6 ms·

Private, Secure and Uncensorable Messaging over a LoRa Mesh (2022)

99 points by Bluestein 2y ago

mlukaszek 2y ago
Any significant differences from Meshtastic other than a console PC app?
- nexus_six 2y ago
  There is a similar thread up here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253922 The author of this blog post is the developer of Reticulum, which is a complete network stack and full-fledged alternative to TCP/IP. (https://reticulum.network/ https://reticulum.network/). Reticulum is capable of operating over not just LoRa, but bluetooth low energy, standard WiFi, Packet Radio, and overlay networks like Tor and I2P.
  - federalfarmer 2y ago
    Reticulum seems like a promising protocol but I doubt it can be used practically as a mesh over packet radio at low baud rates given its asymmetric encryption suite. Constant key exchanges, message acknowledgements, and large payloads over standards like AX.25 or FT8 would quickly congest a given frequency using off-the-shelf analog equipment that requires audio mod/demod. But it would probably work fine for more traditional, client-server traffic or simplex traffic. It seems much better suited to digital traffic in the 900mhz+ range a-la Meshtastic or Arednmesh.
ale42 2y ago
Web site says: > does not reveal any identifying information about Alice or Bob In my opinion this is not really true, any radio transmitter can be triangulated (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding), and once the position is known, the identity of the user can possibly be inferred. Of course the transmitter can be concealed, or operated from a remote location, but this might cancel the benefits of using no infrastructure.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  I think you are entirely correct in that assessment, that the physical layer is vulnerable ... A different question - one I am curious about - is what can be known: Just the fact that A and B are running a transmiter -or- their identities ...
  - mfro 2y ago
    Not an expert by any means but there are a few factors: 1) the data sent between two nodes should be encrypted. As stated by reticulum and nomad devs, the software is in beta so privacy-violating bugs are possible, but theoretically the messages and identities can't be read by an outside agent. 2) the 33cm band[1] is not, from my brief research and basic knowledge of amateur radio, in wide use outside of hobbyists. It may be that in some places you would be the only person within a large radius actually using the band, meaning your signals stand out quite a bit to an astute observer. They would be able to triangulate the location of the transmitters with some work, but again, theoretically they could not read the communications. So there are several opsec concerns for someone who doesn't want to draw attention to themselves. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33-centimeter_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33-centimeter_band
- jonhohle 2y ago
  Is there enough data in the mesh to conceal where a message is coming from? If only Alice and Bob have devices, that may be true, but if the messages are low bandwidth enough to be hidden in amongst the rest of the mesh communication nodes could be found but it wouldn’t necessarily identify where the message originated or was received.
- commandlinefan 2y ago
  The only way any communications medium will ever become truly uncensorable will be when it becomes ubiquitous. If everybody were using this approach, it wouldn't matter who could triangulate who, because you could never pinpoint exactly who you triangulated. I don't have much hope that we'll ever get to that point, though - lots of uncensorable (with enough adoption) approaches have been proposed like Freenet, I2P, and Tor, but the pushback on adoption has always been: "wait, this is actually uncensorable. I'm not going to support that."
theodric 2y ago
'Uncensorable' yes, but still vulnerable to novel government regulation, jamming, rubber hose attack, etc. Folks using Meshtastic in Ukraine rapidly found out that they were advertising their positions, as well, resulting in being struck by opposing forces. I enjoy LARPing as a prepper, but I'm afraid this technology has been demonstrated to fall short in times and places where people really needed to use it in anger. The moment this sort of technology begins to pose a real threat to the control soft-authoritarian governments like the EU and UK have over the populace, they'll simply ban or regulate it the way they already do guns and large cash transactions, and are currently considering doing with Twitter[1]. Once you break that law, you'll be doing 18 months in prison for your ham hobby. I suspect we will just have to go back to talking to each other in the pub :-( [1] https://youtu.be/mrTj6XdpXPM https://youtu.be/mrTj6XdpXPM
- superkuh 2y ago
  This is when you put up a very low to the ground HF dipole and operate the mesh in NVIS (near vertical incidence scattering) donut mode. Your node won't be able to contact anything local but it will contact a ring region about 100 miles around you with a many tens of miles gap. It is much harder to find an NVIS transmitter with multi-lateration which is why it is the mode most commonly used in military operations (for ground troops).
  - nexus_six 2y ago
    The network stack used in this article is called Reticulum. Reticulum can operate over really any medium that has a MDU of 500 bytes, and a throughput greater than 5 bits. I've performed this exact test using two HF radio nodes equipped with NVIS antennas operating on the 40 meter band, with each radio 144 km (90 miles) separate in distance. Node 1 was out in the field while Node 2 was back at my house. Node 2 was able to act as a bridge to the outside TCP Testnet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blwNVumLujc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blwNVumLujc
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
thefourthchime 2y ago
I have one of these. My hacker friend gave it to me to help expand the network in Austin. Unfortunately, it's very much a tinkering, hacky, hobbyist thing. It's extremely exciting to get any kind of communication. It would be interesting to see how well it works in a more densely packed area where people are really using it. For me, it's been, unfortunately, useless.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  Thanks for sharing your experience ... ... mass adoption is a thing - a prerequisite. But it is kind of a chicken and egg problem ... It might unfortunately take some CME event or the like - a severe disruption for people to consider these alternatives, am afraid.-
