[liberationtech] An interesting anonymous chat project: Invisible.im

[Piotr Chmielnicki]

On 07/10/2014 04:06 PM, hellekin wrote:
> On 07/10/2014 10:38 AM, Keira Cran wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Invisible.im (http://invisible.im) is a really interesting project
>> leveraging Tor to provide anonymous chat. It takes a fascinating
>> approach using Tor hidden services, but is yet to be released to the
>> public.
>>
>> It doesn't hurt that it has an all-star tech lineup as well!
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Keira
>>
> *** It sounds like the approach taken by Ciboulette [0], to run local
> hidden services and federate them.  Although I like the approach, I have
> the intuition it's too much effort put on the user: while we're at the
> point of installing servers locally to mimic P2P services, why not focus
> the effort on advancing GNUnet services directly?
>
> The obvious advantage of GNUnet is that it's not just for chat, but
> provides a complete infrastructure ranging from an alternate to DNS, to
> HTTP transport, etc. [1]
>
> ==
> hk
>
> [0] https://github.com/b4zz4/Ciboulette
> [1] https://gnunet.org/
>
>
XMPP over hidden services could be a good compromise between
anonymity/security and usability. A non-tech user could just use a
server he trusts. Organizations could provide trusted servers for
internal or public use.

If a server is compromised, risks can be limited if users have good
OPSEC habits (different coverts identities and so on ...) and use
end-to-and encryption.

Running a .onion on a machine that is not running all the time (like a
laptop) like with Torchat or Cables could be risky because of the uptime
monitoring of the hidden service.

Piotr Chmielnicki
@chmiel_p