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DarkWallet: Lobby enables secure group chat

Posted by: rebphil in Articles June 1, 2014 5 Comments

In a previous article, I commented on the striking utility and unexpectedness of the Dark Wallet lobby.  As I have gained some experience through using it, the Lobby has become even more interesting. In this brief update, let’s learn how to enjoy a private and secure chat-room of our own making.

In the first installment, I covered Cloaks, Peers, Contacts, PM and Beacons.   In that vein, I have recently learned that a future enhancement will cause a Beacon to be sent to your contacts whenever you enter the Lobby.  For now, one needs to click on the beacon “magnet” to unmask your cloak to contacts.  Much can be learned and great benefits will accrue as you partner with other testers in the Lobby.

Private channels & Public Trolbox

Screen Shot 2014-05-24 at 6.29.14 AMYou easily create a private channel by typing in its name (example: “coin joint” ) and clicking on Join.  The new channel will appear in your Channels list. For example, I have created “coin joint 62bd9ae6″.   I could easily communicate this handle to select others in the Lobby, securely, using private chat.  Then we would all know where to go in order to meet privately.  The encryption is derived from the channel name so, just as you would for an important password, pick something obscure and random.

Very simple and very valuable.  Trolls and snoops be gone….

The nature of the public Trollbox within the Lobby pretty much guarantees a certain amount of complaining, trolling, spamming and what I’ll kindly name “buffer overflow testing”.   This is a price we pay for liberty and free speech, nothing more.

The functionality is good in alpha 3 with the back-end issues, that we saw last week, getting resolved in a timely manner even with the core developers taking a well deserved break over the memorial weekend.

Given our understanding of Dark Wallet, I’ll ask, does the Dark Wallet Lobby enable a new universe of future dark marketplaces? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Other articles by rebphil that you might enjoy. 
Dark Wallet     Alpha Test Introduction    Dark Lobby   Alpha 4 update
Learning Crypto     DHM Key exchange     Eliptical Curve DSA     Greedy Mining
CannaCoin     IRC tipbot wallet     CannaStore
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  • https://darkwallet.is caedes

    Ok a little addition:

    When you create a channel with some name like “coin join” you can give it to other people so you will enter the same channel.

    The part you don’t mention is the channel is encrypted using a derivation from the channel name this is what gives you the protection for groups (later there will be added protection).

    So, it’s important to choose a channel name in a similar way you would choose a hard to guess password, more than just a simple name, in the future we are going to automatize creating private and secure rooms so you don’t have to deal with this details, but are still thinking about details about how to do this.

    Simple names are ok for public channels like “Trollbox” or “Trollnet” since everyone will know they exist and thus the channel key.

    • rebphil

      Thanks for the helpful comment, I clarified your point in the article.

  • rebphil

    So, essentially, in alpha 3, the channel name is the secret password.
    caedes has shared here that more is under development…
    and here is the DW reddit thread:
    http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1sinh7/hey_rbitcoin_we_are_the_developers_of_the_dark/

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