drops

[dr]:ops -- dead drops for ops

A p2p transport network for opmsg end2end encrypted messages. If you are new to opmsg, click the link for more info and how to set it up.

• p2p architecture that doesnt require central servers
• almost no meta data
• allows for secure, anonymous (see below) communication
• no more secret court orders to take down your favorite mail provider
• use the same opmsg setup that you use for email
• Interconnects IPv4 and IPv6 space
• be part of the global opmsg p2p or a private local p2p with your friends

Since the drops p2p message network has too few nodes at the moment, the level of anonymity is close to zero, if used from a traceable IP. Do not use it to leak stuff or similar. The level of anonymity will increase in future as more nodes will enter the p2p network.

License

The sources in the src directory are licensed under the GPL.

Everything inside the non-commercial directory must not be used when you:

• make revenue based on the drops source or the drops p2p network or its users, or
• offer products or services based on any drops components in this repository

You are not allowed to use or distribute any of the keying material (ca.pem, cert.pem, key.pem) for or with any of your products or services that you offer.

Build

Note: drops is in the beta testing phase. There are easier things than to get a p2p network flying and tested. For this reason, expect some changes to the commandline/config options. Always check your local config against changes of the template in non-commercial/config and do a make clean before make after a pull.

drops requires OpenSSL. You may use the default installed openssl of your system or create your own libressl install (recommended).

The compilation requires a C++ compiler that supports -std=c++11. This can be configured with e.g. make CXX=eg++ LD=eg++ on OpenBSD.

On OSX you should install your own OpenSSL, as Apple marks OpenSSL as deprecated in favor of their own crypto libs. You may also set all the required options in the Makefile.

It successfully builds on Linux, OSX, OpenBSD and probably a lot of others (Solaris, FreeBSD,...).

If you use your own openssl install, adjust the library paths inside the Makefile.

$ cd src
$ make clean; make
[...]
$ make install

Decide yourself where to place the dropsd binary. It could be copied to ~/.drops/bin .

Run

$ dropsd -h

./dropsd: invalid option -- 'h'
Usage: dropsd   [--confdir dir] [--laddr] [--lport] [--laddr6] [--lport6]
                [--newlocal] [-T tag] [--bootstrap node] [--sni name]

        --confdir,      -c      (must come first) defaults to ~/.drops
        --laddr,        -l      local IPv4 address to bind to (default any)
        --lport,        -p      local TCPv4 port (default 7350)
        --laddr6,       -L      local IPv6 address to bind to (default any)
        --lport6,       -P      local TCPv6 port (default 7350)
        --newlocal,     -N      initially set up a new local drops
        --tag,          -T      drops tag (defaults to 'global')
        --sni,          -S      SNI to use in connects (defaults to 'drops.v2')
        --bootstrap,    -B      bootstrap node if node file is empty and not initial local dropsd

Edit ~/.drops/config to set at least the filters you need, to catch the opmsg personas that you own and maybe the other self-explaining parameters. Its ok to not have any filters in place, in which case you just volunteer to forward drops messages. The address and port binding should work for most installations. Make sure your firewall rules allow direct connection to the Internet and preferably also inbound to your local port. Most cable modems have NAT rules that automatically forward ports to where connections were originated. So the generic setup should work in most cases.

Then you simply run:

$ dropsd

drops: version=0.12 -- (C) 2017 Sebastian Krahmer https://github.com/stealth/drops

drops: Bits of today=5048 id=d34f22641a1594b62e25bf4833245ad7 tag=global
drops: laddr=0.0.0.0 lport=7350
drops: laddr6=:: lport6=7350
drops: Going background.

If you have a missing or damaged nodes file in ~/.drops/global, you may specify the --bootstrap parameter to connect to your first node:

$ dropsd --bootstrap [104.197.174.219]:7350
[...]

The IP above is a bootstrap node that I have set up so you can test it right away.

To send an opmsg to the network you would:

$ opmsg -E 1122334455667788 -o ~/.drops/global/outq/1.opmsg

and its automatically delivered. Filenames must end in .opmsg for safety reasons. Note: Since drops is a p2p network, everyone would get this message. So make sure your opmsg setup is correct, you are not using null ciphers or dirty personas from test setups and alike.

Every opmsg that passes the filter= from the config file, will be placed into ~/.drops/global/inq where you can decrypt it using opmsg -D. Messages in transit and which are not for you may be listed in ~/.drops/global/flying.

