Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

https://briarproject.org/news/2021-briar-1.4-released/

by Sami_Lehtinen • 5 years ago

216 110 5 years ago

jjbinx007• 5 years ago

Presumably sd cards are safer to connect rather than unsolicited usb drives.

Safer how? On PC at least, SD card readers, both internal and external are attached via the USB protocol and are seen by the OS like mass storage devices, just like USB drives, including being bootable, so whatever malware you have for a specific PC target, the payload should basically work the same from SD cards as via USB drives.

redundantly2• 5 years ago

Nyet.

An SD card in a card slot can only be accessed as a mass storage device.

A USB drive can act as a mass storage device as well as a keyboard and mouse and even contain an entire OS on it that could be remotely accessible via WiFi.

lou1306• 5 years ago

Still, it's probably much easier for an USB drive to actually pack malicious hardware in addition to software, like sensors (e.g., microphones) or an USB killer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Killer

LeifCarrotson• 5 years ago

A USB drive can operate fully within the USB spec, implementing a USB hub and USB keyboard, and enter malicious code.

The SD interface does not implement a similar spec, so this somewhat safer. The bad news most PC card readers are based on USB, so a targeted attack (which is probably in scope for Briar's customers) may still be possible - you could attack the firmware of the card reader, as described in [1] by Adam Caudill of BadUSB fame. Without breaking that firmware, however, you can't connect USB network->Card reader->USB hub, and you also probably can't connect SDIO/SPI network->SDIO-based-card-reader->USB hub.

There's also the possibility that the card itself can run untrusted code. Just like a USB drive, an SD card typically contains a small 8051 [2] or ARM [3] microcontroller. Running a compromised controller would give the attacker access to all the data that's ever sent to the SD card, but one would hope that Briar does not cache unencrypted data to the uSD card which the user is expected to write to an physically pass to a potential adversary.

Also, be aware of products like the Toshiba FlashAir Wifi SD card, which implement a wireless adapter in an SD card form factor. Replacing the label would be trivial, and it could broadcast or connect to a hidden wifi network without your knowledge. But again, one would hope that Briar does not cache unencrypted data to the SD card where it could, with one of these cards, be exfiltrated wirelessly. I think this capability is only available as an SD card or an obvious uSD-to-protruding-SD-card adapter form factor, not as a microSD card which would typically be used in a mobile device.

Of course, there's still the possibility that the host OS does something stupid, like autorun an executable on the external media...but that's more of a badly configured Windows PC problem, I expect that modern mobile devices do not do that.

[1] https://security.stackexchange.com/a/109595

[2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3554

[3] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

INTPenis2• 5 years ago

Wow these features really emphasize how Briar is focused on an arab spring situation where the internet access is restricted.

The most common gripe about Briar is that it's not on iOS, but clearly there is nothing like Briar anywhere. Just too bad about the bluetooth thing. I don't see why it should leak your BT ID. That should definitely be an opt-in feature.

glitchc• 5 years ago

iOS already has a built in feature with AirDrop. Everything except apps can be shared through it and it uses a local connection whenever possible.

INTPenis2• 5 years ago

Yeah but Briar communicates over Onion routing, good luck finding that in iOS.

The local communications are of course not onion routed, goes without saying. It's a whole little tookit of subversive communication, including some anonymous and some not.

rchaud8• 5 years ago

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first.

I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone, in either direction pretty seamlessly.

I'm now interested in learning about Bluetooth transfer as well as it works without Internet access. I've heard transfer speeds are slow though.

throw8932894• 5 years ago

With termux it is pretty simple to run sshd and rsync on android phone.

sliken• 5 years ago

Or just adb push/pull, which is a nice way to transfer files (like music) over a USB cable. Even charges the phone at the same time ;-).

lloydatkinson• 5 years ago

Bluetooth transfer

There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.

ChuckNorris898• 5 years ago

OMG yes, being able to share jpgs, mp3s and even java apps from one phone to another via Irda then Bluetooth felt mind blowing in the early to mid 00's, considering that most people didn't have internet on their phones (2G/3G data plans were eye-watering at the time, hell, even texts were expensive) but their phones had this short range wireless sort-of-WiFi-ish capability on their phones for sending and receiving files from other phones or even desktop computers. For FREE!

