortunately, the Web Crypto API doesn't automatically get you safe cryptography either. It was added by the W3C to allow video vendors to implement content DRM in pure Javascript rather than requiring plugins, and so it includes a great deal of legacy crypto. Long story short, you need an expert in cryptography to design this for you, whether or not you use WebCrypto. This isn't something you should take risks with. It would be better to advertise a decentralized social network with NO CRYPTOGRAPHY (which is what this essentially is) than to say it has "cryptography that hasn't been audited" (which most users won't distinguish from real crypography).
    - mschultheiss 11y ago
      1. The web crypto api was indeed made to secure communications, such as stated by the W3C on http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/ (...) "Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications. " 2. Yes, you are definetly right, an detailed audit of the protocol is necessary by more than one expert. 3. Here is a short description of the basic concept: Client and server are seperated. The client software is basically what is hosted on Github. Its source code must be protected from MITM attacks of course, so it is best to ship it as standalone, downloadable application in the final release. THE CLIENT CODE WILL NOT BE OFFERED BY A SERVER IN A PRODUCTION VERSION. So at sign up, the client software now generates a (RSA) public key pair and some symmetric keys used for (AES) encryption and integrity protection locally and encrypts it with a passphrase. The passphrase is only known by the user, but not by the server. The encrypted string is also integrity protected. It is sent to the server, stored there, and decrypted with the passphrase at login again. This way we ensure only the client software can see secrets, such as the private key, but not the server software. Next, you have a key directory. It is signed after every modification with a secret salt which was generated by the client (and not known by the server) at signup. The keydirectory contains all the verified public keys of the user. (Protecting it from replay attacks would be worth another essay here) Now when you write messages for example, you get the public key from this directory and encrypt/sign it basically like in PGP. So the focus of this preview is not on the crypto primitives, but rather on the concept itself. Edit: I hope this does not sound too unfriendly, I am very happy about your feedback and I promise I will look for further advice regarding the crypto/protocol ;)
em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
>> "If you want to support development and have to much money" too much money.
sedatk 11y ago
how is it different from diaspora?
- mschultheiss 11y ago
  It has end-to-end encrpytion - so if you are hosted on a friend's server for example, the friend can not read your messages, which might be useful :)
  - sedatk 11y ago
    in that case, wouldn't it be better to focus on adding e2e to diaspora? or is there an architectural limitation with it? that seems a lot of redundant work at the moment.
    - beagle3 11y ago
      Without knowing anything about the technical difficulties, I would argue that Diaspora as a brand is already dead -- associating with it is basically a guarantee of no users.
      - jaywink 11y ago
        That is so untrue. Diaspora is doing better than ever, after the unrealistic burden of killing Facebook was gotten out of the way. Now it is "just" a well functioning network with tens of thousands of active users and an active development team.
rndmind 11y ago
I support the idea behind this, but I love the community on Diaspora, and more importantly it is also decentralized and open-source.
- blubb-fish 11y ago
  The big downside of it is though that your stuff is potentially stored on someone elses pod - okay, you can create your own server for the pod etc but this won't help you if messages from you are insecurely stored on some strangers server. The solution would be to (somehow) introduce asymmetrical encryption for the content.
sarciszewski 11y ago
https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe28825d6d33c012c2fe4754f02c2/server/charme/lib/App/Users/UserRegistration.php#L34 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe288... Please see: https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/07/how-safely-generate-random-strings-and-integers-in-php https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/07/how-safely-generate-rando... -------------- https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/c8eb501f1ac0c607d953aa60bc95bae6e548ad0b/mobile/Android/CharmeApp/charmeApp/src/main/java/com/mschultheiss/charmeapp/Controllers/ActivityLogin.java#L217 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/c8eb501f1ac0c607... https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe28825d6d33c012c2fe4754f02c2/server/charme/lib/App/Users/UserRegistration.php#L79 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe288... please see: http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ https://hynek.me/articles/storing-passwords/ https://hynek.me/articles/storing-passwords/
dafrankenstein2 11y ago
i did also thought about something like a P2P hybrid network
module17 11y ago
End-to-end-encryption-not-secure. hmm.
ex3ndr 11y ago
One main problem is that you have to make passwords recoverable. In real world message like "warring! we can't restore your key!" just doesn't work at all. People ignore it and still want you to recover their keys. Also forcing people to have password is also very vulnerable.
synchronise 11y ago
Is there a reason why this still relies on a server? I would have thought that the better option would it to be completely P2P, without any servers whatsoever.
jafingi 11y ago
You really need to look on the security perspective to harden it. When it's marketed with security in mind. And there's so many things wrong with the PHP syntax etc. as well as you have committed the entire Composer vendor/ folder. Put it in gitignore and remove it. You should not commit dependencies to your code base.
dutchbrit 11y ago
As someone who has been working on something similar (see old proof of concept here: https://ciety.com https://ciety.com - sorry for the expired ssl certificate), I applaud your efforts. I have learned a lot since the version above (a lot has been changed) and I see room for a lot of improvement. I also have a nice desktop client on the way since you shouldn't be doing crypto in the browser/javascript, feel free to add me on Skype (samgranger) or email me: sam.granger@gmail.com - I'd be willing to give you some pointers. I'll be releasing v2 soon (which will also be open source).
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  Not sure if you missed it but letsencrypt.com has first party certificates for free on 90 day renewal terms. Encrypt everything, and then some. It's at the OS level too, at least on Win10, as I was going through the mmc Cert module to see what was in there and lo-and-behold. I had thought it was just an agreement amongst the three browser developers. I should check my Mac to see if Apple pushed an update too.
tethra 11y ago
It's a nice effort, but it's covered in warnings that say "don't use this" - therefore, not yet interesting. I'm going to leave this here: https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ Movim is a social networking client that is based on standards. It uses XMPP under the hood, and utilises the XMPP standards for instant messaging, multi-user chats, and microblogging (amongst others). It covers all the major features of facebook (IMO) as well as being federated, so that people can run their own nodes.
z3t4 11y ago
I'm also writing a paper on decentralized social networks. And the biggest hurdle I think is to make currently available technology stacks easier to use for non technical users.