You have to have a clock thats set more or less to the correct time (a few hours shift dont matter). Clock accuracy is required as the drops network checks so called Submit-Keys for each message. These are unique RSA-keys wich are increasing one bit in size each day (the Bits of today=). This way drops messages older than 10 days vanish from the p2p network and drops becomes more resistant against DoS attacks.

The log can be found in ~/.drops/global/log.txt. It shows your peers and errors that might occur. Do not be worried about handshake errors or disappearing peers. This is not uncommon in p2p networks.

Meta Data

opmsg already protects the content of your messages when using it with email. However, it cannot protect the mail header since this meta data is required for routing the mail to its destination. A global observer may build a graph of addresses and timestamps to link groups of people to each other and to gather intelligence on it. Thats a well known problem for email and most messenging systems that exist today -- even a problem of the most popular ones.

Not so with drops.

The more people use the drops p2p network, the difficulter it becomes to determine:

• Who actually submitted a message into the network
• Who is reading it
• Which of the many opmsg personas belong to which real person
• How many real persons are really participating

If all drops users follow the opmsg rules of setting up dedicated personas for each communication peer, a global observer will only see 1:1 pairings in the surveillance graph, along with cloaked timestamps. He cannot learn which group of people belongs to each other. At most he can see how strong this link may be due to the amount of messages. Thats why you would throw away opmsg personas regularily. Its also recommended to create dedicated personas for the drops network and to not use your existing personas that you used for mail. To make it easier to remember, assign a name that reflects it:

$ opmsg --newecp --name [email protected]

opmsg: version=1.75 -- (C) 2016 opmsg-team: https://github.com/stealth/opmsg

opmsg: creating new EC persona (curve brainpoolP512t1)



opmsg: Successfully generated persona with id
opmsg: 233054f68bfc8e57 332a29b7011be2c4 01c51ac318d91515 7f034712253b9211
opmsg: Tell your remote peer to add the following pubkey like this:
opmsg: opmsg --import --phash sha256 --name '[email protected]'

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIGbMBQGByqGSM49AgEGCSskAwMCCAEBDgOBggAEabqKWhf4Qvj8BWz6jO4MsKjd
AvSAHdM2g6H1/ppstX3PNvhQlrVKexmUVPp4fxKInKaree8pnK4TpgpYTbtPzHxP
Rtz/h773kxKqk5LV+K+5RtxFpo6vZB4zxDY0ogPUF+K0hR5M7CcMRhhU9OjyewXA
64IMbUD/Jfw9NXrliZ0=
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

opmsg: Check (by phone, otr, twitter, id-selfie etc.) that above id matches
opmsg: the import message from your peer.
opmsg: AFTER THAT, you can go ahead, safely exchanging op-messages.

opmsg: SUCCESS.

Jimmys peer, who is importing this persona and linking it to their own persona may then submit drops messages to Jimmy (given that Jimmy and his peer set up the drops):

$ opmsg -E 233054f68bfc8e57 -o ~/.drops/global/outq/1.opmsg
[...]

Which Jimmy will find in his ~/.drops/global/inq.

Local drops

There may be circumstances when you want to use drops but dont want to submit your messages to be globally visible. For such reasons local drops exist:

$ dropsd -N

drops: version=0.12 -- (C) 2017 Sebastian Krahmer https://github.com/stealth/drops

drops: Success setting up new local drops with tag 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a

drops: You execute: dropsd -T 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a
drops: All others execute: dropsd -T 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a -B [yourip]:yourport

Local drops are using different client/server certificates than global ones. The keys are located within the ~/.drops/TAG directory (~/.drops/87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a/ in this example). You may set up your own CA and replace the .pem files with your own to entirely close your local drops to persons who are in possession of these keys. Otherwise the above tag 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a is the ticket to enter your local drops and it is unique to each new local drops. Your friends would issue dropsd -T 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a -B [yourip]:yourport once you started the newly generated drops via dropsd -T 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a just as it reads above. The reason you explicitely need to start the new instance after you generated it with -N is that you have time to switch the key material for the new local drops as mentioned above. As there doesnt exist any nodes file for the new local drops, the -B parameter is required to name a bootsrap node for the first run. Once the network is settled, every peer may shutdown and restart their drops instances via dropsd -T 87cb0b3623b7cdcc696e8f172b06820a, as the nodes file should already be properly populated at this point. Note that in above example the common ~/.drops/config file would be used which maybe doesnt reflect the filters you need, if you use different opmsg personas in your local setup than in the global one. This may be changed via -c. Message filters however are just a passive thing and nothing is leaked to either setup, so it would be safe to have all filters within a single config.