From 6a29384011bc2c9b1f0abadba5961b2fae828ce3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Sarah Jamie Lewis Date: Thu, 26 May 2022 13:09:38 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] few more thoughts on untrusted servers / group docs --- docs/intro.md | 13 +++++++------ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/docs/intro.md b/docs/intro.md index 2b2d45d6..997c7b8c 100644 --- a/docs/intro.md +++ b/docs/intro.md @@ -46,14 +46,15 @@ can learn anything about the contents or the metadata if your conversation. **Note: Metadata Resistant Group Communication is still an active research area and what is documented here will likely change in the future.** -**TODO: Expand** +In order to get around the limitation of being always-online, Cwtch has built in support for hosting +conversations on **Untrusted Servers**. -In many respects communication with a server is identical to communication with a regular Cwtch peer, -all the authentication and encryption steps above are taken however the server always acts as the inbound peer, and the outbound -peer always uses newly generated **ephemeral keypair** as their "longterm identity". +These servers can be set up by anyone and are intended to be always online. Most importantly, all communication with a +server is designed such that the server learns as little information as possible about the contents or metadata. -As such, peer-server conversations only differ in the *kinds* of messages that are sent between the two parties, -with the server relaying all messages that it receives and also allowing any client to query for older messages. +The risk model associated with servers is more complicated that peer-to-peer communication, as such we currently +require people who want to use servers within cwtch to [opt-in to the Group Chat experiment](/docs/groups/enable-experiment) +in order to add, manage and create groups on untrusted servers. ## Getting Started