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Ask HN: Why does P2P encrypted messaging still suck?

161 points by xstartup 9y ago

I chat with my teammates (who are ready to agree on a particular messenger) So, far we've tried 1. Telegram - The problem here is that E2E encrypted messaging (secret chat) is not available on the desktop. 2. Tox - Works everywhere but qtox crashes randomly on Mac. Antox also doesn't work well on Android either. Utox crashes randomly on Linux. Qtox has no way to disable notification on Linux. 3. Whatsapp - You always need your phone android 4. Signal - Message syncs is very slow if you switch between desktop/phone often. I've reported these issues to all these projects but it's been a long time and nothing resolved so far. The situation is still pathetic. What do you recommend?

imsofuture 9y ago
Signal works pretty well for me. I mostly use it on my phone, but occasionally on my desktop, but never had sync issues. Matrix.org + Riot.im are a pretty solid combination. Plus, you can bridge to IRC.
- rijoja 9y ago
  I've heard a lot of great things about matrix.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > Plus, you can bridge to IRC I tried this recently. I really wanted it to work. However, it was a complete mess, mainly frequent (and prolonged) disconnects on the bridge. For folks who primarily use Matrix but would like to occasionally pop into IRC channels, it's probably OK. For folks that need a reliable IRC connection, don't bother.
  - secfirstmd 9y ago
    Agreed. Also another issue was that I Tested and trained a number of NGOs on it and the general feedback was that there were too many options on it when it came to rooms, sharing etc. As a techie I love it, but the general response was that it was too complex to use.
    - uhoreg 9y ago
      The UI could definitely be improved, but the core team has recently hired a UI designer, so hopefully this will improve in the future. If you have any other feedback that you've heard from your trainings, I'm sure the core team would love to hear about it either in their issue tracker (e.g. github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues for Riot web), or in the Matrix rooms (#riot:matrix.org or #matrix:matrix.org).
  - Aaronn 9y ago
    You are probably using one of the IRC bridges that is on the matrix.org server. The matrix.org server is having a lot of problems with being DDoSed as well as not being able to keep up with the normal traffic. The next generation homeserver written in Go is supposed to help with this a lot. There is nothing inherently broken with Matrix <-> IRC bridges, it is just that one server. Other servers are bridging to IRC perfectly fine and you are welcome to host your own.
- subway 9y ago
  The matrix.org home server is spectacularly overloaded right now, causing messages to take several seconds to be delivered at a minimum. It isn't terribly surprising considering my own federated home server with under 20 users sits around 4gb of memory utilization with a single core (the server is single process/single threaded by default) pegged. There's some work that can be done to proxy some of the load off into separate workers, but Synapse is pretty darn awkward to work with.
  - 16 9y ago
    Have you tried leaving any giant rooms you may be in? Like Riot/Matrix HQ? I use my personal homeserver for my friends/some IRC channels and my load is nonexistent. May not be the answer you're looking for, but those huge (10,000+ users) rooms are a huge strain on homeservers right now. Look for performance updates in the next version of synapse.
    - subway 9y ago
      Yup -- that's exactly what the end solution was. Unfortunately reaching out to those 20 users and saying "hey, could you be judicious about which federated rooms you join? otherwise you're gonna hose us all" kinda sucks.
  - derefr 9y ago
    I've been considering writing a Synapse-equivalent Matrix server in Elixir, if there was enough interest.
    - dest 9y ago
      FYI there have been efforts to rewrite an equivalent in Golang: https://github.com/matrix-org/bullettime https://github.com/matrix-org/bullettime
      - voxadam 9y ago
        Dendrite seems to be a much more active Matrix server written in Go. https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite
- Tharkun 9y ago
  Last I checked there was no Signal client for most Linux or BSD distros. IIRC they did something silly like a Debian-only package or something. But as many others have stated, its inability to work without exchanging phone numbers is a show stopper for many uses cases. Especially now that my country requires SIM registration with valid IDs.
  - kreetx 9y ago
    I've been using Signal for a couple of months. Even though it works it has some quirks (slow to load up on macos, sometimes message lifetimes don't seem to be working, messages taking time to arrive to a second device although both have the application running). WhatsApp was better in that regard, but I'd prefer to use something a little more independent :) Ah, and will try Keybase soon, although the downside of these switches are that I need to convince people around me to use them too..
  - tapoxi 9y ago
    I'm using the Flatpak on Fedora: https://beta.flathub.org/apps/details/org.signal.Signal https://beta.flathub.org/apps/details/org.signal.Signal
  - robertely 9y ago
    There are builds for ubuntu now. They even run an APT repo. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/214507138-How-do-I-install-Signal-Desktop- https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/214507138-How-d...
