“Pest” vs. 0xFE

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3926

by glidergun • 5 years ago

57 33 5 years ago

loper-os.org

hermitdev• 5 years ago

Title should be updated to match the original: "Pest" v. 0xFE

"vs." being an abbreviation for versus carries an entirely different meaning than the intended version.

saurik• 5 years ago

FWIW, I would have read "v." the same, as "v." is also an abbreviation--mostly used in legal documents and court cases--for versus.

kazinator• 5 years ago

Looks like the versions count down toward zero. Pest v. 0xFF is an older article by several days.

unwind• 5 years ago

It's supposed to mean "version"? The post seems to be the successor/continuation of "Pest v. 0xFF", replacing it by ... decreasing the version number?

Then it starts off saying that you're going to need a "vtree", and for that obviously you need a "V-tron" and that's about where I gave up.

It was like trying to read something from a parallel world.

nerdponx3• 5 years ago

Apparently this is something related to using the Bitcoin blockchain to produce a cryptographically verifiable sequence/tree/dag(?) of revisions. Like Git but more crypto-ey.

dafoex• 5 years ago

In all brutal honesty I would have read "v." as versus, whereas just "v" as in "v 4.2.0" would be version.

lixtra• 5 years ago

1.1. What is Pest?
Pest is a peer-to-peer network protocol intended for IRC-style chat. It is designed for decentralization of control, resistance to natural and artificial interference, and fits-in-head mechanical simplicity -- in that order.
Pest explicitly rejects the inherently-centralizing concepts of IRC

nerdponx3• 5 years ago

1.2.1. One Station -- One Operator.
An IRC server is typically inhabited by a multitude of casual users and policed by a small group of privileged curators. A Pest station, on the other hand, is under the exclusive control of one person: its operator.
1.2.2. Nets Instead of Channels.
Pest stations organize into nets. A net is formed by a group of station operators with a common interest. An operator who wishes to join a net must peer with at least one of the stations in that net. A broadcast message is sent to every member of a station's net. Nets may easily and organically undergo schismatic splits, or, on the contrary, combine into larger nets, whenever the individual station operators so desire.

This is interesting stuff. The basic model seems kind of elegant and should be relatively straightforward to implement. It also seems like it should be relatively easy to set up a station that "bridges" to other chat platforms like Matrix, IRC, etc.

However I suspect that moderation being nonexistent could pose a problem. Un-peering with somebody is equivalent to blocking them, which is certainly a valid tool for dealing with troublemakers, but it doesn't carry the same weight as being able to centrally found somebody. But I suppose that's part of the deliberate design here.

inquist• 5 years ago

♥

eru2• 5 years ago

Very neat:

1.2.4. Messages are Authenticable, but not Opposable.
All Pest messages are authenticable -- a station will only process a message if it carries a valid signature from a peer (though in some cases, the message may not have been authored by that peer.)
However, they are also repudiatable (i.e. non-opposable) -- since all packet signatures are produced with symmetric keys, the recipient of a message cannot, at any point in time, prove to a third party that he was not in fact the author of that message.

dathinab3• 5 years ago

However, they are also repudiatable (i.e. non-opposable) -- since all packet signatures are produced with symmetric keys, the recipient of a message cannot, at any point in time, prove to a third party that he was not in fact the author of that message.

So basically there is intentionally no way to prevent message forgery by the recipient. Why?

Also tbh. how can I trust a person who in 2021 still hasn't understood that/why HTTPS is important for security even if you only provide read only content with making proper crypto/security decisions?

wizzwizz42• 5 years ago

“Message forgery by the recipient” is a bit strong. It's more like “lying by the recipient”, since the signature is only meaningful to the recipient.

This stops stuff you say in chat from following you around, unless you choose to sign it with your regular private key.

nerdponx3• 5 years ago

I find this weird and almost the opposite of what I would want.

I would want a system where I cannot repudiate messages that I sent, but I must repudiate (i.e. cannot claim authorship of) messages that I did not send.

As far as I understand, isn't that how asymmetric encryption typically works? What's the advantage of symmetric encryption in this case?

asciilifeform8• 5 years ago

Author of linked article speaking. (How it ended up here -- I have no idea, I'm rather surprised that it was of interest to more than the 3 people for whom it was written.)

This flame is doubly funny given how the article specifically concerns algorithms for possible decentralized cryptonets.

HTTPSism is deliberately broken on my WWW, to annoy unthinking servants of the PKI Reich.

For the thick: at the start, there is a PGP-signed copy of the text offered. And yes I in fact live and die by my PGP identity. And not Verisign et al's NSA-controlled PKI horror, no.

rhn_mk1• 5 years ago

I can't wait to try out some implementations.

asciilifeform8• 5 years ago

At the moment even the algorithm isn't finished.

ur-whale• 5 years ago

I'm not seeing much detail about the crypto (other than serpent and HMAC-512).

Also: there is a claim of being DDOS-proof, but I haven't found an explanation as to how.

Also: is there actual implementation or even a mock?

edave644• 5 years ago

I also don't see much DDOS proofing in this. Best I can find is that you can unpeer people, but since every message is rebroadcasted by everyone, that doesn't seem like much of a protection. Especially since, if the DDOSer has a lot of peers, it seems can be pretty imposible to know who the attacker even is, since there is no singed journal of hops or something.

asciilifeform8• 5 years ago

"every message is rebroadcasted by everyone" is not factual per the spec.

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

"Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for www.loper-os.org. The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.nfshost.com, nfshost.com"

edave644• 5 years ago

The concept of the "SelfChain" confuses me. It sounds like it would fall apart completely for anything except direct messages. If one person goes offline and all other people continue to talk, does that mean the next day my station considers all other speakers "forked"? And I have to unfork all of them? It's not like I can catch up since all messages are stale and discarded after 15 minutes.

Do I allow a hearsay message to fork one of my peers? Can a rouge peer just come in, fork everyone, and leave?

pabs3• 5 years ago

Reminds me a bit of Scuttlebut:

https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/

“Pest” vs. 0xFE

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