[ANNOUNCE] Bitmessage - P2P Messaging system based partially on Bitcoin

[chek2fire]

Any idea why i cant connect to internet with bitmessage? I always have the "could not connect to Peer" and i have setup my router to port forward 8444 and i try to delete and the .dat files but with no luck. My net connection is still in red.

[dewdeded]

Redownload or try other system/computer. Something looks very wrong with your setup.
Normaly should connect (even) without port-forwarding.

[chek2fire]

Ok i have fix it but in a strange way. First i open bitmask and then the bitmessage begin to see the nodes but was always in yellow status. After that i close bitmask and bitmessage and when i open again bitmessage it was working and now is always in green status

[JonathanCoe]

I'm pleased to announce that the beta code of Bitseal, an Android client for Bitmessage, is now available.

https://i.imgur.com/GnCeFtt.png   https://i.imgur.com/eYb4e3w.png   https://i.imgur.com/wcSPaIv.png

Github:      
https://github.com/JonathanCoe/bitseal
https://github.com/JonathanCoe/bitseal-tests
https://github.com/JonathanCoe/bitseal-server

Screenshots:   
https://imgur.com/a/utC00

Working features:
   - Sending messages
   - Receiving messages
   - QR codes for addresses
   - Address Book
   - Import addresses
   - Export addresses
   - Choose which servers to use (including your own)


Roadmap for development (subject to change):
   - Update for Bitmessage Protocol Version 3
   - Lite client message retrieval using prefix filters (credit to Peter Todd for suggesting this)
   - Local encryption of the database, using SQLCipher
   - SSL for connections between clients and servers
   - POW implemented in C or C++ via the Android NDK
   - Support for broadcasts
   - Refresh the UI


Notes:

- Bitseal is not ready for widespread use yet. A full release is planned once lite client message retrieval is implemented. The app will be available on the Google Play store once this is done.

- Bitseal is free, open source software, released under the Gnu General Public License Version 3.

- Some parts of Bitseal include, are based on, or are reliant upon software written by others, including Jonathan Warren, Sebastian Schmidt, Tim Roes, Roberto Tyley, the bitcoinj developers, and the Bouncy Castle developers. This is noted in the source code where applicable.

- I have set up a few default servers which can be used for testing purposes. Anyone is free to set up and use their own. The server application is simply a slightly modified copy of PyBitmessage.

- The development of Bitseal has been a large project, taking many months of work. I'm doing it on a purely non-profit basis. Bitcoin donations are very gratefully received: 1ALTrxJ3Yn3Rc85Uf467u3ZcpHCzx4jDAT

[justusranvier]

Working features:
   - Sending messages
   - Receiving messages
   - QR codes for addresses
   - Address Book
   - Import addresses
   - Export addresses
   - Choose which servers to use (including your own)


Roadmap for development (subject to change):
   - Update for Bitmessage Protocol Version 3
   - Lite client message retrieval using prefix filters (credit to Peter Todd for suggesting this)
   - Local encryption of the database, using SQLCipher
   - SSL for connections between clients and servers
   - POW implemented in C or C++ via the Android NDK
   - Support for broadcasts
   - Refresh the UI


Notes:

- Bitseal is not ready for widespread use yet. A full release is planned once lite client message retrieval is implemented. The app will be available on the Google Play store once this is done.

- Bitseal is free, open source software, released under the Gnu General Public License Version 3.

- Some parts of Bitseal include, are based on, or are reliant upon software written by others, including Jonathan Warren, Sebastian Schmidt, Tim Roes, Roberto Tyley, the bitcoinj developers, and the Bouncy Castle developers. This is noted in the source code where applicable.

- I have set up a few default servers which can be used for testing purposes. Anyone is free to set up and use their own. The server application is simply a slightly modified copy of PyBitmessage.

- The development of Bitseal has been a large project, taking many months of work. I'm doing it on a purely non-profit basis. Bitcoin donations are very gratefully received: 1L7amdWrPv4R4f1vLdanr2xU71TPs3wUEC

Great project. I have a few questions:

Does this app use its own address book, or does it integrate with the existing address book? Google contacts allow arbitrary fields to be attached to records. It should be possible to add Bitmessage addresses to existing contact this way.

Will Bitseal be able to run as a background service that other Android applications could call via an API?

Will the changes you made to PyBitmessage get merged upstream?