    - culot 9y ago
      There's been one a couple in the AUR for a long while, too. Signal Desktop is not too bad. The aesthetics are clunky, and it didn't seem to scale well last time I used it, but decent overall.
  - dublinben 9y ago
    There's even a cli client that someone has written: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli
- Akujin 9y ago
  I just recently replaced FB messenger between my GF and myself with Matrix.org + Riot.im. Hosting the server (synapse) yourself takes about 15 minutes to setup. I highly recommend it.
- phaer 9y ago
  Is the encryption for Riot.im out of Beta yet? Last time I've looked, about 4 month ago, it came with a big warning. Besides that it had no real concept of identity tied to account or so but generated a new key each time someone opened it in a browser or installed the app on a new device with out prompting, leading to people having as much as 30(!) keys, which of course nobody ever verifies.
  - Arathorn 9y ago
    it's less in beta than it was 4 months ago. we're at the stage of putting telemetry in the app to get it to phone home ever time encryption fails so we can see just how broken it is in the wild, as it seems pretty good for us. Cross-signing keys is next up and we're working on it over the next few weeks.
    - phaer 9y ago
      Nice, thanks for the answer and your work!
- xstartup 9y ago
  I am using Arch + Signal but message syncs are pretty slow after long chat session on mobile. I've forgot to mention, we've also tried Riot Matrix. UX was simply not there and app felt oriented towards the very technical audience. My teammates had a problem with this.
smehtaca 9y ago
I find Wire(wire.com) to be well designed and usable, especially their mac client. Only issue I have with Wire is having no anonymous sign up and having to rely on a central server to add contacts but the former can be worked around by using a temporary email. I take issue with having to provide a cell phone number for Signal. I just hope Tox clients get more polished and more usable as every client I've used except toxic has been terribly buggy.
- grumdan 9y ago
  In addition, their server-side code is open-source and they claimed that federation support is something they are considering to add: https://github.com/wireapp/wire/issues/160 https://github.com/wireapp/wire/issues/160 Overall, I'm also not a big fan of Signal's hostility to federated protocols (https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/), so I'm more optimistic about Wire in the long run.
  - kiliankoe 9y ago
    Just want to add onto this that pretty much everything Wire makes is open source. The backend (written in Haskell no less, which continues to amaze me), the desktop app and the mobile apps.
TXCSwe 9y ago
I run Telegram on my desktop? Also i use WhatsApp on my iPhone.
- uph 9y ago
  Telegram doesn't use end-to-end encryption by default. It's marketed as a secure messenger, but it's comparable to Facebook Messenger or Google Allo.
  - xstartup 9y ago
    As I've mentioned in the post above, telegram simply does not have "secret chats" available on Desktop. So, if you use Secret chat on mobile and go to desktop, you'll not see it! Switching back and forth between secret and not secret is troublesome especially when the other side doesn't know if you are on desktop or mobile to check availability for secret chat.
    - michel-slm 9y ago
      Which desktop client did you try? The official Mac client, at least, has secret chat just like the mobile clients (I just used it yesterday) Note that Telegram secret chats are end to end encrypted (default chats are not) but you're still dealing with the Telegram server (not peer to peer)
      - narg 9y ago
        I have just installed the Mac client and it allows to create new secret chat but it does not show the secret chats created before on your phone. At least that is what happened to me.
      - xstartup 9y ago
        I tried arch linux one.
    - ergl 9y ago
      AFAIK Telegram for OSX does support secret chats: https://macos.telegram.org/ https://macos.telegram.org/ I don't know about the other platforms
ken 9y ago
At one company where I worked, we ran our own IRC (+SSL) server, and it worked great. Depending on your exact requirements and use cases, that may or may not qualify as "p2p encrypted".
- walrus01 9y ago
  Seconding this. You can lock down an irc server pretty thoroughly if it is for company internal use only. First, put it in private IP space that is only accessible from a VPN connection (properly setup openvpn for instance). Have unique vpn public/private keys per device so you can revoke access to a stolen laptop or phone granularly. The ircd server host OS should have no public facing IP. Also configure the ircd to only listen for sessions from a certain range of IP space. Once people are on the vpn, have them ssh into a shell bastion system and run irssi + screen (or tmux) from there, connect to the ircd.
  - giggles_giggles 9y ago
    This doesn't protect users from snooping by the IRCD admin, which is what e2e encryption/p2p chat is about -- removing the ability of the service provider to see the content of the private messages between users. IMO IRCD in no way qualifies as "encrypted p2p chat".