167 points by mschultheiss 11y ago

> https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme#why-am-i-not-allowed-to-loose-the-passphrase https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme#why-am-i-not-allowed-... One 'o' in "lose".

beatpanda 11y ago

I want this to work so much. So many people have tried this, and I have signed up for, or self-hosted, every single one of these things, and even convinced my friends to join a few. None of them ever take off. How is this different?

joe_the_user 11y ago
Yes, this. It seems like there are far more programmers creating back-end for this kind of thing than there are designers working on good concepts and front-ends.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  I'd build it on top of WordPress as a plugin. Then most of the interface decisions are done, the community is already there, and installation takes about 3-4 clicks.
Animats 11y ago
Yes. There's Diaspora and Frendica already, with maybe a few hundred users. To launch something like this, you need to figure out some way to get a user base, a user base that people will want to connect with. Something like - Ivy League students (hey, it worked for Facebook.) - VC, angels, investors, and startup CEOs. (They might like something with more security, especially since they might be planning to take a bite out of Facebook or Google.) - Political groups, where there are communities of fund-raisers and lobbyists, people trying to get things done together and concerned with others not listening in. Consider targeting groups that involve people working together to do something. They need to-do lists, spreadsheets, scheduling tools, and other collaboration support. Basically Box.net's feature set, but without Box, Inc.
- eellpp 11y ago
  Its a big leap to jump from a centralised social network to a truly distributed self hosted network. The missing link seems to be the semi-central ones, like having few central hosts which allow users to flow between them. Get the protocol to evolve and user adoption to happen on this and subsequently allow anyone to plugin their self hosted server, if they want to and still allow full network discovery across the hosts all over world.
- jaywink 11y ago
  diaspora* and Friendica have a combined 80K active users, at least: http://the-federation.info http://the-federation.info

erikbigelow 11y ago

Nice. Keep working on it. We need a solution. What's your stack?

zitterbewegung 11y ago

How do you handle discovery is it location based or in person like a darknet?