[JonathanCoe]

Thanks! To answer your questions:

Currently the app uses its own address book. You're right that it might be useful to integrate Bitmessage addresses with the standard contacts list - I'll look into it. Thanks for the suggestion.

I haven't tried using Bitseal as a background service with an API yet, but I think it should certainly be possible. One good point about Bitseal's code is that there's a fairly clean separation between the UI and the background processes, so it ought to be easy to either adapt Bitseal itself or just pull out the background code and make it into a standalone app.

The only major change I made to PyBitmessage was a new set of API commands for the functions required by the Android app. Other than that there were some very small tweaks, of which only one was relevant to normal PyBitmessage. I've submitted that as a pull request: https://github.com/Bitmessage/PyBitmessage/pull/709

[JonathanCoe]

PyBitmessage 0.4.4 has been released! Downloads for Linux, Mac, and Windows are available at https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

This update upgrades PyBitmessage to version 3 of the Bitmessage protocol: https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Protocol_specification_v3

Anyone interested can find the discussion thread about Protocol Version 3 here: https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=4067.0

It's a really large update, with several important improvements to Bitmessage. Many thanks to Atheros and Thomas for all the work they've put into this.

[JonathanCoe]

Atheros, the lead developer of Bitmessage, has made a request for feedback from the crypto community on possible new feature first suggested by Greg Maxwell: https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=4170.0

The feature in question is adding support for Bitmessage addresses which, rather than containing the hash of two EC public keys as is the case now, contain a single compressed EC public key. This would allow for greater resilience against traffic analysis, because it would remove the need to request the full public keys of an address before sending a message to it and the need for the receiving node to respond to such requests.

Greg Maxwell's proposal was originally discussed in these posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/1ay3kh/why_not_use_the_public_key_directly/

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitmessage/comments/1kc03b/please_support_nonhashed_addresses/

The main point that Atheros is asking for feedback on is whether there is any downside to using the same EC key for both ECDSA and ECIES (signing and encryption).

Any input from the Bitcoin community would be very much appreciated!

[JonathanCoe]

Bitseal 0.5 (Bitmessage Android Client) is available for testing:

https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=4155.msg9750#msg9750

Many thanks to everyone for their support so far! Your feedback is very welcome.

[chek2fire]

thx! Download asap

[akaman]

Before I invite people to message me bit BitMessage, would someone here mind sending me a test message?

BM-NBLH4ZYSW2pnHqbBEyqM1XahWAdbdPnM

Thank you!

[cryptonautz]

Is bitmessage happening on this transaction?

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/address/1JwSSubhmg6iPtRjtyqhUYYH7bZg3Lfy1T/transactions

[Financisto]

@Atheros and Bitmessage related developers,

What's the hash algorithm used in order to generate deterministic addresses by inserting a passphrase? Is it: sha256(passphrase)?

Is the "Address version number" and the "Stream number" used like Salts?

P.s. I didn't find that info while reading your whitepaper.

That's a kind of a Brainwallet. Interesting.

Congratulations for all your hard work throughout those years.

* Edit.

I just found this info here: https://bitmessage.org/Bitmessage%20Technical%20Paper.pdf

Code:

Else if calculating an address deterministically using a passphrase:
private_signing_key = first 32 bytes of SHA512(passphrase || "\x00")
private_encryption_key=first 32 bytes of SHA(passphrase || "\x01")

If SHA512 is used for that matter, wouldn't implementing KDF + Salt a safer way to generate those deterministic addresses?

[phelix]

What is the state of the nation?

[akaman]

What is the state of the nation?

+1 curious to know. There seems to a few contributed pull requests on Github that aren't being merged. Is the lead-developer still working on the project?

[akaman]

Just in case anyone (like me) is wondering why it is so quiet here. It seems discussion of BitMessage is now mostly here:

https://bitmessage.org

[HostFat]

You should follow this fork:
https://github.com/mailchuck/PyBitmessage

[Anon136]

You should follow this fork:
https://github.com/mailchuck/PyBitmessage

Is mailchuck dead? I'm just getting an endless "waiting for their encryption key".

[ALXBOB]

Is it cryptografically safe to encrypt/decrypt messages using bitcoin key pair and bitmessage?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=145098

[Amitabh S]

Has this been tested/analyzed properly? What public key encryption algorithm does it use?