Snawoot 9y ago
Try Keybase (keybase.io). It provides usable apps for all platforms, encrypted file sharing, git, group chats. Most important thing: it does not require to trust keybase servers as trusted party. Trust for your partner key is inferred from various proofs. Disclaimer: I do NOT work for keybase, just a big fan of it.
- diafygi 9y ago
  I've tried, but it still doesn't support yubikeys/smartcards. So people send me messages on keybase chat, but I can't decrypt them :(
  - Snawoot 9y ago
    I use Yubikey 4 with keybase too and my GPG key is stored on smartcard. As far as I know Keybase uses device keys for encryption which are independent from your PGP key (but they are cross-signed if you have PGP key added to your profile). Everything is working well for me. Probably your issues caused by some immature version of app or server API.
  - cjbprime 9y ago
    Hi, I work at Keybase. There actually is some Yubikey support. But it's not relevant here, because chats use per-device keys, not your PGP key.
    - diafygi 9y ago
      Right, so how can I decrypt the chats you sende email notifications about if my base pgp key is on a smartcard?
      - bluehatbrit 9y ago
        The messages are encrypted with your device keys, so you need to be on one of your attached devices. That'll be either a desktop, or mobile device attached to your keybase account.
      - 9y ago
jamesgeck0 9y ago
I've occasionally seen delays of ~10 minutes between message sent and received with Signal; even upwards of 30 minutes sometimes. It's a shame; the app has a very good user experience otherwise.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Delays of minutes or hours also occur in WeChat and plain old SMS. They are incredibly annoying, but it's not obvious to me that we can blame Signal here?
- xstartup 9y ago
  For me, the main problem is, it takes forever to sync when you switch devices after really long chat session on verified chats.
n1000 9y ago
Did you consider https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en yet? I have been using it for years and it is great (iOS and Android). The developers keep adding new useful features to stay on par with Whatsapp etc. For instance, their web chat is currently in beta.
rapsey 9y ago
> Ask HN: Why does P2P encrypted messaging still suck? Because no one wants to pay for it.
- tibbon 9y ago
  Also, no one's asking to have it paid for. I've noticed over the past few years that a lot of things go un-made because there's an assumption that no one will pay for something if it's done really well. The reality is a lot of people will pay for something if it's done really well. I'd easily pay $10/month for Facebook, if Facebook really had some way to shut off 100% of its marketing-based data things that we're all so worried about. Thing is that people became allergic to asking outright for money from consumers a while ago. I used to buy software, and I still will if someone actually makes great software! (I pay for all sorts of services that actually ask; Dropbox, a password manager, Spotify, Netflix, extra space on Gmail, etc. Provide an actually great service, make it a reasonable price and I'll pay!)
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    threema.ch exists if you want a paid encrypted chat client Things that are free get about 10x more adoption than non-free equivalents, and chat clients are software that have network effects.
    - pnutjam 9y ago
      https://spideroak.com/semaphor/ https://spideroak.com/semaphor/ SpiderOak is a good company. I've had a free storage account with them for years. I didn't log in for 3 years and when I logged in my data was still sitting there, safe and sound. Pretty nice for a free tier.
Boulth 9y ago
Did you consider XMPP with OMEMO? I'm running my own server for family and friends, we use https://conversations.im https://conversations.im in mobile and Gajim or https://dino.im https://dino.im on desktop. Everything runs well including encrypted group chats.
- madez 9y ago
  How do you deal with lost messages? When clients have unreliable connections, we experience message loss with that setup (ejabberd + conversations). Actually, I'm dumfounded that that can happen at all. Lost messages are trivial to detect and to correct, how can that happen with that setup?
  - Boulth 9y ago
    I never had lost messages and I'm using Prosody for almost 2 years. Check the advanced info in Conversations account settings page. There you will find all features that the server should support for good service. Maybe your ejabberd is old or doesn't have all necessary modules enabled?
    - defanor 9y ago
      It actually highly depends on client support. There's a few XEPs that help to mitigate message loss, some depending on clients and some -- on both clients and server; apparently most clients don't implement those, and the support on servers is poor as well.
      - Boulth 9y ago
        Yes, that's why I recommended modern clients in the original message, they work well and are maintained. I wouldn't say the support on servers is poor if you run your own, two most popular servers (Prosody and ejabberd) support modern XEP suite after enabling modules. For third party one can check here: https://conversations.im/compliance/ https://conversations.im/compliance/
Aaronn 9y ago
Maybe I'm missing something but you asked for P2P messengers but listed a bunch of messengers that aren't P2P? The only one you've tried that is P2P is Tox right?
derefr 9y ago
How about running the Telegram or WhatsApp mobile apps on your desktop using an Android virtualization layer (e.g. BlueStacks)?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- compsciphd 9y ago
  At least in the pass, one couldn't easily (if at all) run whatsapp on multiple devices. Even if one would run it in bluestacks, it be only a desktop solution.