Swizec 11y ago

This is a serious question, because it's the situation I'm in: Why would somebody who is techy enough to use a decentralized social network, not just use IRC? I have a group of techie friends. We started a "private" IRC channel in 2010-ish and so far have been unable to find something better. Modern clients embed images, embed video links, and so on. We have bots that handle upvotes and offline messaging and a few other things. We even have a thingy that shows history (and most modern clients do that anyway) None of us would be willing to self-host anything. Too much effort. Am I misunderstanding how decentralization works for Charme? Is it more like hosting my own website, or more like using git? I like the idea. I worry about moving my existing social capital.

grandcat 11y ago
In my opinion, IRC does not have the features that Charme can offer right now (not looking at the security perspective right now): It allows smart ways to filter your friend's messages. For example, you could filter for people driving from point A to point B. Considering some hundred friends within one group (like in FB), you could handle the massive amount of messages manually any more. So, these context things in Charme look very promising. For hosting I agree that it might be a problem. But normally, you always know one of these techy guys :) However, I completely agree with the last part: moving a user base is very tough or even impossible.
Quiark 11y ago
How do you run the bots if you don't self-host them?

benwerd 11y ago

Discovery is crucial. A social network can be thought of as a kind of search engine: you're trying to find people, posts and resources that are relevant to your interests. On the other hand, a social communication app works by allowing you to connect to your existing friends. So for example, with an app like Peach, finding new people or searching for posts matters less. The really hard question for the first case is: how do you combine searchability with end-to-end encryption?

unepipe 11y ago
There have to be things that are explorable and things that are not. Your messages, your "wall" (to non-friends) etc - those can be encrypted. your name, your city, your public posts, posts made by companies - you could design this so those are not encrypted/are available for search.

tptacek 11y ago

The cryptography in this system does not appear to be safe. Apart from the fact that it's browser Javascript, which can only be as secure as the server's verified TLS key anyways (and thus doesn't add any security TLS doesn't), it's also using outdated RSA crypto constructions that are vulnerable to attacks. I think you should find an expert to work on this project with you and provide the cryptographic design for you. Cryptography in a social network is like cryptography in a messaging application: it has to work. It's irresponsible to offer someone a solution for sharing secrets (with peers or with their network of close friends) if you can't keep those secrets. Thankfully, you're not doing that yet; I think it was good judgement for you to include the "NOT SECURE" warning in the Readme. Good luck!

mschultheiss 11y ago
Yes, as written on top this is a technology preview, so it is not safe yet. Furthermore the production version will use the web crypto api. The client software must be shipped packaged as a standalone application (Apache Cordova etc.) with integrity protection or hosted on your own server and served via https. Yeah, the goal is actually to get some feedback about the crypto design and improve it :)
- tptacek 11y ago
  Unfortunately, the Web Crypto API doesn't automatically get you safe cryptography either. It was added by the W3C to allow video vendors to implement content DRM in pure Javascript rather than requiring plugins, and so it includes a great deal of legacy crypto. Long story short, you need an expert in cryptography to design this for you, whether or not you use WebCrypto. This isn't something you should take risks with. It would be better to advertise a decentralized social network with NO CRYPTOGRAPHY (which is what this essentially is) than to say it has "cryptography that hasn't been audited" (which most users won't distinguish from real crypography).
  - mschultheiss 11y ago
    1. The web crypto api was indeed made to secure communications, such as stated by the W3C on http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/ http://www.w3.org/TR/WebCryptoAPI/ (...) "Uses for this API range from user or service authentication, document or code signing, and the confidentiality and integrity of communications. " 2. Yes, you are definetly right, an detailed audit of the protocol is necessary by more than one expert. 3. Here is a short description of the basic concept: Client and server are seperated. The client software is basically what is hosted on Github. Its source code must be protected from MITM attacks of course, so it is best to ship it as standalone, downloadable application in the final release. THE CLIENT CODE WILL NOT BE OFFERED BY A SERVER IN A PRODUCTION VERSION. So at sign up, the client software now generates a (RSA) public key pair and some symmetric keys used for (AES) encryption and integrity protection locally and encrypts it with a passphrase. The passphrase is only known by the user, but not by the server. The encrypted string is also integrity protected. It is sent to the server, stored there, and decrypted with the passphrase at login again. This way we ensure only the client software can see secrets, such as the private key, but not the server software. Next, you have a key directory. It is signed after every modification with a secret salt which was generated by the client (and not known by the server) at signup. The keydirectory contains all the verified public keys of the user. (Protecting it from replay attacks would be worth another essay here) Now when you write messages for example, you get the public key from this directory and encrypt/sign it basically like in PGP. So the focus of this preview is not on the crypto primitives, but rather on the concept itself. Edit: I hope this does not sound too unfriendly, I am very happy about your feedback and I promise I will look for further advice regarding the crypto/protocol ;)

