* docs: correct inaccurate privacy and metadata claims
Several documented guarantees did not match the implementation. These
matter more than ordinary doc drift: someone deciding whether to carry
this phone to a protest reads these sentences as the threat model.
- Peer IDs were described as "short ephemeral IDs derived per session"
that "rotate periodically" and "prevent tracking". They are the first
8 bytes of the Noise static key fingerprint, stable across sessions
and reboots, and replaced only by a panic wipe. Corrected in the
whitepaper (§3, §8), IdentityModels, and BitchatProtocol, whose
header notes claimed "no persistent identifiers in protocol headers"
while every header carries exactly one.
- "No plaintext message content is ever written to disk" was false for
accepted media, which is stored unsealed under the platform's
data-protection class. Narrowed to what actually holds.
- Padding was described as applying to all packets but fragments. Only
noiseEncrypted and noiseHandshake frames are padded; the pad bytes
equal the pad length rather than being random; and because that
length must fit one byte, a frame needing over 255 bytes of padding
is emitted unpadded. Documented in the whitepaper (§4.1) and
MessagePadding.
- The gossip archive window is 6 hours in production, not the
15 minutes claimed in PRIVACY_POLICY.md and the privacy assessment.
The 15-minute figure is the struct default that BLEService overrides.
- The privacy assessment credited iOS BLE address randomization without
noting that stable app-layer identifiers defeat it.
The whitepaper's future-work list now names the changes these
corrections imply: rotating on-air identity, padding for non-Noise
types, and making the announce neighbor list optional.
No behavior change; comments and documentation only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* docs: correct the same claims in the README
The README repeats two of the claims corrected elsewhere in this PR, and
it is the document people actually read before deciding to trust the app.
- "no persistent identifiers" is the inverse of what the mesh does; it
now points at the whitepaper's identity and metadata sections.
- "end-to-end encryption with forward secrecy" holds for live Noise
sessions but not for sealed store-and-forward mail, which the
whitepaper already flags as its main cryptographic trade-off.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: jack <jackjackbits@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Split-out safe half of #1437 (the kind-1402 wire migration stays held for Android coordination). Docs (README/WHITEPAPER/PRIVACY_POLICY/privacy-assessment) now describe the actual proprietary DM construction — kind 1059 gift wrap carrying XChaCha20-Poly1305 with a 24-byte nonce, base64url v2: framing, and an HKDF that borrows the nip44-v2 info label but is not the NIP-44 key schedule — instead of claiming NIP-17/44/59.
Hardens the existing legacy inbound path: 64 KiB ciphertext cap before decode (~46x the largest producible legacy envelope), outer kind/recipient-tag/signature binding, tagless kind-13 seal binding, unsigned kind-14 inner binding, inner tags restricted to the two shapes deployed clients emit (verified against every historical iOS release and a fixture frozen from Android production), SecRandomCopyBytes failure now throws, non-UTF-8 plaintext now throws instead of returning empty. Adds frozen cross-platform fixtures with hash-pinned generators; interop-reviewed with no rejection surface for deployed clients.
Store-and-forward previously delivered to an out-of-range peer only if a
mutual favorite happened to be connected at send time and later met the
recipient directly, and everything except courier envelopes died with the
app process. This closes those gaps end to end:
- Persist the MessageRouter outbox to disk, sealed with a ChaChaPoly key
held only in the Keychain (no plaintext at rest); queued private
messages now survive an app kill and flush on next launch.
- Deposit retry: queued messages are re-deposited whenever a new eligible
courier connects, tracked per message so the same courier is never
double-burned, until 3 distinct couriers carry it or it expires.
- Tiered open couriering: signature-verified strangers can now carry mail
(2 envelopes/depositor into a 20-slot pool) alongside mutual favorites
(5 each); overflow evicts verified-tier mail before favorites'.
- Spray-and-wait: envelopes carry a copy budget (4, capped 8, new TLV,
wire-compatible with old clients); couriers split half their remaining
budget with each newly encountered courier so mail diffuses through a
moving crowd.
- Remote handover: a verified relayed announce now floods a copy toward
the multi-hop recipient (directed-relay treatment, 10-min per-envelope
cooldown) while the carried original stays put for a direct encounter.
- Public history: gossip-sync window for whole public messages widened
from 15 min to 6 h, matched on the receive-acceptance side, and the
message store persists to disk so devices bridge partitions and
restarts ("town crier").
- Privacy-safe local delivery counters (bare tallies, log-only) so the
store-and-forward stack is measurable on-device.
- Panic wipe now also clears the sealed outbox, gossip archive, and
counters.
- Rewrite WHITEPAPER.md to describe the app as implemented (Noise XX/X,
actual flood control, courier system, gossip sync, Nostr path); the old
document described a bloom filter, three fragment types, and a
MessageRetryService that don't exist.
1037 macOS tests pass (17 new); iOS builds.
Co-authored-by: jack <jackjackbits@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Changed system messages from green to grey with consistent 12pt font
- Fixed text wrapping to flow naturally under timestamps
- Changed default nickname to anonXXXX format
- Replaced text with icon representations in status bar
- Added icons to sidebar section headers
- Made autocomplete UI consistent between commands and @mentions
- Added welcome message for new users (3 second delay)
- Changed sidebar header to 'YOUR NETWORK'
- Added command aliases (/join, /msg)
- Implemented /hug and /slap commands with haptic feedback
- Improved command help display with alphabetization
- Renamed 'rooms' to 'channels' throughout entire codebase
- Add performance features to README.md including LZ4 compression, battery optimization, and network efficiency
- Add comprehensive Performance Optimizations section to WHITEPAPER.md with technical diagrams
- Update architecture diagram to include Compression Service and Battery Optimizer
- Document future performance enhancements including WiFi Direct transport
- Implement room-wide message retention controlled by room owners
- Change username format from <name> to <@name> throughout UI
- Fix text alignment in chat messages (consistent font sizes)
- Add comprehensive technical whitepaper with Mermaid diagrams
- Update README with current features and commands
- Add retention status indicators and announcements
- Update command help text to use short versions (/j, /m)