- xstartup 9y ago
  Yea, but that's too much to ask from all teammates.
niksakl 9y ago
1. Telegram - Not p2p 2. Tox - p2p 3. Whatsapp - Not p2p 4. Signal - Not p2p Putting the above aside: If Tox doesn't work for you, your best mobile-friendly options are: 1) Signal and 2) as others have mentioned Matrix - if you want a self hosted and federated solution. [edited: addendum] i now realize you probably mean p2p-encrypted messaging. Damn semantics of non-formal languages!
- qznc 9y ago
  My guess is that the intention was "E2E encrypted".
  - niksakl 9y ago
    Yes, i guessed the same, but after i posted the original answer.
- pnutjam 9y ago
  No love for SpiderOak's Semaphor. It's a secure end-to-end encrypted system. Free for 5 users or less. https://spideroak.com/semaphor/ https://spideroak.com/semaphor/
- itakedrugs 9y ago
  How do you call P2P that is strictly without any third party?
  - asdsa5325 9y ago
    What does "third party" in your question refer to? Are you referring to servers that route client-side encrypted messages from user to user?
    - itakedrugs 9y ago
      Yes, so that messages can reach a user even if the receiving and sending users are never online at the same time (a server could be another user/peer(s) that isn't part of the communication, so it could possibly still be called p2p?)
petecooper 9y ago
>3. Whatsapp - You always need your phone android Really? I have iOS here, WhatsApp works fine here and the web app version (https://web.whatsapp.com/ https://web.whatsapp.com/) also works fine.
- compsciphd 9y ago
  Does the webapp still not work if your phone is off (perhaps runs out of battery)?
  - petecooper 9y ago
    I've just tried – it doesn't appear to work if the phone handset is offline.
- seddinbad 9y ago
  you can't use whatsapp web when your phone is not on the same network
  - petecooper 9y ago
    Today I learned - thanks!
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be on the same network, only on the internet and you need to scan the code (see also my response above)
  - apotheothesomai 9y ago
    In case anyone is interested, the phone plus web combo was apparently the final solution to the thorny problem of establishing identity with the web client without requiring any more info on the user beyond the phone number. All bets are off, now that it's FB's beast, but the two device solution was intended as a privacy feature, afaik. I sat next to Pasha Sadri, the web client lead, for 4 months before the acquisition. He mentiond the problem a few times. The fact it took another 2 years to get the client out seems to indicate that multiple problems were solved in other ways.
Sephr 9y ago
I was working on exactly this many years ago at the OFTN OSWG with an open source project called Hum. I stopped development after Apple got sued for secure p2p video chat with the original version of FaceTime, seeing as Hum was also going to support secure multiparty p2p video chat. Unfortunately VirnetX (and by extension, the US military) owns a patent that would have made deployment of Hum difficult without an expensive legal team. It's not too hard to imagine that the real reason you don't see many p2p encrypted communication platforms is US military-sponsored patent trolling. This aligns with their mass surveillance interests.
- jtl999 9y ago
  sad
- tuxxy 9y ago
  Wait a minute here -- You're saying that the US military is patent trolling with secure, multiparty chat patents? Can you link to said patents?
  - jrhurst 9y ago
    It's not really trolling in this case since they actually use and develop on the technology
    - alexkon 9y ago
      The Ars Technica article on their lawsuit against Apple [1] said they advertised a product on their website but received zero revenue from that product and seemingly didn't have any engineers working on it. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/full-scale-of-apples-patent-loss-to-virnetx-is-now-clear-440-million/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/full-scale-of-ap... Edit: Added the link.
  - asdsa5325 9y ago
    The person is wrong. It's a private company that has the patent, the company works with the government. I don't know why he implies the government is involved in the patent suit, they are not.
jedberg 9y ago
Money. It's not profitable to run an encrypted messaging service for free, because you can't extract any data from the chats, and people aren't willing to pay what it costs to maintain a good app.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  Maybe a company could allow paying customers to invite 10 of their contacts to use the app/service for free. Or is even the potential association of all of those people too insecure? I otherwise can't imagine how to bootstrap a network. Maybe users could pay to receive messages.
  - Something1234 9y ago
    > Maybe users could pay _receive_ messages. Pay to recieve a possibly unsolicited message?! That's insane.
