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Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks
- INTPenis 5y agoWow these features really emphasize how Briar is focused on an arab spring situation where the internet access is restricted. The most common gripe about Briar is that it's not on iOS, but clearly there is nothing like Briar anywhere. Just too bad about the bluetooth thing. I don't see why it should leak your BT ID. That should definitely be an opt-in feature.
- glitchc 5y agoiOS already has a built in feature with AirDrop. Everything except apps can be shared through it and it uses a local connection whenever possible.
- INTPenis 5y agoYeah but Briar communicates over Onion routing, good luck finding that in iOS. The local communications are of course not onion routed, goes without saying. It's a whole little tookit of subversive communication, including some anonymous and some not.
- mike_d 5y agoYou mean like this? https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser/id519296448 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onion-browser/id519296448
- danmur 5y agoLucky :P
- ASalazarMX 5y agoNice, another iOS Safari skin. This surely works as well and is as secure as the official Firefox-based Tor Browser.
- marcodiego 5y agoHow does it compares to Secure Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt ?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lucb1e 5y agoThat seems to be a protocol rather than an implementation. From the project's download page, the only Android application is manyverse. How does that compare to Briar?
- jjbinx007 5y agoPresumably sd cards are safer to connect rather than unsolicited usb drives.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoSafer how? On PC at least, SD card readers, both internal and external are attached via the USB protocol and are seen by the OS like mass storage devices, just like USB drives, including being bootable, so whatever malware you have for a specific PC target, the payload should basically work the same from SD cards as via USB drives.
- redundantly 5y agoNyet. An SD card in a card slot can only be accessed as a mass storage device. A USB drive can act as a mass storage device as well as a keyboard and mouse and even contain an entire OS on it that could be remotely accessible via WiFi.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoYou're right. My bad.
- cva 5y agofwiw, it is most definitely possible to build an sd card that can exfiltrate its own data over wifi. in fact, that was the entire point of the Eye-Fi[0] product (though not with any nefarious intent). though granted that's still a way smaller attack surface than what would be typically granted to a usb device. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-Fi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-Fi
- redundantly 5y agoI had forgotten entirely about Eye-Fi. Excellent point! When it comes to physical access, especially with shared physical devices, there's always going to be some type of attack vector, however small it may be.
- rchaud 5y agoPeer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first. I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone, in either direction pretty seamlessly. I'm now interested in learning about Bluetooth transfer as well as it works without Internet access. I've heard transfer speeds are slow though.
- throw8932894 5y agoWith termux it is pretty simple to run sshd and rsync on android phone.
- sliken 5y agoOr just adb push/pull, which is a nice way to transfer files (like music) over a USB cable. Even charges the phone at the same time ;-).
- lloydatkinson 5y ago> Bluetooth transfer There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoOMG yes, being able to share jpgs, mp3s and even java apps from one phone to another via Irda then Bluetooth felt mind blowing in the early to mid 00's, considering that most people didn't have internet on their phones (2G/3G data plans were eye-watering at the time, hell, even texts were expensive) but their phones had this short range wireless sort-of-WiFi-ish capability on their phones for sending and receiving files from other phones or even desktop computers. For FREE! I remember I would spend hours after school in Photoshop to turn an image I like into the perfect wallpaper for my phone, tuning the resolution and color gradient until it looked perfect on the phone's low resolution display, and using bluetooth to upload them. Same with mp3s. Due to the low amount of storage on the early phones amounting to only a few MB, I spent a lot of time experimenting with aggressive compression to make sure I could fit as many songs on my phone as possible. Therefore they sounded pretty bad on the cheapo wired hands-free earphones that came in the box, but I didn't care or didn't bother to notice as I now had my favorite bands always with me in my pocket before MP3 players became affordable and I would just get lost in the lyrics on the bus to school. On an old Symbian Nokia I had, once you paired it to your PC via Bluetooth, you could send and read SMS texts off it directly from windows just like I can now use Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp desktop clients. I didn't think this would be so mind blowing until I found that Android had no similar functionality built in at the time for SMS on desktop via Bluetooth (and still doesn't AFAIK) which really bummed me out that such a powerful OS with such powerful HW was so lacking in features compared to the dying Symbian. Another fun anecdote, digging around my parents house this year, I found my ancient 2003 vintage NEC phone which had some VGA photos I took with it of me and my old school mates on it. When I saw that I could pull the photos off it in a pinch to my modern Android phone using Bluetooth, and immediately share them online with my former schoolmates from the photos, it was pretty mind blowing to say the least. Bluetooth gets a lot of hate today for connectivity issues some people face, but seeing it work reliably between vastly different devices almost 20 years apart is an amazing feat in my book and should at least deserve some praise.
- dwb 5y agoI generally lean more toward “i like that iOS is locked down”, but this offline-app-sharing feature is one of the best arguments I’ve seen against that. That said, either I’d want peer-to-peer-shared apps to be signed by an entity I already highly trust, or that the sandbox containing the app was extremely solid (and preferably both of course).
- xfer 5y agoWell, if you don't trust this person you are downloading your app from, can you expect them to keep your messages private and secure? It already says when you would use such functionality("might be useful during internet shutdowns or natural disasters").
- sneak 5y agoApple (or the military that controls them) can revoke the certs for any app at any time, rendering it unlaunchable.
- myself248 5y agoF-Droid can also share APKs peer-to-peer. If both parties have F-Droid installed prior to the internet going away or being censored or whatever, other apps can be shared locally from a single device that has the app, to any other F-Droid user: https://f-droid.org/en/tutorials/swap/ https://f-droid.org/en/tutorials/swap/
- mike_d 5y ago> I’d want peer-to-peer-shared apps to be signed by an entity I already highly trust Airdrop is peer-to-peer file sharing built into the OS.