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago

>> "If you want to support development and have to much money" too much money.

sedatk 11y ago

how is it different from diaspora?

mschultheiss 11y ago
It has end-to-end encrpytion - so if you are hosted on a friend's server for example, the friend can not read your messages, which might be useful :)
- sedatk 11y ago
  in that case, wouldn't it be better to focus on adding e2e to diaspora? or is there an architectural limitation with it? that seems a lot of redundant work at the moment.
  - beagle3 11y ago
    Without knowing anything about the technical difficulties, I would argue that Diaspora as a brand is already dead -- associating with it is basically a guarantee of no users.
    - jaywink 11y ago
      That is so untrue. Diaspora is doing better than ever, after the unrealistic burden of killing Facebook was gotten out of the way. Now it is "just" a well functioning network with tens of thousands of active users and an active development team.

rndmind 11y ago

I support the idea behind this, but I love the community on Diaspora, and more importantly it is also decentralized and open-source.

blubb-fish 11y ago
The big downside of it is though that your stuff is potentially stored on someone elses pod - okay, you can create your own server for the pod etc but this won't help you if messages from you are insecurely stored on some strangers server. The solution would be to (somehow) introduce asymmetrical encryption for the content.

sarciszewski 11y ago

https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe28825d6d33c012c2fe4754f02c2/server/charme/lib/App/Users/UserRegistration.php#L34 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe288... Please see: https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/07/how-safely-generate-random-strings-and-integers-in-php https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/07/how-safely-generate-rando... -------------- https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/c8eb501f1ac0c607d953aa60bc95bae6e548ad0b/mobile/Android/CharmeApp/charmeApp/src/main/java/com/mschultheiss/charmeapp/Controllers/ActivityLogin.java#L217 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/c8eb501f1ac0c607... https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe28825d6d33c012c2fe4754f02c2/server/charme/lib/App/Users/UserRegistration.php#L79 https://github.com/mschultheiss/Charme/blob/7634cd89febbe288... please see: http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ https://hynek.me/articles/storing-passwords/ https://hynek.me/articles/storing-passwords/

dafrankenstein2 11y ago

i did also thought about something like a P2P hybrid network

module17 11y ago

End-to-end-encryption-not-secure. hmm.

ex3ndr 11y ago

One main problem is that you have to make passwords recoverable. In real world message like "warring! we can't restore your key!" just doesn't work at all. People ignore it and still want you to recover their keys. Also forcing people to have password is also very vulnerable.

synchronise 11y ago

Is there a reason why this still relies on a server? I would have thought that the better option would it to be completely P2P, without any servers whatsoever.

jafingi 11y ago

You really need to look on the security perspective to harden it. When it's marketed with security in mind. And there's so many things wrong with the PHP syntax etc. as well as you have committed the entire Composer vendor/ folder. Put it in gitignore and remove it. You should not commit dependencies to your code base.

dutchbrit 11y ago

As someone who has been working on something similar (see old proof of concept here: https://ciety.com https://ciety.com - sorry for the expired ssl certificate), I applaud your efforts. I have learned a lot since the version above (a lot has been changed) and I see room for a lot of improvement. I also have a nice desktop client on the way since you shouldn't be doing crypto in the browser/javascript, feel free to add me on Skype (samgranger) or email me: sam.granger@gmail.com - I'd be willing to give you some pointers. I'll be releasing v2 soon (which will also be open source).

iheartmemcache 11y ago
Not sure if you missed it but letsencrypt.com has first party certificates for free on 90 day renewal terms. Encrypt everything, and then some. It's at the OS level too, at least on Win10, as I was going through the mmc Cert module to see what was in there and lo-and-behold. I had thought it was just an agreement amongst the three browser developers. I should check my Mac to see if Apple pushed an update too.

tethra 11y ago

It's a nice effort, but it's covered in warnings that say "don't use this" - therefore, not yet interesting. I'm going to leave this here: https://movim.eu/ https://movim.eu/ Movim is a social networking client that is based on standards. It uses XMPP under the hood, and utilises the XMPP standards for instant messaging, multi-user chats, and microblogging (amongst others). It covers all the major features of facebook (IMO) as well as being federated, so that people can run their own nodes.

z3t4 11y ago

I'm also writing a paper on decentralized social networks. And the biggest hurdle I think is to make currently available technology stacks easier to use for non technical users.