    - aeorgnoieang 9y ago
      Yeah, even requiring users to _send_ messages probably isn't enough to prevent spam. But that's assuming something like the example I imagined, someone wanting to received encrypted messages from anonymous others. If a user's address is private tho, then asking them to pay to receive messages should be as sensible as the degree to which they protect the distribution of their address.
    - agrue 9y ago
      Unlimited texting as the norm is pretty new, carriers have charged for incoming and outgoing MMS since it became a thing. Same with minutes and received calls.
      - andrewflnr 9y ago
        Getting charged to receive a message I didn't ask for was bullshit then and it's bullshit now. The difference is that people are even less likely to tolerate it now.
friendlysurfer 9y ago
Try Peerio.
rhizome 9y ago
Signal on Android(app)/Debian(desktop) always syncs for me within a few seconds, and both my connection and DNS suck.
jonknee 9y ago
It's difficult, even the richest company in the world hasn't figured out proper sync of their encrypted messaging platform and they only support their own operating systems!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
web007 9y ago
If you're an individual or organization in opposition to a state / stage agency then certainly it makes sense to find an app to protect your communication without a third party being involved. Short of that, consider if you actually need "P2P encrypted messaging" - if you're doing business-type things then you should probably use a business-type messaging solution. Slack is pretty good. IRC is fine if you're slightly more paranoid, it just doesn't have UX on par with a commercial solution. Find any HIPAA-compliant messaging product and you'll get most of what you actually need (vs think you want), but be prepared to pay much more for it than for a regular chat client.
X-Istence 9y ago
I have been using Keybase.io for a lot of the chatting I do with friends, and it works great across multiple platforms.
- phaer 9y ago
  To clarify: Keybase.io, like Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram above, is encrypted but not P2P - all of them rely on centralized servers.
  - SpaceLab_ 9y ago
    and thats where the vulnerability is, in the centralized servers
    - aianus 9y ago
      The only vulnerability introduced by the servers at keybase is denial of service. I believe the protocol and clients are open source and there is no need to trust their servers for the key distribution part either (keys are cryptographically verified from a variety of sources like DNS, Twitter, Reddit, HN for each recipient)
enricotal 9y ago
https://status.im https://status.im is great, it uses ethereum whisper protocol https://wiki.status.im/Whisper_Messaging https://wiki.status.im/Whisper_Messaging
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Who would want to store their private messages on a public database? Not to mention needing to buy ETH some how and than paying for every message?
  - gravityblast 9y ago
    You don't need ETH to send messages on whisper. And Whisper doesn't store your messages on the blockchain. https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Whisper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Whisper
    - nosuchthing 9y ago
      Interesting protocol, thank you for sharing and correcting my misunderstanding. Uncertain-latency Not designed for RTC. At first glance, this looks like a client broadcasts the Whisper to another server which than places it in a cache and might forward to more clients if enabled. Eventually the cache is cleared and there's no telling if the message will propagate successfully in any given time frame?
      - adambbb 9y ago
        More or less it's how you described it. The current implementations broadcast messages to all connected peers supporting the protocol every a few hundreds of milliseconds. It's also true that there is no confirmation that the message reached the recipient (in order to provide dark routing). This can be built on top of Whisper in a separate communication protocol.
deleted 9y ago
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michelledepeil 9y ago
I've recently moved to wire after looking for a chat app capable of exactly this. It's quite good, sync is fast an effective and even group calling is acceptable. Only problem is that it currently doesn't allow you to send yourself stuff, making it less useful than telegram was...
deleted 9y ago
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pmlnr 9y ago
XMPP + OMEMO. Cross-platform, multiple client, works fine.
prabhaav 9y ago
We are building a p2p decentralized application that uses WebRTC for real time chat, video, etc You can try it at www.stealthy.im. Would love your feedback! Also, we have a super secure version called "Snowden Mode" for the privacy enthusiasts!
- stevenicr 9y ago
  Looks neat - like it checks a lot of boxes I am looking for. Does not seem to tell me of I can host all the code on my own servers or if this is a kind of closed source saas thing you are trying to make happen. It may answer "does it have perfect forward privacy" with some of the terms I am not familiar with, or not, not sure.
  - prabhaav 9y ago
    Thanks Steve, the underlying auth/storage technology is open source: https://github.com/blockstack https://github.com/blockstack. We are planning to open source our code in due time. One of the cool aspects of our tool is there are no servers involved. Everything runs client side and the lookups are done with de-centralized zonefiles on the blockchain.