I remember I would spend hours after school in Photoshop to turn an image I like into the perfect wallpaper for my phone, tuning the resolution and color gradient until it looked perfect on the phone's low resolution display, and using bluetooth to upload them.

Same with mp3s. Due to the low amount of storage on the early phones amounting to only a few MB, I spent a lot of time experimenting with aggressive compression to make sure I could fit as many songs on my phone as possible. Therefore they sounded pretty bad on the cheapo wired hands-free earphones that came in the box, but I didn't care or didn't bother to notice as I now had my favorite bands always with me in my pocket before MP3 players became affordable and I would just get lost in the lyrics on the bus to school.

On an old Symbian Nokia I had, once you paired it to your PC via Bluetooth, you could send and read SMS texts off it directly from windows just like I can now use Signal/Telegram/Whatsapp desktop clients. I didn't think this would be so mind blowing until I found that Android had no similar functionality built in at the time for SMS on desktop via Bluetooth (and still doesn't AFAIK) which really bummed me out that such a powerful OS with such powerful HW was so lacking in features compared to the dying Symbian.

Another fun anecdote, digging around my parents house this year, I found my ancient 2003 vintage NEC phone which had some VGA photos I took with it of me and my old school mates on it. When I saw that I could pull the photos off it in a pinch to my modern Android phone using Bluetooth, and immediately share them online with my former schoolmates from the photos, it was pretty mind blowing to say the least. Bluetooth gets a lot of hate today for connectivity issues some people face, but seeing it work reliably between vastly different devices almost 20 years apart is an amazing feat in my book and should at least deserve some praise.

meibo• 5 years ago

Also, small java feature phone games! Was always a highlight when someone was "traded" a brand new feature phone game from another school, and it spread through ours within a day.

rchaud8• 5 years ago

I believe that's how the "share song" feature of Zune MP3 players worked.

microtherion• 5 years ago

In some areas of the world, this method seems to have persisted longer. Sahel Sounds released two compilations "Music from Saharan Cellphones" of tracks that they originally discovered on such bluetooth sharing networks: https://sahelsoundscompilations.bandcamp.com/album/music-fro...

(Though I'm pretty sure that they then went back and established traditional contractual relationships with the artists before releasing the compilations).

MonaroVXR• 5 years ago

Reporting in with a Samsung E900 with 1GB Micro SD card.

oreilles• 5 years ago

Why Bluetooth when WiFi is a hundred times faster?

ChuckNorris898• 5 years ago

AFAIK there's still no standardized, non-proprietary, easy, out of the box way to share files between different phones brands/OS and/or PCs using WiFi as Android/Samsung/Apple each do their own thing here.

You have to resort to setting up an ftp server and/or download extra apps on your phone for this, whereas Bluetooth file sharing is standardized and should work out of the box on any phone brand or OS (not sure on iPhones though) and anyone should know how to use it without needing any third party apps.

jqpabc1237• 5 years ago

https://github.com/zhanghai/MaterialFiles

Open source Android file manager with built-in ftp server.

Windows file manager also has built-in ftp.

Linux has built-in ftp.

Transfer files fast and easy over WiFi.

Ruthalas• 5 years ago

I use MaterialFiles daily, and had not realized it had that functionality.

Thank you for mentioning it!

dna_polymerase• 5 years ago

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first.

Been in software half my life never heard anyone saying anything like this. It's most of the time easier and more efficient to use cloud storage than to spin up and bootstrap a p2p system. Also, thanks to encryption I don't really care if data hits the cloud.

shawn-butler• 5 years ago

Cloud providers going through your photos and data for incriminating evidence in an automated way is a fairly new thing though.

The more intrusive it gets the more likely the pendulum will swing.

