4 ms·

What's the use case? I'm assuming one is trying to send a message to someone far away so it seems like the alternatives wouldn't necessarily help.

rsolva 2y ago
Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages, as in a game of whisper. This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had Briar installed ... but most people don't. But I see how this feature could be very helpful if a state shuts down internet connectivity or during war or a natural catastrophe. The nifty thing is that the app can be shared from one device to another, so you are not dependent on having the app in advance of an emergency. Ideally, everyone should have this installed as an insurance :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
  > Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages Sounds like an excellent target for DoS
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    DoS by local users on local networks? This is that thing where you solve the cryptography problem with the $5 wrench but only slightly different, right?
    - N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
      I haven't looked at the implementation. I was making an off the cuff comment to see if anyone had more information, but yes, ultimately I assume that you could mute an unwanted node with brute force? Or just move further away from it? I was thinking more you flood the "mail bag" of the "message carrier" and assume the implementation has a LRU eviction policy on said "mail bag".
  - genewitch 2y ago
    Someone not participating in briar or the DoS can use fing (android app) or a signal strength meter (handheld, I have 2, personally) to direction find and triangulate the person sending the traffic. Hence $5 lead pipe. and by "someone" i mean "any android cellphone"
- 7373737373 2y ago
  > This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had [...] installed ... but most people don't. Which is why it would be nice if operating systems already included such functionality
- Velocifyer 2y ago
  This is not true, unless you are all in one big fourm or you have a chain of shared blogs. I think they are woried about metadata privacy or people using this to do a DoS.
beefnugs 2y ago
A bunch of countries turn off the internet at the first sign of protests, hell sometimes they just turn it off to stop "a bunch of college kids from cheating during test week" Coming to a country near you soon
- DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
  Right but Bluetooth and local Wi-Fi are very short range so it doesn't actually solve that problem
  - Charon77 2y ago
    It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby.
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Airtags have a totally different architecture than what this protocol is describing, I think.
      - dlenski 2y ago
        > I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Yes indeed. I don't understand how the peer-to-peer relaying can possibly scale without some directed routing algorithm. If my phone running Briar is literally handing off every as-yet-undelivered message to every other phone running Briar, we're going to pretty quickly become overwhelmed. It'll have all the routing issues of a Wi-Fi mesh network, except at a vast scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar
    - dlenski 2y ago
      > It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. Let's think this through. Imagine civil war breaks out in Australia, and communications infrastructure is destroyed or shut off. I'm in Sydney and want to transmit a message to a friend in Perth. How exactly is "everyone acts as a relay" going to work? In particular, how is it going to scale when everyone in the country is trying to do the same things? > This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby. This is incorrect. Airtags (and the Google version) communicate with nearby Internet-connected devices, via Bluetooth and NFC I think. Those nearby Internet-connected devices send the airtag's location to a server. Nothing about this would work without the Internet.

rsolva 2y ago

Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages, as in a game of whisper. This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had Briar installed ... but most people don't. But I see how this feature could be very helpful if a state shuts down internet connectivity or during war or a natural catastrophe. The nifty thing is that the app can be shared from one device to another, so you are not dependent on having the app in advance of an emergency. Ideally, everyone should have this installed as an insurance :)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
> Other phones with Briar installed can carry your (encrypted) messages Sounds like an excellent target for DoS
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  DoS by local users on local networks? This is that thing where you solve the cryptography problem with the $5 wrench but only slightly different, right?
  - N2yhWNXQN3k9 2y ago
    I haven't looked at the implementation. I was making an off the cuff comment to see if anyone had more information, but yes, ultimately I assume that you could mute an unwanted node with brute force? Or just move further away from it? I was thinking more you flood the "mail bag" of the "message carrier" and assume the implementation has a LRU eviction policy on said "mail bag".
- genewitch 2y ago
  Someone not participating in briar or the DoS can use fing (android app) or a signal strength meter (handheld, I have 2, personally) to direction find and triangulate the person sending the traffic. Hence $5 lead pipe. and by "someone" i mean "any android cellphone"
7373737373 2y ago
> This works best if enough people between you and the recipient had [...] installed ... but most people don't. Which is why it would be nice if operating systems already included such functionality
Velocifyer 2y ago
This is not true, unless you are all in one big fourm or you have a chain of shared blogs. I think they are woried about metadata privacy or people using this to do a DoS.

beefnugs 2y ago

A bunch of countries turn off the internet at the first sign of protests, hell sometimes they just turn it off to stop "a bunch of college kids from cheating during test week" Coming to a country near you soon

DonsDiscountGas 2y ago
Right but Bluetooth and local Wi-Fi are very short range so it doesn't actually solve that problem
- Charon77 2y ago
  It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Airtags have a totally different architecture than what this protocol is describing, I think.
    - dlenski 2y ago
      > I haven't studied the protocol but that seems like it has some...obvious routing issues. Yes indeed. I don't understand how the peer-to-peer relaying can possibly scale without some directed routing algorithm. If my phone running Briar is literally handing off every as-yet-undelivered message to every other phone running Briar, we're going to pretty quickly become overwhelmed. It'll have all the routing issues of a Wi-Fi mesh network, except at a vast scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network#Briar
  - dlenski 2y ago
    > It does if you consider that everyone can act as a relay. Let's think this through. Imagine civil war breaks out in Australia, and communications infrastructure is destroyed or shut off. I'm in Sydney and want to transmit a message to a friend in Perth. How exactly is "everyone acts as a relay" going to work? In particular, how is it going to scale when everyone in the country is trying to do the same things? > This is also how apple airtags can be find anywhere there's an iphone users nearby. This is incorrect. Airtags (and the Google version) communicate with nearby Internet-connected devices, via Bluetooth and NFC I think. Those nearby Internet-connected devices send the airtag's location to a server. Nothing about this would work without the Internet.