ThinkBeat 2y ago
How does this compare to CB radio in terms of the distance it can operate over? The two radio boards seem a lot less capable but looks can be deceiving given how ignorant I am over these matters.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Basic LoRA can do >7km in the 25mW ranges, but the bandwidth is minimal. Note, under some situations the range can hit hundreds of km. CB/11meter range depends on many parameters, but even at 4W you would be lucky to reach beyond 80km. The main difference is Lora Gateways receiver sensitivity is <-139dBm, and can recover data from what looks like the noise floor in most hardware. If Lora had at least 3 manufacturers, I would have stuck it in every station years ago. Cheers, =3
  - ale42 2y ago
    There are some amateur radio operators who operate in QRP (max. 5 W power) and have a DXCC award (so they have contacted at least 100 different countries). So the range is much more than 80 km, especially if you use digital modes able to recover signals you can't even hear (like FT8 or WSPR)... but bandwidth will be very low.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Tropospheric ducting is rare on 11meter, but indeed Hams have achieved some pretty creative antenna setups in HF. It is a deep rabbit hole, but in the spirit of comparing apples-to-apples... Also, the ERP limits on FCC stamped consumer modules is fairly low for unlicensed users. i.e. many Lora modules have iffy certified antennas for compliance reasons. Cheers, =3
- Rhapso 2y ago
  Well the range of packet radio over CB in the US is "We will hunt you down and arrest you". In general, the links supported range from line-of-sight to a few miles. If it can move 5 bits/second and you can make a link-layer abstraction (outputs the packet from 1 sender at a time) Reticulum will make the rest of the network work as intended.
ThinkBeat 2y ago
I have been dreaming about something like this for a while. Depending on local laws and regulations different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage. If one would like to interconnect various meshes, I can't think of a way to avoid using the Internet to trunk traffic across the Atlantic let's say. Should that ever be done is a most excellent question. perhaps proximity and a local mesh is where it should stop.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage. One of the nicest advantages of the underlying network stack here is that it can run over almost anything (Ethernet, I2P, internet, WiFi ...) > Should that ever be done is a most excellent question. Baring your, indeed very valid question, I am sure some enterprising soul would come up with a way to run some microwave trunk or some such, if needed.-
  - orbat 2y ago
    You generally need line-of-sight for microwave links and the longest known link is something like 350km, and even using tropospheric scatter you can't go over ~500km, so you'd need multiple relay stations with microwaves. Using a lower band and bouncing off the ionosphere gets you much further but only works if ionosphere weather is OK, and it'll have lower bandwidth (not necessarily a problem though), and encryption is a no-no for amateur radio in most countries
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      What would it be like - heaven forbid - to have weather-dependant transatlantic links? (Decently fast, just ... periodically off ...)
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  In general, most high-band UHF RF is constrained by earths curvature. Hams that operate in HF/CW bands simply rely on atmospheric or moon bounce to exchange Morse-code over long distances. Amateur radio is a great way to gain a different perspective on electronics, physics, and our sun. Have a great day, =3
alnwlsn 2y ago
In my opinion, all these types of projects (Meshtastic, etc) fail at their goal of working "completely offline" as I discovered when I brought a bunch of Meshtastic stuff with me on vacation to a place with very limited internet. If I need to do a bunch of pip install instead of a zip file I can thumb drive around to anyone who needs it, it isn't really that useful. Even the documentation is on a web site; I would have loved a PDF, or at least a single file HTML, so I could at least learn about how to use the system while being offline. Sure, you can download it all yourself, but that requires you to know what you'll need beforehand. In short, we need a "click here before going offline" button. If the internet is still working, you probably would just use it for your messaging instead.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  You can `pip install` from the filesystem just as easily as you would over the internet, either from wheels or source folders. I'm sure if you wanted to you could write a quick script to download all of the packages and dependencies you need and then zip it all up for you.
  - alnwlsn 2y ago
    I'm considering it. Of course, the whole argument could then be extended all the way to "does your computer have an OS installed?" and that can of worms is something I think most would agree is outside of the scope of the original project. Bootstrapping can be tricky.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Yeah but given that the default is apparently not to do that... kind of shows that these things are just a fun theoretical exercise rather than a serious attempt to solve a problem that actually exists.
- edsq 2y ago
  It looks like the RNode firmware does exactly what you're looking for with its "RNode Bootstrap Console": https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ Documentation is surprisingly hard to find, but from blog posts on the site it looks like if you press the reset button twice within one second, an RNode will turn into a WiFi access point and host this website. From there, you can download everything you need to create and use another RNode (including Reticulum, Nomad Network, and Sideband). I find this notion of RNodes being self-propagating really compelling!

