[nickbw]

For any HN crypto nerds: I made a little web chat that even the server can't read.

Besides boring old SSL, bonchat.org uses a javascript implementation of AES to encrypt chat client-to-client. There are no cookies, no sessions, and no account registration. You never even send your password or plaintext username to the server.

If you chat with someone who knows the same password, you get a simple HTML/Markdown web chat. If you chat with someone using a different password you get gibberish. That's it. :)

It has a number of glaring flaws and no marketability, but by golly it's secure!

[tptacek]

It's not by-golly secure; it's insecure in a way that drives me perpetually nuts and that pushes a grevious misconception about how crypto algorithms can secure traffic in browsers.

There is perhaps no worse place in the world to do crypto than in a Javascript interpeter bound to an HTML DOM and hooked up to a network.

[celoyd]

Got a specific problem in mind? How would you attack this?

[tptacek]

See upthread.

[jat850]

"It has a number of glaring flaws and no marketability, but by golly it's secure!"

Everything has a market. Some things just have a very, very narrow market :)

In seriousness though, in its current form it may not be that appealing but the idea probably has merit to some.

[adamdecaf]

No system is ever 100% secure.

[jsean]

Neither was that ever implied... ?