Re: The messenger service is ready to use

[Karl]

On 3/10/21, TheJackiMonster <thejackimonster@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Karl,
>
> so basically a feature like exporting a stream of messages into a file,
> transporting the file via any external media and importing the messages
> from the file to a peer would help, right?
>
> I think that's possible to integrate because messages get verified with
> the senders identity key pair (ego) rather than using the key pair from
> a certain peer.
>
> I would think a feature like this could be implemented together with a
> function to backup chats into external files. Theoretically this is
> already possible because I have structured the storage in multiple
> directories which allows quite individual access for such a task but a
> good UI would definitely help.

Thanks Jacki, that sounds basically great, assuming you mean encrypted
messages, not decrypted messages.

Basically you have an online peer that does not have the private
identity key but can acquire the messages based on the public key or a
second signed private key.  You export them encrypted and move them to
an offline program that holds the identity key securely.  On the
offline system you decrypt them and encrypt your replies, then move
the encrypted replies back to the online peer that doesn't have the
identity key.

If the identity key is not used in the network protocol, it works
great and actually coding an implementation can be solved after the
system is in use.

If the identity key is used in the network protocol but the protocol
can asynchronously accumulate messages without acknowledgement over
very large latency, it still works but now all the network software,
drivers, and hardware on the secure system may need to be audited
which is much bigger labor for lone coders without security training.
If large latency doesn't work then it becomes hard to communicate
securely from an offline system.

But it is just a request for future work; any p2p messaging at all is
what we really need.