- SpaceLab_ 9y ago
  Cool app! had some bugs logging in, will try again in a bit. Would like to chat with you about collaborations :)
  - prabhaav 9y ago
    Thanks SpaceLab, please reach out to us at support@stealthy.im Also, let us know about the login bugs, we are looking to constantly improve the tool :)
DavisBobby 9y ago
Y'all not using Digital Note? (XDN) Been incredible for me.
morpheuskafka 9y ago
Wire is pretty lit, e2e on all devices.
johnhenry 9y ago
Lack of efficient fully homomorphic encryption -- as soon as we crack that, we can start injecting ads into encrypted messages and it will be profitable enough to make not suck.
kodablah 9y ago
Some general notes (I don't have recommendation). Many people see those options as not something to build on, but rather use. I.e. there aren't many p2p encrypted communication frameworks, and they especially don't solve anonymity + discovery well. Also, I think not enough developers care about making it really easy to self-host (i.e. bust NAT and serve from home) with read mirroring. Myself and I'm sure a gazillion others have side projects trying to tackle these things. You just have to wait until one catches on :-)
- no_identd 9y ago
  Here's your solution, 181 pages worth of it: https://grothoff.org/christian/habil.pdf https://grothoff.org/christian/habil.pdf Bonus: Briar could run on GNUnet, which would speed up interest in secushare development, which currently occurs at a... well, unexciting rate. Also, I wish Briar would implement double ratcheting WITH metadata encryption. At the moment, it has no double ratcheting, but because the transport layer works differently this seems less concerning as they use good crypto algorithms, but it poses an issue to secure interdevice message sync. I only point the 'WITH metadata encryption' part out because SignalProtocol[!] lacks it. A point against both Briar and Signal: I can't specify my preferred encryption method and parameters.
lhlmgr 9y ago
I use Wire, which is a neat p2p encrypted messenger: - with an open source app / server - you don't need a mobile phone and you can use a desktop app - Voice call works perfect (really good alternative to skype) - no random crashes at all - (a colleague of mine diskussed some 'minor' issues on twitter - and they fixed in within few days)
tombert 9y ago
I use Signal every day as my primary IM client. I haven't had any real problems except the occasional having to reset my keys.
ge0rg 9y ago
Briar seems to be an interesting p2p encrypted chat and forum system.
coretx 9y ago
For noobs like the OP Http://crypto.cat is something to look at. (XMMP/OMEMO for idiots.)
boisebenkline 9y ago
Try https://forsta.io https://forsta.io
datenwolf 9y ago
> The situation is still pathetic. What do you recommend? XMPP/Jabber + OTR
- iod 9y ago
  Yea I second that, and have been doing this combination for years. For the client programs: Pidgin with OTR - Linux/Windows Adium with OTR - Mac ChatSecure/ZOM - iOS/Android Used on top of some XMPP service underneath such as Cisco Jabber.
  - datenwolf 9y ago
    On that matter: Can anybody recommend XMPP clients that support GSSAPI/SASL/Kerberos user authentication? I'd really love to implement thorough self hosted SSO infrastructure that authenticates against a crypto token (Yubikey, Nitrokey, GPG smartcard). Doing this for e-mail and SSH logins is straightforward (BT;DT). And the Prosody documentation is promising with that respect, so the server side should be doable as well. But on the XMPP client side all I can find are some maillist posts where people supposedly got it working with Pidgin, but no howtos or similar to be found. One thing that I also want to implement is kerberized OAuth and OpenID; however there are only very few services where you can actually log in with something other than Google, Twitter or Facebook – StackExchange used to offer login via custom OpenID, but they removed that a few years ago.
simlevesque 9y ago
I use JMP.chat which is basically XMPP + OMEMO + a phone number.
olejorgenb 9y ago
https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/ https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg/ https://www.patreon.com/matrixdotorg https://www.patreon.com/matrixdotorg
kuon 9y ago
I use Wire (wire.com). It's good with a few downsides: - Cannot send things to yourself. - Sometimes buggy with video calls - I would love a bit more customization client side, like being able to have a more compact interface on the desktop
aaronharnly 9y ago
Well, iMessage is end-to-end encrypted and works smoothly on both mobile and desktop. Caveats apply, of course: supports OS X and iOS only, is not open source and its protocol is not publicly available for audit. OP’s post indicates they need support for Android mobile and Linux desktop, so it won’t fit their bill, but it’s a viable option for some.
mempko 9y ago
Two words: Key Management And of course nobody wants to pay for it. Also we need to aim higher than just p2p messaging. Shameless plug. http://firestr.com http://firestr.com
arzt 9y ago
mainframe is attacking this issue https://mainframe.com/ https://mainframe.com/
jalayir 9y ago
I think part of your question is, why does every p2p app not work on all platforms equally well. This is true of pretty much 90% of apps and software - they don't work on all platforms equally well. This is because of conscious design and business decisions taken by the builders.