- dwb 5y agoI think you misunderstand. I’m talking about running apps shared over some untrusted (or partially trusted) medium, be that airdrop or whatever else.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoBriar is really neat, and I hope it will land on Linux, Mac and Windows. Being able to send messages and files directly to anybody on a local network without any account just rocks.
- sebkur 5y agosince recently, there's a cross-platform desktop client in development using compose for desktop as its UI framework
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoThat's fantastic news.
- giphyman 5y agoI found the code repository for Briar desktop port: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar-desktop https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar-desktop
- flaburgan 5y agoUbuntu 08.04 was already allowing this using empathy...
- jqpabc123 5y agoMan can not live by Android alone. I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.
- emptysongglass 5y agoYes I wouldn't touch it because even though I'm not into Apple and its ecosystem I do communicate with Apple users and I'd expect activists would want to too.
- georgyo 5y agoiPhone makes much of these concepts either impossible or extremely difficult. Namely, things cannot operate easily as a background service. Forcing the user to jump though many hoops to make it work. And since it is not an apple service. There is a single button "reset settings" that breaks all the users changes for these apps. On one hand it is generally more secure for iPhone users, on the other hand it greatly inhibits some types of innovation.
- jqpabc123 5y agoI understand. But it doesn't change the fact that other tools are available which do serve both and are thus much more practical.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoWhat I'd like to have is easy offline media files sharing across as many phone models as possible. Basically a free open-source alternative to ShareIt. Why it doesn't exist yet? Does ShareIt use some hidden and/or proprietary APIs?
- urtrs 5y agoTrebleShot was similar but it is deprecated now.
- nanomonkey 5y agoI do this with the Manyverse app, which uses the Secure Scuttlebutt p2p gossip protocol.
- sebkur 5y agoif "on the local lan" is offline enough for you, take a look at kde connect, connects all your devices with file transfer, cross-device copy'n'paste etc.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoBy "offline" I mean not using any external infrastructure at all. Use Wi-Fi/bluetooth/whatever both devices are capable of and set it up as needed. I want to walk up to a person anywhere and share photos/videos I've just made with them.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoOk.. I installed this... what now? Is there anything to follow? A list of public accounts/blogs? Or is the only option to get real-life friends to join, and follow only them?
- sebkur 5y agoyou can also add contacts remotely, you need to exchange your briar links on a different channel. It's safe to post your link publicly. Only if both parties add each other's links within the app, you will be able to communicate. Post you own link here and add mine: briar://aagcagf7vews5wtz4kpzzy76vpv2r65mlwqlm6a627tvr6bkf75em
- a-b 5y agoReminded me about FTN, FIDO, and Golded
- slim 5y agoThe best feature of Briar is still, the tutorial on how to build it from source. Complete with screenshots https://briarproject.org/building-the-source-code/ https://briarproject.org/building-the-source-code/
- goodpoint 5y agoBriar desperately needs a library for Linux and Windows that can be used to build all sort of applications. Discussion forums, group chat, IM, location-based messaging, email/mailing-list equivalents, blogs and offline websites and more. Not just one app.
- giphyman 5y agoBriar is actually built on a library called Bramble that can be used for offline-first p2p data syncing. There was recently a good talk by a Briar Dev going deeper into the Bramble protocol: https://nico.dorfbrunnen.eu/posts/2021/diving-at-xmpp/ https://nico.dorfbrunnen.eu/posts/2021/diving-at-xmpp/
- goodpoint 5y agoThanks for the link. Unfortunately that implementation can be used only from java.
- oggelato 5y agowhat do you think about this https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#does-briar-provide-anonymity https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#does-b... ?
- lucb1e 5y agoIt basically says what I would expect, but then I'm a tech-savvy privacy nerd who knows how this sort of tech works. Any particular reason you asked?
- oggelato 5y agoI've asked because the mac of your Bluetooth is linked to your device and therefore traceable to the user, don't you agree? and then, for what reason should I share the BT address with a remote contact that i will never see IRL?
- lucb1e 5y agoIf you won't ever see them... keep in mind you're posting in a thread titled "Briar 1.4 - Offline sharing". It's meant to be used offline and you're broadcasting your MAC address where-ever you go anyway. Doesn't mean others should track it (I had some interesting experiences with my WiFi MAC ending up in some tracking database), but it's not for a lack of ability.
- Heliosmaster 5y agoI'm a bit doubting about this feature: "Share the app with people nearby without internet access" Hey fellow protester, here is a binary for you to install on your device. That doesn't sound dangerous, right?
- xori 5y agoIt's actually built into vanilla android https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/9283534?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/9283534?hl=en
- thekid314 5y agoThis sounds like a hobby project. Except Sudan has had its internet cut for 2 weeks. A widely used mesh network app would really change the balance of power between the people and the military coup.
- askvictor 5y agoThese sorts of things inevitably are hobby projects... until they're not. The people making them are usually quite far-sighted about scenarios they might be used in, but these scenarios are generally not relevant day-to-day for most people. That would be a real breakthrough - make a system like this that is useful enough to get mass adoption in 'normal' times, but can continue working in disaster/coup/war type situations.
- imwillofficial 5y agoAnyone remember the Bump app to share contact details? That was so cool.
- daneel_w 5y agoI've waited for an iOS version of Briar for years already.
- exabrial 5y agoThis is freaking cool! I just wish it was cross-platform