99 points by Bluestein 2y ago

mlukaszek 2y ago

Any significant differences from Meshtastic other than a console PC app?

nexus_six 2y ago
There is a similar thread up here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41253922 The author of this blog post is the developer of Reticulum, which is a complete network stack and full-fledged alternative to TCP/IP. (https://reticulum.network/ https://reticulum.network/). Reticulum is capable of operating over not just LoRa, but bluetooth low energy, standard WiFi, Packet Radio, and overlay networks like Tor and I2P.
- federalfarmer 2y ago
  Reticulum seems like a promising protocol but I doubt it can be used practically as a mesh over packet radio at low baud rates given its asymmetric encryption suite. Constant key exchanges, message acknowledgements, and large payloads over standards like AX.25 or FT8 would quickly congest a given frequency using off-the-shelf analog equipment that requires audio mod/demod. But it would probably work fine for more traditional, client-server traffic or simplex traffic. It seems much better suited to digital traffic in the 900mhz+ range a-la Meshtastic or Arednmesh.

ale42 2y ago

Web site says: > does not reveal any identifying information about Alice or Bob In my opinion this is not really true, any radio transmitter can be triangulated (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding), and once the position is known, the identity of the user can possibly be inferred. Of course the transmitter can be concealed, or operated from a remote location, but this might cancel the benefits of using no infrastructure.

