Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service YouTube and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/2652 Thanks!
[Music]
all right welcome everybody first talk
on day four at the bits and boy stage
how's everybody
doing yeah a bit tired and then there's
the Sun so please uh as it's very warm
today and sunny uh take cover uh under
our sun sales also uh drink more water
that's always important and um yeah be
aware that there's recording in progress
so if you're sitting in front here
please mind the camera um we are now
listening to a talk by hulga
he will explain us something about the
Delta chat messenger which is email
based and has some unique features and
he will also talk about the different
functionalities and security aspects of
that um hulga said that he likes to do
the talk interactive so um if you have
questions you can ask them throughout we
have our stage manager Rico here with a
microphone raise your hand and he will
come to you so everybody understands you
well and um yeah if you want to post in
the fediverse about this talk it's the
hashtag bits un Bo with an AE obviously
so with that I have nothing more to say
than a very warm welcome again to hga
enjoy the
talk thanks um well it's been a while
since I stood in front of I don't know
50 60 people I think it was actually
before the pandemic uh so I used to give
uh quite some talks before the pandemic
but that's like long ago I don't know um
anyway we are offline and one of the
features of the doat messenger is that
it can work very well offline this will
be a recurring
topic um and first of all I'd like to
know who of you have like tried once
like not continuously used but tried
once Delta chat like uh in the last yeah
okay so that's like a quarter I would
say so I will say a few words about
the the state of uh messaging I mean you
probably know WhatsApp and signal and
Telegram and so on and they are um
centralized Island basically where the
devices uh connect to the single
Authority and kind of root messages and
exchange their cryptographic identity
through the central
server then we have a very long running
like 30 40 years Network which is
Federated
uh and
interoperable and basically if I just
say it like this then it could also be
the kind of mobile number network but
the thing with the email-based Federated
system is that at least conceptually
everybody can just instantiate an email
server and just have their own users and
so on and that is not so easy in the
mobile phone number Network which is
pretty closed on many levels so the the
email Federated server system that we
have on the planet is the largest
Federated system that exists basically
as an open
system and uh delach chat is a messenger
that uses that so instead of contacting
a single
Authority you actually contact your
email provider like there's no other
server
involved you contact I don't know poo
some people use Hotmail or you use your
only domain um or Gmail and so on and
then the mail providers talk with each
other to exchange messages and um your
communication partner uses the email
server of their choice so when you enter
your email credentials in data chat it
is um your username and password but it
doesn't go anywhere except to your email
provider to um to get your mails and to
send mails so it's not like it's
transferred to some secret datet server
or
something um I said it's the largest
Federated open messaging system
email um doat is not only able to talk
with other people who have installed
Delta but actually any message that
Delta sends can also be sent to someone
using a web mail or K9 mail or you know
various other email apps and they will
just receive it as a message so if you
actually attach a picture it will be an
attachment and if they reply you will
see it in your chat so in that sense you
can address almost you can basically
address from your datat messenger anyone
with an email
address um and you can also use it to
subscribe to some services like you just
get chat messages and it's like a a nice
quick interface to deal with like
notifications and other
things
um one thing that I've been involved
with let's say peer-to-peer crypto some
other uh decentralization topics since
about 10 years now quite deeply I mean
originally since 20 years but in the
last 10 years I really it was actually
past Snowden like almost exactly 10
years ago um that I thought okay I
really want to use my expertise to help
do something different than what we
have and um in 2017 Bon who's actually
sitting somewhere here there he started
uh for his daughter like a WhatsApp
alternative he took Telegram and ported
it to use an e uh an email library and
so you had the telegram interface but
instead of contacting telegram servers
you just contact UM email servers and
within like 2 3 months it worked and
people started using it but then people
got back and said wow what about end to
endend encryption and that's why I came
in because I wasn't involved in the
autoc Crypt standard um and uh some
other security things uh in that years
and um this idea that you have something
that is as usable as WhatsApp or
Telegram and that you actually really