Not many consumers will encrypt unless it’s at a product level. It’s too difficult.

chaxor• 5 years ago

I have seen many concerns of quantum computing and its ability to blow through most of our encryption standards with ease. So that trust in the cloud via encryption will likely soon fade

goodpoint3• 5 years ago

This is absurd. Try synchronizing a GB of data between two devices in the same room on an ADSL. If they (stupidly) bounce through an external server it might take an hour.

Not to mention if you are on a mobile connection.

Very people on this planet have fast + symmetric + unlimited bandwith available 24/7.

outworlder• 5 years ago

It's most of the time easier and more efficient to use cloud storage than to spin up and bootstrap a p2p system

Is it though? I've found that non technical family members will happily use Apple's airdrop to share things.

iszomer• 5 years ago

Prior to all this cloud madness, I used to rely on a WiFi Direct app called HitcherNet and later, Superbeam. But when it came to actually syncing across a network, I've settled on Syncthing.

ryukoposting2• 5 years ago

Syncthing was a godsend when I was in college, but it was surprisingly hard to convince my peers (pun intended) that it was worth using instead of Google Drive/OneDrive. For most of them, the hangup came down to the setup process- the incumbent cloud-based file sync tools are braindead easy to use. Just log in, and boom, there are your files. Syncthing's setup process is clunky by comparison, but more importantly it's a workflow that people aren't really familiar with.

brnt2• 5 years ago

Setup is the reason I use Resilio over Syncthing. Sharing a 'share' is a matter of passing around one string. Infinitely more manageable by laymen.

dwb2• 5 years ago

I generally lean more toward “i like that iOS is locked down”, but this offline-app-sharing feature is one of the best arguments I’ve seen against that. That said, either I’d want peer-to-peer-shared apps to be signed by an entity I already highly trust, or that the sandbox containing the app was extremely solid (and preferably both of course).

xfer2• 5 years ago

Well, if you don't trust this person you are downloading your app from, can you expect them to keep your messages private and secure?

It already says when you would use such functionality("might be useful during internet shutdowns or natural disasters").

sneak2• 5 years ago

Apple (or the military that controls them) can revoke the certs for any app at any time, rendering it unlaunchable.

myself248• 5 years ago

F-Droid can also share APKs peer-to-peer.

If both parties have F-Droid installed prior to the internet going away or being censored or whatever, other apps can be shared locally from a single device that has the app, to any other F-Droid user:

https://f-droid.org/en/tutorials/swap/

mike_d2• 5 years ago

I’d want peer-to-peer-shared apps to be signed by an entity I already highly trust

Airdrop is peer-to-peer file sharing built into the OS.

dwb2• 5 years ago

I think you misunderstand. I’m talking about running apps shared over some untrusted (or partially trusted) medium, be that airdrop or whatever else.

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

Briar is really neat, and I hope it will land on Linux, Mac and Windows. Being able to send messages and files directly to anybody on a local network without any account just rocks.

sebkur3• 5 years ago

since recently, there's a cross-platform desktop client in development using compose for desktop as its UI framework

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

That's fantastic news.

giphyman2• 5 years ago

I found the code repository for Briar desktop port: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar-desktop

flaburgan• 5 years ago

Ubuntu 08.04 was already allowing this using empathy...

jqpabc1237• 5 years ago

Man can not live by Android alone.

I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.

emptysongglass• 5 years ago

Yes I wouldn't touch it because even though I'm not into Apple and its ecosystem I do communicate with Apple users and I'd expect activists would want to too.

georgyo2• 5 years ago

iPhone makes much of these concepts either impossible or extremely difficult.

Namely, things cannot operate easily as a background service. Forcing the user to jump though many hoops to make it work. And since it is not an apple service. There is a single button "reset settings" that breaks all the users changes for these apps.

On one hand it is generally more secure for iPhone users, on the other hand it greatly inhibits some types of innovation.

jqpabc1237• 5 years ago

I understand.

But it doesn't change the fact that other tools are available which do serve both and are thus much more practical.

rchaud8• 5 years ago

The use cases described are niche enough that iOS users can buy a second Android phone to use it with.

jqpabc1237• 5 years ago

Or they could just use a different solution that supports both Android and iOS.

