The Final Piece for Fully Private Encrypted Messaging: Blockchain
To understand why blockchain is the last piece of the puzzle for completely private messaging, you first have to understand how basic encryption works.
How encrypted messaging works and where it still falls short
Everyone has both a public address and a private key. Let’s take Alice and Bob for example. All Alice and Bob need is each other’s public address to create a secure line of communication between each other.
Each member can enter this secure line of communication using their respective private keys. Alice and Bob’s private keys are the only two keys in the world that can be used to enter their private communication channel.
But to create this channel in the first place, Alice and Bob need each other’s public address. The question is: where did they get this information from?
Chat applications today either store your public address themselves or rely on a third party to store them for you. This means someone else is holding all of the public addresses for a system. We’ll call this person Charlie.
Charlie holds everyone’s address, and when you want someone’s address, you ask Charlie. Even though Charlie knows everyone’s address, he still can’t read Alice and Bob’s messages, because he doesn’t know their Private key.
Alice wants to talk to Bob, so she asks Charlie for his public address. If Charlie gives her Bob’s proper public address then all is well. Alice and Bob can speak to each other in privacy.
There are, however, a few problems here. If Charlie wanted to, he could give Alice and Bob his own (or some other) public key. This would mean that Alice and Bob would think that they are talking to each other, but in reality they are talking to Charlie. Charlie could very easily impersonate Alice or Bob. Charlie could also act as an invisible intermediary, who passages messages between Alice and Bob, without the two ever knowing. This means he could relay messages between the two while also listening in. PGP encryption is called “Pretty Good Privacy” and not “Perfect Privacy” for a reason. It still requires at least some level of trust.
Even if Charlie was the nicest guy in the world, there are still big concerns. What if Charlie was compelled either by a malicious party or from an authoritative figure. This could range anywhere from a competing business to an intrigued government.
This is where blockchain comes in.
Blockchain fixes the last problem for encrypted messaging
So really the problem stems down to this: how can Bob and Alice retrieve each other’s public address without relying on Charlie? Naturally, they could exchange the information discreetly in person, but unfortunately most everyone on the internet gets your information through the internet.
So how can Bob and Alice get each other’s public address from the internet without relying on a single person like Charlie?
Simple. We use everyone’s favorite buzzword: blockchain.
All the nodes on the blockchain store ALL of the public addresses in a system. These nodes are connected with each other and ensure that no one is altering the list of addresses. This means that other nodes in the system would prevent someone like Charlie from changing Bob’s address.
Blockchain uses simple fiscal incentives to basically pay everyone for being honest which ensures that the list of public addresses goes unscathed. Now, whenever Alice wants to talk with Bob in private, she can simply check the blockchain for his public address. Once she has his public address she can use her private key (that no one else in the world knows) to create a secure line of communication.
Blockchain doesn’t solve everything. But it’s more than “pretty good” when it comes to PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) Management.
At MIMIR, we saw this as a true benefit of blockchain that could be capitalized upon early. For this reason we created Eth-Mail. We do exactly what we described above. We use the Ethereum blockchain as value store for everyone’s public address. This means that we couldn’t read your messages even if we tried. We don’t have any of the power that Charlie does.
Think messaging should be private? Check out ropsten.eth-mail.io and join the privacy revolution today.
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