Bluestein 2y ago
I think you are entirely correct in that assessment, that the physical layer is vulnerable ... A different question - one I am curious about - is what can be known: Just the fact that A and B are running a transmiter -or- their identities ...
- mfro 2y ago
  Not an expert by any means but there are a few factors: 1) the data sent between two nodes should be encrypted. As stated by reticulum and nomad devs, the software is in beta so privacy-violating bugs are possible, but theoretically the messages and identities can't be read by an outside agent. 2) the 33cm band[1] is not, from my brief research and basic knowledge of amateur radio, in wide use outside of hobbyists. It may be that in some places you would be the only person within a large radius actually using the band, meaning your signals stand out quite a bit to an astute observer. They would be able to triangulate the location of the transmitters with some work, but again, theoretically they could not read the communications. So there are several opsec concerns for someone who doesn't want to draw attention to themselves. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33-centimeter_band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33-centimeter_band
jonhohle 2y ago
Is there enough data in the mesh to conceal where a message is coming from? If only Alice and Bob have devices, that may be true, but if the messages are low bandwidth enough to be hidden in amongst the rest of the mesh communication nodes could be found but it wouldn’t necessarily identify where the message originated or was received.
commandlinefan 2y ago
The only way any communications medium will ever become truly uncensorable will be when it becomes ubiquitous. If everybody were using this approach, it wouldn't matter who could triangulate who, because you could never pinpoint exactly who you triangulated. I don't have much hope that we'll ever get to that point, though - lots of uncensorable (with enough adoption) approaches have been proposed like Freenet, I2P, and Tor, but the pushback on adoption has always been: "wait, this is actually uncensorable. I'm not going to support that."

theodric 2y ago

'Uncensorable' yes, but still vulnerable to novel government regulation, jamming, rubber hose attack, etc. Folks using Meshtastic in Ukraine rapidly found out that they were advertising their positions, as well, resulting in being struck by opposing forces. I enjoy LARPing as a prepper, but I'm afraid this technology has been demonstrated to fall short in times and places where people really needed to use it in anger. The moment this sort of technology begins to pose a real threat to the control soft-authoritarian governments like the EU and UK have over the populace, they'll simply ban or regulate it the way they already do guns and large cash transactions, and are currently considering doing with Twitter[1]. Once you break that law, you'll be doing 18 months in prison for your ham hobby. I suspect we will just have to go back to talking to each other in the pub :-( [1] https://youtu.be/mrTj6XdpXPM https://youtu.be/mrTj6XdpXPM

superkuh 2y ago
This is when you put up a very low to the ground HF dipole and operate the mesh in NVIS (near vertical incidence scattering) donut mode. Your node won't be able to contact anything local but it will contact a ring region about 100 miles around you with a many tens of miles gap. It is much harder to find an NVIS transmitter with multi-lateration which is why it is the mode most commonly used in military operations (for ground troops).
- nexus_six 2y ago
  The network stack used in this article is called Reticulum. Reticulum can operate over really any medium that has a MDU of 500 bytes, and a throughput greater than 5 bits. I've performed this exact test using two HF radio nodes equipped with NVIS antennas operating on the 40 meter band, with each radio 144 km (90 miles) separate in distance. Node 1 was out in the field while Node 2 was back at my house. Node 2 was able to act as a bridge to the outside TCP Testnet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blwNVumLujc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blwNVumLujc
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

thefourthchime 2y ago

I have one of these. My hacker friend gave it to me to help expand the network in Austin. Unfortunately, it's very much a tinkering, hacky, hobbyist thing. It's extremely exciting to get any kind of communication. It would be interesting to see how well it works in a more densely packed area where people are really using it. For me, it's been, unfortunately, useless.

Bluestein 2y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience ... ... mass adoption is a thing - a prerequisite. But it is kind of a chicken and egg problem ... It might unfortunately take some CME event or the like - a severe disruption for people to consider these alternatives, am afraid.-

ThinkBeat 2y ago

How does this compare to CB radio in terms of the distance it can operate over? The two radio boards seem a lot less capable but looks can be deceiving given how ignorant I am over these matters.

Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Basic LoRA can do >7km in the 25mW ranges, but the bandwidth is minimal. Note, under some situations the range can hit hundreds of km. CB/11meter range depends on many parameters, but even at 4W you would be lucky to reach beyond 80km. The main difference is Lora Gateways receiver sensitivity is <-139dBm, and can recover data from what looks like the noise floor in most hardware. If Lora had at least 3 manufacturers, I would have stuck it in every station years ago. Cheers, =3
- ale42 2y ago
  There are some amateur radio operators who operate in QRP (max. 5 W power) and have a DXCC award (so they have contacted at least 100 different countries). So the range is much more than 80 km, especially if you use digital modes able to recover signals you can't even hear (like FT8 or WSPR)... but bandwidth will be very low.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    Tropospheric ducting is rare on 11meter, but indeed Hams have achieved some pretty creative antenna setups in HF. It is a deep rabbit hole, but in the spirit of comparing apples-to-apples... Also, the ERP limits on FCC stamped consumer modules is fairly low for unlicensed users. i.e. many Lora modules have iffy certified antennas for compliance reasons. Cheers, =3
Rhapso 2y ago
Well the range of packet radio over CB in the US is "We will hunt you down and arrest you". In general, the links supported range from line-of-sight to a few miles. If it can move 5 bits/second and you can make a link-layer abstraction (outputs the packet from 1 sender at a time) Reticulum will make the rest of the network work as intended.

ThinkBeat 2y ago

I have been dreaming about something like this for a while. Depending on local laws and regulations different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage. If one would like to interconnect various meshes, I can't think of a way to avoid using the Internet to trunk traffic across the Atlantic let's say. Should that ever be done is a most excellent question. perhaps proximity and a local mesh is where it should stop.

Bluestein 2y ago
> different technology could be utilized to optimize coverage. One of the nicest advantages of the underlying network stack here is that it can run over almost anything (Ethernet, I2P, internet, WiFi ...) > Should that ever be done is a most excellent question. Baring your, indeed very valid question, I am sure some enterprising soul would come up with a way to run some microwave trunk or some such, if needed.-
- orbat 2y ago
  You generally need line-of-sight for microwave links and the longest known link is something like 350km, and even using tropospheric scatter you can't go over ~500km, so you'd need multiple relay stations with microwaves. Using a lower band and bouncing off the ionosphere gets you much further but only works if ionosphere weather is OK, and it'll have lower bandwidth (not necessarily a problem though), and encryption is a no-no for amateur radio in most countries
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    What would it be like - heaven forbid - to have weather-dependant transatlantic links? (Decently fast, just ... periodically off ...)
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
In general, most high-band UHF RF is constrained by earths curvature. Hams that operate in HF/CW bands simply rely on atmospheric or moon bounce to exchange Morse-code over long distances. Amateur radio is a great way to gain a different perspective on electronics, physics, and our sun. Have a great day, =3

alnwlsn 2y ago

In my opinion, all these types of projects (Meshtastic, etc) fail at their goal of working "completely offline" as I discovered when I brought a bunch of Meshtastic stuff with me on vacation to a place with very limited internet. If I need to do a bunch of pip install instead of a zip file I can thumb drive around to anyone who needs it, it isn't really that useful. Even the documentation is on a web site; I would have loved a PDF, or at least a single file HTML, so I could at least learn about how to use the system while being offline. Sure, you can download it all yourself, but that requires you to know what you'll need beforehand. In short, we need a "click here before going offline" button. If the internet is still working, you probably would just use it for your messaging instead.

Y_Y 2y ago
You can `pip install` from the filesystem just as easily as you would over the internet, either from wheels or source folders. I'm sure if you wanted to you could write a quick script to download all of the packages and dependencies you need and then zip it all up for you.
- alnwlsn 2y ago
  I'm considering it. Of course, the whole argument could then be extended all the way to "does your computer have an OS installed?" and that can of worms is something I think most would agree is outside of the scope of the original project. Bootstrapping can be tricky.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Yeah but given that the default is apparently not to do that... kind of shows that these things are just a fun theoretical exercise rather than a serious attempt to solve a problem that actually exists.
edsq 2y ago
It looks like the RNode firmware does exactly what you're looking for with its "RNode Bootstrap Console": https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ Documentation is surprisingly hard to find, but from blog posts on the site it looks like if you press the reset button twice within one second, an RNode will turn into a WiFi access point and host this website. From there, you can download everything you need to create and use another RNode (including Reticulum, Nomad Network, and Sideband). I find this notion of RNodes being self-propagating really compelling!