Most people won't carry a second device for just one app.

ComodoHacker2• 5 years ago

What I'd like to have is easy offline media files sharing across as many phone models as possible. Basically a free open-source alternative to ShareIt. Why it doesn't exist yet? Does ShareIt use some hidden and/or proprietary APIs?

urtrs• 5 years ago

TrebleShot was similar but it is deprecated now.

nanomonkey2• 5 years ago

I do this with the Manyverse app, which uses the Secure Scuttlebutt p2p gossip protocol.

sebkur3• 5 years ago

if "on the local lan" is offline enough for you, take a look at kde connect, connects all your devices with file transfer, cross-device copy'n'paste etc.

ComodoHacker2• 5 years ago

By "offline" I mean not using any external infrastructure at all. Use Wi-Fi/bluetooth/whatever both devices are capable of and set it up as needed. I want to walk up to a person anywhere and share photos/videos I've just made with them.

marcodiego• 5 years ago

How does it compares to Secure Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt ?

lucb1e3• 5 years ago

That seems to be a protocol rather than an implementation.

From the project's download page, the only Android application is manyverse. How does that compare to Briar?

ajsnigrutin• 5 years ago

Ok.. I installed this... what now?

Is there anything to follow? A list of public accounts/blogs? Or is the only option to get real-life friends to join, and follow only them?

sebkur3• 5 years ago

you can also add contacts remotely, you need to exchange your briar links on a different channel. It's safe to post your link publicly. Only if both parties add each other's links within the app, you will be able to communicate. Post you own link here and add mine: briar://aagcagf7vews5wtz4kpzzy76vpv2r65mlwqlm6a627tvr6bkf75em

a-b• 5 years ago

Reminded me about FTN, FIDO, and Golded

slim• 5 years ago

The best feature of Briar is still, the tutorial on how to build it from source. Complete with screenshots

https://briarproject.org/building-the-source-code/

goodpoint3• 5 years ago

Briar desperately needs a library for Linux and Windows that can be used to build all sort of applications.

Discussion forums, group chat, IM, location-based messaging, email/mailing-list equivalents, blogs and offline websites and more. Not just one app.

giphyman2• 5 years ago

Briar is actually built on a library called Bramble that can be used for offline-first p2p data syncing. There was recently a good talk by a Briar Dev going deeper into the Bramble protocol: https://nico.dorfbrunnen.eu/posts/2021/diving-at-xmpp/

goodpoint3• 5 years ago

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately that implementation can be used only from java.

oggelato2• 5 years ago

what do you think about this https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/-/wikis/FAQ#does-b... ?

lucb1e3• 5 years ago

It basically says what I would expect, but then I'm a tech-savvy privacy nerd who knows how this sort of tech works. Any particular reason you asked?

oggelato2• 5 years ago

I've asked because the mac of your Bluetooth is linked to your device and therefore traceable to the user, don't you agree? and then, for what reason should I share the BT address with a remote contact that i will never see IRL?

Heliosmaster• 5 years ago

I'm a bit doubting about this feature: "Share the app with people nearby without internet access"

Hey fellow protester, here is a binary for you to install on your device. That doesn't sound dangerous, right?

xori• 5 years ago

It's actually built into vanilla android https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/9283534?hl=en

thekid314• 5 years ago

This sounds like a hobby project. Except Sudan has had its internet cut for 2 weeks. A widely used mesh network app would really change the balance of power between the people and the military coup.

askvictor2• 5 years ago

These sorts of things inevitably are hobby projects... until they're not. The people making them are usually quite far-sighted about scenarios they might be used in, but these scenarios are generally not relevant day-to-day for most people. That would be a real breakthrough - make a system like this that is useful enough to get mass adoption in 'normal' times, but can continue working in disaster/coup/war type situations.

imwillofficial• 5 years ago

Anyone remember the Bump app to share contact details? That was so cool.

daneel_w• 5 years ago

I've waited for an iOS version of Briar for years already.

exabrial• 5 years ago

This is freaking cool! I just wish it was cross-platform

Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

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