The Most Secure Messaging On Earth (Fee Backed Asset)

[luckybit]

@bytemaster

Here is the source code: https://github.com/davidlazar/vuvuzela

Elucidate what you can from it.

[monsterer]

Is there any possible way that any MITM attack can happen? Can anyone find out who is sending messages to who, or who is checking their messages and when? Encryption doesn't go far enough.

See the stealth transfers proposal. The only place this proposal is lacking is that the sender and recipient can prove a connection between themselves if they so chose.

[luckybit]

The only way to bring this into bitshares (which makes any sense) is to do nothing and wait for proper anonymity to be implemented in bitshares transactions. Then you just send a memo and you're done.

But does it scale? How much data is contained in a memo?

If it doesn't scale, then bitshares doesn't scale either.

Is there any possible way that any MITM attack can happen? Can anyone find out who is sending messages to who, or who is checking their messages and when? Encryption doesn't go far enough.

[monsterer]

The only way to bring this into bitshares (which makes any sense) is to do nothing and wait for proper anonymity to be implemented in bitshares transactions. Then you just send a memo and you're done.

But does it scale? How much data is contained in a memo?

If it doesn't scale, then bitshares doesn't scale either.

[luckybit]

The only way to bring this into bitshares (which makes any sense) is to do nothing and wait for proper anonymity to be implemented in bitshares transactions. Then you just send a memo and you're done.

But does it scale? How much data is contained in a memo?

[monsterer]

The only way to bring this into bitshares (which makes any sense) is to do nothing and wait for proper anonymity to be implemented in bitshares transactions. Then you just send a memo and you're done.

[jsidhu]

As linked from the whitepaper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV2HDM86XgI&t=17m50s
For anyone without access to youtube, or that doesn't want to click and watch for 20 seconds.  This is a video of Michael Hayden saying that the USG kills people based on metadata.

And their families wouldn't stand up and tell the world that they had no proof? I don't think that anything that not proving that someone did or said something woudl be used to get rid of people even for the power monger USG.

[luckybit]

The final destination for all mail would be the blockchain

You need to read the paper more carefully -- you're no longer talking about Vuvuzela, but some hypothetical blockchain-based system that does things differently than Vuvuzela.  Vuvuzela's critical contribution is that it's scalable because it doesn't broadcast messages.  If you put messages on the blockchain, you're not only broadcasting them (which is more expensive than the way Vuvuzela does it) but requiring the broadcast nodes to archive them (broadcasting and archiving is even more expensive than broadcasting).

OP idea doesn't really specify how Vuvuzela protocol would interact with the blockchain or what would give the asset any value.

It's all up for discussion. I do think it can be monetized via the Internet of things but I don't know if it would have to be done over Bitshares or over a DAG like Iota.

[luckybit]

Using the "drop box" approach does not solve the "routing" problem unless you use the same drop box over and over.  In which case the problem can be described as:

How do I put information "X" into public mailbox "Y" without anyone knowing I was the one putting the message there. 
A second question is how do I check mailbox "Y" without anyone knowing I am the one checking it.

The solution is for me to put my message in an envelope, then put the envelope inside another envelope, and lastly put that inside yet another envelope.  I then mail the message, the first recipient opens it and "re-mails it", the second recipient does the same. This is how remailing works in the physical world (where it is grey market / illegal).   

The only difference here is that the remailer batches messages and then adds bogus messages into the mix.  This means that second remailer cannot correlate inputs to the source with outputs. 

The final destination for all mail would be the blockchain which is replicated in such a manner that users can check their mail without revealing which mailbox they are looking at.

The challenges posed by this protocol include:
1. How do the remailers get paid?
2. How is payment made in such a way that doesn't compromise the intended goal?
3. How do you verify the remailer doesn't just drop your message after taking payment?
4. What size should every message be, they must all be the same size or patterns can be detected / correlated.

Lastly, and most significantly, how much does this degrade the user experience? If it degrades it much at all then your target audience is greatly reduced. 

In fact, I would argue that BitMessage is already sufficient for this market (with a better UI perhaps).

Bitmessage is decent but it doesn't use the Bitshares blockchain. Bitmessage is funded on the donation model.

You of course could use something very similar to Bitmessage but could it work over Bitshares?
Anyway
http://blog.acolyer.org/2015/10/23/vuvuzela-scalable-private-messaging-resistant-to-traffic-analysis/

[Thom]

I think you should amend your poll options to allow for doing it so as not to interfere with other work talking place, such as getting the UI / UX in better shape so it's more attractive to traders and easy to use for all.

I'm happy to see the progress is moving right along, thanks to the efforts of Jakub & Bill Buttler, an of course the devs doing the actual work.

I have read the papers on Vuvuzela and think this is an excellent candidate to extend our ecosystem. Perhaps it could be adapted for use with web servers for truly anonymous browsing, which if that can be done provides another layer of security for web wallets,

In general I'm in favor of using this technology, but it should not impact efforts currently underway. An FBA could accomplish that if devs other than the core devs or those already working to complete current efforts, were recruited or found to do this work.

Realistically, I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect that such an FBA would not have some impact on current efforts, if nothing else discussion about API and code to integrate this new feature. Without more examples, tutorials and documentation efforts like this cannot be purely independent.

[theoretical]

The final destination for all mail would be the blockchain

You need to read the paper more carefully -- you're no longer talking about Vuvuzela, but some hypothetical blockchain-based system that does things differently than Vuvuzela.  Vuvuzela's critical contribution is that it's scalable because it doesn't broadcast messages.  If you put messages on the blockchain, you're not only broadcasting them (which is more expensive than the way Vuvuzela does it) but requiring the broadcast nodes to archive them (broadcasting and archiving is even more expensive than broadcasting).

OP idea doesn't really specify how Vuvuzela protocol would interact with the blockchain or what would give the asset any value.

[puppies]

As linked from the whitepaper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV2HDM86XgI&t=17m50s
For anyone without access to youtube, or that doesn't want to click and watch for 20 seconds.  This is a video of Michael Hayden saying that the USG kills people based on metadata.

[jsidhu]

I think encryption is all that is needed.. They will know you send messages but cannot prove what you say and that is all that matters. Analyzing more and trying to prove more is a waste of resources imo.

[puppies]

I was under the impression that memo is unbreakable at least until today .....

They can't see what you said, but they can see who you said it to and when.  That alone is often enough.

[btswildpig]

I was under the impression that memo is unbreakable at least until today .....