vuvuzela / alpenhorn

Bootstrapping Secure Communication without Leaking Metadata

Alpenhorn

Alpenhorn is the first system for initiating an encrypted connection between two users that provides strong privacy and forward secrecy guarantees for metadata. Alpenhorn does not require out-of-band communication other than knowing your friend's Alpenhorn username (usually their email address). Alpenhorn's design, threat model, and performance are described in our OSDI 2016 paper.

In short, Alpenhorn works well for bootstrapping conversations in Vuvuzela. Now users can start chatting on Vuvuzela without having to exchange keys in person or over some less secure channel.

A beta deployment of Alpenhorn and Vuvuzela is coming soon.

alpenhorn's Issues

pretty empty looking repo

read the paper just now....

Replace Bloom filters with Cuckoo filters

We might be able to save some bandwidth by using Cuckoo filters:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/papers/cuckoo-conext2014.pdf

Error when trying to install vuvuzela-client

$ go get -u vuvuzela.io/vuvuzela/cmd/vuvuzela-client
# vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg
go/src/vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg/server.go:89:6: opts.Dir undefined (type func(string) badger.Options has no field or method Dir)
go/src/vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg/server.go:90:6: opts.ValueDir undefined (type func(string) badger.Options has no field or method ValueDir)
go/src/vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg/server.go:91:6: opts.SyncWrites undefined (type func(string) badger.Options has no field or method SyncWrites)
go/src/vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg/server.go:93:24: cannot use opts (type func(string) badger.Options) as type badger.Options in argument to badger.Open

Apparently that is related to breaking API changes:
https://github.com/dgraph-io/badger/releases/tag/v1.6.0

Problem now is, when I change the version of badger I get this:

$ go build
# vuvuzela.io/alpenhorn/pkg
../alpenhorn/pkg/data.go:131:7: assignment mismatch: 1 variable but item.Value returns 2 values
../alpenhorn/pkg/data.go:131:20: too many arguments in call to item.Value
	have (func([]byte) error)
	want ()
../alpenhorn/pkg/data.go:154:7: assignment mismatch: 1 variable but item.Value returns 2 values
../alpenhorn/pkg/data.go:154:19: too many arguments in call to item.Value
	have (func([]byte) error)
	want ()
../alpenhorn/pkg/extract.go:222:6: assignment mismatch: 1 variable but item.Value returns 2 values
../alpenhorn/pkg/extract.go:222:18: too many arguments in call to item.Value
	have (func([]byte) error)
	want ()
../alpenhorn/pkg/register.go:102:17: not enough arguments in call to tx.Commit
	have ()
	want (func(error))

Due to my non-existent knowledge of programming in Go, I had to hack this in an ugly way. But hey, better than nothing!

Workaround

go get -u vuvuzela.io/vuvuzela/cmd/vuvuzela-client

cd "$GOPATH/src/github.com/dgraph-io/badger"

No. None of the tagged versions work. Use this commit.

git checkout 50bef1d5c7be94eed748c17ae55a4de94b8ba165

cd "$GOPATH/src/vuvuzela.io/vuvuzela/cmd/vuvuzela-client"

Basically building vuvuzela-client now.

go build main.go gui.go conversation.go notify.go alpenhorn.go commands.go connect.go

./main -username [email protected]

You probably could move the executable to pretend you installed vuvuzela as intended:

mv main "$GOPATH/bin/vuvuzela-client"

Easy way for running alpenhorn/vuvuzela server

How can a user run a vuvuzela server? How easily can a network of servers be established?

client: wait for extraction to finish before sending onion

Don't just fail if the extraction isn't finished yet.

