* Peter Saint-Andre - &yet <pe...@andyet.net> [2015-04-18 04:59]: > [MAM privacy concerns]
I wholeheartedly agree with you here, but I would like to see another solution to this - use of asymmetric crypto storage on the server, a la Lavabit: 1. When a user logs in for the first time, an asymmetric keypair is created (I was thinking of Curve25519, where key creation is almost free). The private key is encrypted with a key derived from the user password / SASL state (https://www.zash.se/mod_storage_encfs.lua.html is a PoC for that). 2. All data that is stored for the user is encrypted with their public key and appended to their "container". 3. When the user logs in, the private key is unlocked for the duration of the user session, allowing them to access/modify the container (i.e. retrieve MAM / offline storage). I am aware that such a mechanism will not protect against malicious admins or live access to the server, but off-server archives provide the same level of security, just with slightly better detectability of malicious access. OTOH, such a storage mechanism can be created without modifying the XEP, and it can be adapted/extended to improve the privacy of other things as well, like private xml, roster, etc. For this, we just need to group the different elements stored on the server by their access patterns, i.e.: * offline storage / MAM: append-only when user offline (solvable with asymmetric crypto) * roster: append for subscriptions, check of existence (i.e. solvable with unencrypted storage of hashed JID) * ... > Using Carbons (XEP-0280) [the off-server storage] could obtain copies > of all the messages I send and receive. I really dislike (ab)using carbons as a MAM pseudo-subscription. We need to (at least) provide an atomic operation for MAM retrieval and MAM subscription (a.k.a. carbons) to prevent race conditions at the beginning of a session. My gut feeling is that there are some more corner stones when using Carbons as a MAM subscription, but I haven't looked into the possible implications yet. Georg -- || http://op-co.de ++ GCS d--(++) s: a C+++ UL+++ !P L+++ !E W+++ N ++ || gpg: 0x962FD2DE || o? K- w---() O M V? PS+ PE-- Y++ PGP+ t+ 5 R+ || || Ge0rG: euIRCnet || X(+++) tv+ b+(++) DI+++ D- G e++++ h- r++ y? || ++ IRCnet OFTC OPN ||_________________________________________________||
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