Implement Cables Communication system

Byzantium / Byzantium

Configs and code for Project Byzantium.

GNU General Public License v3.0

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Implement Cables Communication system #123

Open Sitwon opened 12 years ago

Sitwon commented 12 years ago

The Liberté Linux project has developed a secure, decentralized, email-like communication system called Cables. I think it's an almost perfect addition to Byzantium Linux.

http://dee.su/cables https://github.com/mkdesu/cables

virtadpt commented 12 years ago

Advantages:

Layer 4 agnostic. If it'll run over Tor without problems it should run over a mesh without problems.
PFS by default.
Messages from a node can be repudiated - "I didn't send it!"
A regular mail client can be used. Does this include webmail clients (like privacybox.de)?

Disadvantages:

We can't count on any given node having persistent storage. This means that any crypto keys a given node generates will have to be regenerated on next boot. That breaks the history of communications - you can't trust that the same person is running a local node. On the other hand, we also regenerate SSL certs on boot if they don't already exist.

Which is more important - being able to repudiate a message or having the same x.509 for a node?

It's worth experimenting with.

haxwithaxe commented 12 years ago

ssl isn't any good for authentication/identification without a central authority anyways so the ssl cert being regenerated is fine. the the cables key pairs need to persist to maintain identity of an individual so we might need to put some ui around that to notify of that issue and suggest possible solutions.

in my opinion being able to repudiate a message is tied intrinsically to having an identity associated with the sender.

virtadpt commented 11 years ago

Development of Cables seems to have stalled out. The last commit was seven months ago.

It also requires a full MTA, Java, Tor or I2P as their transport mechanisms (the former requires access to the global net, the latter a fair amount of organization beforehand to set up a network), and a user facing mail client to send and receive messages.

How practical is this going to be in a crisis, compared the other stuff we already offer?