ReAzem 9y ago
Did you try Ring? (https://ring.cx https://ring.cx). Ring is comparable to Tox, but it has much less bugs. Full disclosure: Ring dev here. I can answer questions. Keep in mind that some of the platforms you have listed here are not decentralized. When using a fully decentralized system like ring, you must be willing to compromise on some functionality.
- romwell 9y ago
  Never heard of ring, looks very interesting! Questions: 1. Who is developing Ring? Is there a company behind the software? Who are the people? 2. Is it really truly P2P? Does it require servers or known supernodes? If so, what guarantees that those are up? (E.g.: Skype used to be somewhat P2P until MS changed that, and banned old clients from logging in - is that scenario possible?) 3. What is the UI framework based on? (i.e. is it another Electron app?) 4. Bittorent Bleep looked promising, until it was suddenly no more. How are you going to keep Ring afloat? What's going to ensure it's there in 5, 10 years? (As much as I don't like Skype, everyone I need to (video)chat with has been there for 15 years) Thank you!
  - ReAzem 9y ago
    1. Ring is a GNU project (see https://www.gnu.org/manual/blurbs.html#ring https://www.gnu.org/manual/blurbs.html#ring). It is mainly developed by Savoir-faire Linux. A free software consulting company based in Montreal: https://savoirfairelinux.com https://savoirfairelinux.com 2. It is fully decentralized. OpenDHT is the backbone of the network. Calls are made using the sip protocol and are initialized with ICE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Connectivity_Establishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Connectivity_Estab...). Some situations require extra nodes: - If ICE can't open a connection with: ip-to-ip, UPNP, udp hole punching, it will revert to using a TUN/STUN server hosted by Savoir-faire Linux. Note that you can configure your own TURN/STUN server in the Ring settings. - The first time that Ring connects to the network, it needs a "bootstrap server". A bootstrap server isn't really a super node, it is just a "know active node". Every DHT-supporting bittorrent client supports this. Note that you can point ring to another bootstrap server in the settings. - Ring uses an optional blockchain (ethereum) based service to register usernames. This isn't part of all ring nodes by default. It has to be installed separately and then you must point your ring client to it. You can chose not to use usernames if you want and call people with their full RingID instead. 3. We have several clients, all of them use native frameworks. - GNU/Linux: GTK - Android: native android libraries - Mac: native mac libraries - Windows UWP: native UWP libraries - Windows win32: native win32 libraries - IOS: native ios libraries 4. Ring (sflphone) was released in 2004. At first, it was a SIP softphone app. It only became decentralized a few years ago. However, the app still supports SIP. The development has been generously funded by Savoir-faire Linux since 2004 and there is no plan to stop. Savoir-faire Linux has taken every step to ensure that Ring remains free. Joining the GNU project, (2016) was one of these steps: - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2016-11/msg00001.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2016-11/msg00001...
Nuzzerino 9y ago
What about RetroShare? I realize the software can feel a bit janky at times, but I've heard many good things about its p2p privacy features.
tscs37 9y ago
I wouldn't call three of those p2p and one of them doesn't even deserve the description "encrypted". The probably is that the proper p2p encrypted messaging tools have a UI that either absolutely sucks or they have other, similar problems. Problems you have when you can't afford a UI/UX designer.
dbsvsv 9y ago
Isn't there a client by John McAfee?
smilesnd 9y ago
Because networking is difficult with a lot of unknowns, P2P is a resource hog with many security issues, and encryption in itself is a beast. A lot of the video game studios would love to use P2P instead of having to invest in infrastructure that cost money. Destiny is a example why they shouldn't. Destiny P2P system shows on average that anything over 5 users causes major lag in data transfer. Users home networks are equip for handling data coming to them, but not for data being pushed out. Same thing for cell phones they are design for small burst of data going out not constant data being uploaded. P2P is to much a resource hog when it becomes a time sensitive data transfer. The other problem Destiny prove to be a issue with P2P is a small security issue with ddosing. You beating someone in a video game well a instant ddos and bam lag spikes. Lag spike in a P2P system are murder because they are instantly felt by all. Another unknown issue with networking is routing you never know how or where your packets are being sent. If one user packets are for some reason being routed through Uganda then every user might have to send the same package 3 or 4 times each time till it reaches them. You would be surprise how many packet drops happen between isp and networks. This is even a bigger issue with P2P because a packet drop is multiple by the amount of users. And finally we get to the fun world of encryption. It is fun because it is simple to say all the terms that make it sound encrypted and secure but it is a iceberg of hell and dog poop. Creating secure channels while creating encrypted message while insuring that the end party are a trusted end users while ensuring all the algorithms used are up to date and solid is horribly boring and tedious. Did you know that if you compress something then encrypted then you just broke your encryption? That is because compression algorithm has a repeating pattern that makes it easier to break encryption. It is little things like that and more why you need a whole security team of red and blue team when you ever use the word encrypted. Also to the other problem you eluded to cross platform. Making anything cross platform is it's own major heart break issue. When you toss in phones as well (I run in corner screaming and crying thinking about it). You might say something like java can handle it all, but it doesn't. You still need to test everything over and over again. Every computer can be running a different version of the Java virtual machine each having its own different bugs. Then you get to the realm of cell phones on top of creating a desktop app, and I would just walk away. I would charge someone billions to handle that kind of dev work. The situation isn't pathetic it is a iceberg problem. The amount of complex problems that come with creating a stable P2P cross platform encrypted solution that is easy for end user to use, and doesn't compromise in certain areas would cost millions of dollars upfront to build.