Upgrade client and connect: apparent errors

I upgraded after two years:

$ /usr/lib/go-1.10/bin/go get -u vuvuzela.io/vuvuzela/cmd/vuvuzela-client
package crypto/ed25519: unrecognized import path "crypto/ed25519" (import path does not begin with hostname)
package github.com/godbus/dbus/v5: cannot find package "github.com/godbus/dbus/v5" in any of:
        /usr/lib/go-1.10/src/github.com/godbus/dbus/v5 (from $GOROOT)
        /home/dev/go/src/github.com/godbus/dbus/v5 (from $GOPATH)
package google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/rpc/status: google.golang.org/genproto is a custom import path for https://github.com/googleapis/go-genproto, but /home/dev/go/src/google.golang.org/genproto is checked out from https://github.com/google/go-genproto

I was curious if the md5 of the client would change, so I checked it before and after. It did not:

901cb30ede47e5b7d5d19bdd68422b69 vuvuzela-client

Then I ran the client and /connect:

 -!- Connection error: inconsistent PKG status for "XXXXXXX":
  ·  PKG pkg1.vuvuzela.io:8443: Post https://pkg1.vuvuzela.io:8443/status: read tcp 10.18.0.3:56142->128.52.176.147:8443: read: connection reset by peer
  ·  PKG nickolai.srv.vuvuzela.io:54331: Post https://nickolai.srv.vuvuzela.io:54331/status: read tcp 10.18.0.3:54780->50.202.194.198:54331: read: connection reset by peer
  ·  PKG pkg2.vuvuzela.io:8443: Post https://pkg2.vuvuzela.io:8443/status: read tcp 10.18.0.3:39762->128.31.25.215:8443: read: connection reset by peer
 -!- Type /connect after resolving the issue to try again.

Freshness of signed configs

There currently isn't a good way to verify the (short-term) freshness of signed configs. The configs have an expiration date, but those are typically long-term.

Add new PKG protocol

When adding a new PKG we might want to do something like: temporarily stop all registrations at the existing PKGs, have each existing PKG send a signed copy of its users database to the new PKG, and then have the new PKG pre-populate its users database by merging the existing databases before re-enabling registrations. To merge databases, the new PKG should only accept a user record if the all the other PKGs agree on it; otherwise, it should ask the user to register (and verify their email address).

is vuvuzela.io must to write in config-server-state as "Registrar"？

I plan to deploy the alpenhorn server locally。
the config-server-state is like this:
{ "Version": 1, "Created": "2023-02-05T15:50:15.375810566-05:00", "Expires": "2028-02-05T15:50:15.375810566-05:00", "PrevConfigHash": "", "Service": "AddFriend", "Inner": { "Version": 2, "Coordinator": { "Key": "kq0jmkh6r5hz5pp5z3r2jcm6ff7r8z693g72h1h81yqyh3cjbbcg", "Address": "localhost:8000" }, "PKGServers": [ { "Key": "v2j5v6f2p20xvfvqskxshydye7n7xps3frxe4vkqedysb147dj20", "Address": "localhost:8000" } ], "MixServers": [ { "Key": "5qnp2ac88cshy9p51a4fag0q5kqbjv3a12qcdtng31t9cp35qpzg", "Address": "localhost:28000" } ], "CDNServer": { "Key": "c37zge59xj5ekdkb3ywyg4r5kc4bv1zrfgcx8wpbdddrfs46fr5g", "Address": "localhost:8080" }, "Registrar": { "Key": null, "Address": "" } }, "Guardians": [ { "Username": "gfkd", "Key": "jf6f58kbrvwzy4xsdvawq2ca2s3dd4r9g2tf4584cdysx5cyy05g" } ], "Signatures": { "jf6f58kbrvwzy4xsdvawq2ca2s3dd4r9g2tf4584cdysx5cyy05g": "w2s0zekey8y5wtqrp6gxp74tg444c88mpk8snhsxw75n9emgtrse20a2est6st19h837dp2ya61v4pwgzb6ebw493f9ycb35xtpxa18" } }

"Registrar": {
"Key": null,
"Address": ""
}

the register-server must be "vuvuzela.io"？
can i use localhost regsiter

mixnet: last server does not need to generate noise for dummy mailbox