try to offer something that fully
interoperates with the email system
that's like a design drive that goes um
since it's beginning we also doing
various conducting various independent
security audits
but if you are actually interested in
like the details of security aspects and
there are many I suggest that you come
later to our village and we have like a
more detailed discussion because in a in
a group like this it's like easily lost
in details one thing that we did since
we met in 2019 in Kiev in Ukraine um is
that we moved our C development that was
the core of all the apps on Android iOS
desktop and so on we moved this C
development to rust so before it
came cool last year or something I don't
know
um so all of the networking um I guess
like is the only email messenger that
has like networking and all of the
network protocols encryption decryption
kind of all of the apis that processes
this completely implemented in Rust um
with security Audits and that means it's
you know quite fast and we can easily
collaborate like rust is often like
often you look at like some language
feature or so but there's like this
whole you want to have an image resize
you use a crate to do image resize and
it works on iOS on Android on on uh
desktop platforms and so on and it just
works we can just include it and use
image resizing um and that is like if
you are familiar with c and C++ getting
this to work on like five platforms is
like serious work so rust is actually
very good for collaboration between
different development
groups um the main thing we have been or
a main thing we have been uh doing the
last um year actually is that we have
been developing an idea where we use the
messenger not only for the social
messages that you have with your chat gr
your family your your hacker space your
and so on but you can also send an web
application we call this web XTC um web
xc. org and it basically means that you
have a zip file that contains an index
HTML some JavaScript some assets and you
just drop this as an attachment into a
chat and everybody gets a start button
and everybody can just start
it so the distribution is not like some
app store or something like this you can
literally like use your command line
tool zip to package this together and
then drop it in into the the chat with
your partner or you know your friends
hacker space whatsoever and then anybody
can run this app and these apps actually
send their messages via the
messenger return to this
point it means that when you write an
web app you how many of you have touched
like web application technology or
website technology
actually quite a few so you probably
know index HTML and all of these things
things or react you have heard of react
and all of these Frameworks um the way
how you write web apps that run in
delach chat and also two other
Messengers by now is by
calling a send and a receive function
basically standard in standard out for
pushing messages between your app
instances like if I drop an an a zip
file into a chat and people start this
in the chat and these apps call send up
date the other app instances will
receive it in their update listener so
that's the API there's no component
thing there's no uh react like thing you
have to use or anything and if you look
at the example apps you find all kinds
of Frameworks it doesn't matter it's
only this send receive API that goes via
the messenger and is endtoend encrypted
to all of the
endpoints we have uh just released like
before Camp uh on the Block you can also
find find this um something called X
store a bit of a random name has nothing
to do with this other X that is floating
around um or maybe it has something to
do with it because it is actually true
that you can like a lot of games have
been actually ported to this ZIP file
model but also something like a
collaborative editor so that is like the
second last row second thing is the
editor um and it means that you can
drop this and add it with anybody in the
chat and all of the messages between the
that update the editor will be endtoend
encrypted and you can use it offline and
there's no
server that needs to mediate
anything um so if you really um start
using it it's like
surprisingly like what is important to
note is what is not there there's no
login there's no out there's no username
there's no password there's no gdpr
there's no cookie consent and so on
because the web app runs in a totally
isolated environment and cannot
communicate to the internet just like
here
and and that means that um the only way
for the app to get out from its like
very restricted send box is to call send
message and receive message M and it has
no direct HTTP to anything Al I cannot
just cannot do this so that's why we
also sometimes say peer-to-peer apps
because you you really send a message
and it arrives at um your other
instances of the same app and they can
process the update they got from
themselves like from the other
instance so you have in an editor that
runs as a webc you have
a um I got it uh you have a basically
cryp Pad but without the server so
everything is encrypted also no login
and so on but you can like any XTC app
like even um Tetris or like the high