nmgsd 9y ago
The issue becomes very difficult when you need to preserve message history reliably and allow account usage across devices. Because key management becomes tricky and clunky and there's no easy UX ways around it. For ephemeral messaging like a SnapChat type use case, you can EASILY provide p2p encrypted. For services like Telegram and FacebookMessenger, their feature list requires cross device syncing, historical archiving, and those features don't play well with rotating keys, perfect forward secrecy, and other e2e encrypted messaging techniques.
pcunite 9y ago
Startups like PreVeil are trying to address this with servers that don't have access to your data.

Boulth 9y ago
If you're referring to the table at the bottom I believe they just want to sway people into buying Business Edition with that. When you compare actual XEPs needed [0] for good mobile and desktop multi device service then Community supports them too! (except one: roster versioning but that matters if you have hundreds of contacts). [0]: https://github.com/siacs/Conversations#xmpp-features https://github.com/siacs/Conversations#xmpp-features
- madez 9y ago
  I do experience message loss, and there is that table. So, I don't think there is much room for interpretation.
  - Boulth 9y ago
    Does your server pass this test https://github.com/iNPUTmice/ComplianceTester https://github.com/iNPUTmice/ComplianceTester ? Did you try conversations.im server that is known good for comparison?
    - madez 9y ago
      I just ran the tester. The default ejabberd configuration in Debian Testing fails: Use compliance suite 'Advanced Server Core Compliance Suite' to test server.tld running XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities… PASSED running XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol… PASSED passed 2/2 Advanced Server Core Compliance Suite: PASSED Use compliance suite 'Advanced Server IM Compliance Suite' to test server.tld running XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities… PASSED running XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol… PASSED running Roster Versioning… PASSED running XEP-0280: Message Carbons… PASSED running XEP-0191: Blocking Command… PASSED running XEP-0045: Multi-User Chat… PASSED running XEP-0198: Stream Management… PASSED running XEP-0313: Message Archive Management… FAILED passed 7/8 Advanced Server IM Compliance Suite: FAILED Use compliance suite 'Advanced Server Mobile Compliance Suite' to test server.tld running XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities… PASSED running XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol… PASSED running XEP-0198: Stream Management… PASSED running XEP-0352: Client State Indication… PASSED running XEP-0357: Push Notifications… PASSED passed 5/5 Advanced Server Mobile Compliance Suite: PASSED Use compliance suite 'Conversations Compliance Suite' to test server.tld Server is ejabberd 18.01 running XEP-0115: Entity Capabilities… PASSED running XEP-0163: Personal Eventing Protocol… PASSED running Roster Versioning… PASSED running XEP-0280: Message Carbons… PASSED running XEP-0191: Blocking Command… PASSED running XEP-0045: Multi-User Chat… PASSED running XEP-0198: Stream Management… PASSED running XEP-0313: Message Archive Management… FAILED running XEP-0352: Client State Indication… PASSED running XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload… FAILED running XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams (Proxy)… PASSED running XEP-0357: Push Notifications… PASSED running XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS… FAILED running XEP-0384: OMEMO Encryption… PASSED running XEP-0313: Message Archive Management (MUC)… FAILED passed 11/15 Conversations Compliance Suite: FAILED My point is not whether ejabberd supports the needed XEP's. What matters is if they are enabled and properly configured by default.
      - Boulth 9y ago
        You were arguing before that reliability is a premium feature while the table shows that XEP-0313 is available for free edition, and that's what holds your messages while you are away. As for the configuration yes, it would be nice if it came pre-configured with modern suite, but it doesn't. It still can be configured and as far as I can see from the tester the effort is not that high.
        madez 9y ago
        I tried to configure it, but it failed. I filed a bug report.