3 ms·

This is very cool, but it seems extraordinarily cumbersome to pass on the generated super long string to another computer or mobile device.

OJFord 5y ago
I'm not sure about 'extraordinarily cumbersome', just copy-paste through Slack or whatever? Surely most use cases are between people, not just between (one person's) devices? An improvement could be to reversibly derive a few random words ('what 3 words' style) from the public key I suppose - so that it can be easily shared over a voice call, or to make it easier for the same person to enter on another device.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  There's a (mostly) serverless file transfer tool whose name escapes me at the moment that uses this method to exchange the actual keys for the secure transfer...but it works there because the connection is only available for initiation, for that specific host and port, for a pretty limited period of time. The key is also one-use. In this case the 'server' is up for an extended period of time, presumably, and the public key is both the address and authentication (unless you turn on requiring a specific key on the initiator, I think? I only glanced at the docs.) With enough nodes you'd end up with multiple nodes having the same words (divide the possible keyspace by the possible combination of words and you'll get a very large number), and also you'd be at significant risk of people finding nodes just by banging away trying to connect to different 3-word addresses. I agree that the tool seems to be intended for same-party use.
  - pfraze 5y ago
    Magic Wormhole is probably what you’re thinking of. The live handshake requirement is definitely a limiting factor on that approach, but probably still worth doing. Other options would be QR codes and registry services. The protocol team is looking at using the ristretto algorithms to derive “subdomains” which would reduce the amount of key sharing a fair bit
  - criddell 5y ago
    Are you talking about AirDrop?
gauchojs 5y ago
Yeah - this could work for more people if they had a small app that opened "Spork urls" spork://whattzzuu5drxwdwi6xbijjf7yt56l5adzht7j7kjvfped7amova

OJFord 5y ago

I'm not sure about 'extraordinarily cumbersome', just copy-paste through Slack or whatever? Surely most use cases are between people, not just between (one person's) devices? An improvement could be to reversibly derive a few random words ('what 3 words' style) from the public key I suppose - so that it can be easily shared over a voice call, or to make it easier for the same person to enter on another device.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
There's a (mostly) serverless file transfer tool whose name escapes me at the moment that uses this method to exchange the actual keys for the secure transfer...but it works there because the connection is only available for initiation, for that specific host and port, for a pretty limited period of time. The key is also one-use. In this case the 'server' is up for an extended period of time, presumably, and the public key is both the address and authentication (unless you turn on requiring a specific key on the initiator, I think? I only glanced at the docs.) With enough nodes you'd end up with multiple nodes having the same words (divide the possible keyspace by the possible combination of words and you'll get a very large number), and also you'd be at significant risk of people finding nodes just by banging away trying to connect to different 3-word addresses. I agree that the tool seems to be intended for same-party use.
- pfraze 5y ago
  Magic Wormhole is probably what you’re thinking of. The live handshake requirement is definitely a limiting factor on that approach, but probably still worth doing. Other options would be QR codes and registry services. The protocol team is looking at using the ristretto algorithms to derive “subdomains” which would reduce the amount of key sharing a fair bit
- criddell 5y ago
  Are you talking about AirDrop?

gauchojs 5y ago

Yeah - this could work for more people if they had a small app that opened "Spork urls" spork://whattzzuu5drxwdwi6xbijjf7yt56l5adzht7j7kjvfped7amova