scoreboard of Tetris end to endend
encrypted a little drawing board end to
end encrypted a little editor the
checklist app like a couple of kilobytes
or the poll app is like 6 kiloby large
right everything completely end to end
encrypted offline first you can use it
even here and then later on when you go
somewhere it updates and so on and you
don't need to work very hard as a web
developer we had a
carpenter who had not done any
HTML JavaScript or
GitHub you
know and this person was through like
education a few questions able to write
a functional app that is part of the App
Store I mean the store that we have this
x store that you can mail and it gives
you a selection of apps you know that's
the level of Simplicity and his app is
like endtoend encrypted it works offline
first so basically any web app that you
put in there um gains these properties
and that's pretty pretty interesting I
would say um to give you a little bit of
an overview of the like what are the
numbers because we perceive reality I
heard through numbers and then how many
users how many this and that and so on
um we have currently three Messengers
that supported that support
webcc that is uh Delta chat of course
who's kind of like spare heading the
effort and also tries to get some
funding to like you know um to to evolve
some of the features so that you can do
something like this um application store
and things like this um and then there's
geogr and xmpp based messenger where you
can use the same apps the same zip file
you just drop it into the into chram and
it runs there like it's uh independent
from how the send update receive update
is implemented and in xmpp it's like an
xmpp message in data chat it's like an
pgp
encrypted um message that goes via the
providers in a prospective future system
where you have some peer-to-peer
connection it will be this peer-to-peer
connection so the the apps themselves
they run basically
unmodified that's the idea we had four
security audits you can read about this
in the kind of early this year the blog
posts around end to endend encryption
the r pgp
implementation the TLs setup uh Network
passing IMAP SMTP and then also web XTC
security getting an isolated web view
read all the great story about how
Chrome
sucks in the in the blog post I think
from March or so where we detail like
how bad it is um we have we push
actually I said that we want to have it
like WhatsApp and um telegram we have
datat in like 10 different app stores
like of course
Android Google Play and F Droid and
Apple Store and often also on on test
flight but also some uh special app
stores in in uh Iran and some other
places um and we have I would say
currently like 10 to 15 active
contributors
um we also have a little Community
around setting up your own servers so
you can easily give out email accounts
to your friends via a QR code scan you
scan it you have an account like and
then you can just use it for chatting
that is actually something that we call
the dedicated chat email account so that
you really just have an email account
that you just use for chat you can use
your existing address and kind of share
with your other email app or you can use
a dedicated and the dedicated is like
like a kind of a clear model it's very
easy to just try and onboard and you
don't mess with your kind of existing
email address but also like half the
people who answered in the fattye Paul
said they they use um their existing
email address which is like the original
model but the server guide is also
important there
um I think with that I would like to
close maybe one or two questions I think
that Neil actually uh wanted to say
something earlier um other wise we are
at the Delta chat Village over there um
in Kona um might also if there's
interest we can also uh do some sessions
but you can always just come there and
see who's there we are like six seven
people at least who has mostly sitting
in the last
bench except the orange T-shirt
maybe or are you also programming in
Delta chat or no okay
so and um
yeah so with that I'd like to close and
maybe let Neil
ask you you gave an as an example the
collaborative editor and then you also
said that you
can uh use a standard in standard out
model and I'm wondering how you get the
file
out the file out of the editor yeah yes
we implemented something uh funded by um
an elnet earlier this year where you can
have an there's an another API is not
just send and receive so the other IO
that you have is send an attachment to a
chat so any web app can just generate an
image or generate a markdown file or
generate an IC calendar file there's
also a calendar and then you can
actually send this item to whatever chat
you choose so from the web ad you say
you basically call this function and
then it switches back to the messenger
and you send it the attachment to
whatever chat you
want and there's also import files so
you can actually um import resources
from the local file system into yourb
web app and then do something and send
it onto a chat like taking an image and
and modifying it or
[Music]
whatever
okay thanks a lot I we are out of
questions and uh so first of all a big
round of applause for
hga