I also tend to bite my tongue these days because the space is filled with messengers who make similar promises regarding metadata resistance while also offering real-time video chat and transparent offline messaging - feats which, if true, I would hail as academic breakthroughs.
This fix mainly addresses several long standing issues with Android, but also contains an important update to libCwtch which prevented some contacts from exchanging profile images.
🎨 Custom Theme Support! It is now possible to load new themes into the Cwtch UI and customize it to your liking 🖌️ Additionally, this release contains many small UI fixes and accessibility improvements 🐞 Many small bug fixes including improvements to file sharing on Android, and support for newer versions of Tails.
Awesome - we know this UI is pretty clunky and are actively working on making it better!
For future reference it is also possible to run a standalone server (https://git.openprivacy.ca/cwtch.im/server/) and get a server key that way (some groups also host public cwtch servers and publish details online).
hi! It's a little unclear, and we are currently revamping this, but you can past a server key / group invite into the "Add Contact / Invitation / Key Bundle" input box.
Last week, we mentioned that enhanced permissions are essential to implementing many of the aspects of the new hybrid groups design.
In this small devlog we introduce the new enhanced permissions api in libCwtch, explain why it is needed, and how future releases of Cwtch will manage conversation-level permissions.
Anonymity is an explicit goal of Cwtch, as such the protocols have been designed to provide against that risk model (See the Cwtch handbook: https://docs.cwtch.im/security/intro)
Seems like there might be some confusion in the UI or documentation? While only one profile can be interacted with at a time (as in on screen at a time), the other profiles can be active, and will receive messages etc.
The ultimate goal is to introduce a new groups protocol that augments the untrusted services model with p2p exchanges "hybrid groups" - while we don't anticipate any significant changes to the cwtch server to support that work, that may change as research progresses.
The standalone server has a few small features that built-in server hosting doesn't, but we are planning on aligning both in a future release.
Thanks for the feedback. Cwtch is technically all three of those things (Cwtch UI is an app, based on an open SDK designed to write other apps, implementing on a transport protocol we designed) - and we are still working through how best to communicate that.
One of our main areas of ongoing work is improving the web/documentation site.
Our main website has a video/faq/screenshots that might be more illuminating: https://cwtch.im/ - but it isn't perfect
Cwtch is a communication application (and associated libraries) that uses Tor v3 Onion Services to establish surveillance resistant channels between people.
Cwtch 1.13 is the culmination of the last few years of effort by the Cwtch team, and is the first release that meets our bar to be labelled a Cwtch Stable release candidate.
We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who helped Cwtch get this far.
A note on CVE-2023-4863: we have not been able to confirm the impact to Flutter (and thus Cwtch UI) of the announced vulnerability in libwebp (if any).
In Cwtch, images are only ever displayed if the contact has been explicitly accepted AND the file sharing and image previews experiments are enabled.
We continue to recommend that people only enable experimental features where they understand the risks involved and also suggest enabling the Block Unknown Contacts feature in such cases.
The next large step for the Cwtch project to take is a move from public Beta to Stable. We have been working hard towards that goal over the last year.
Today, as we approach the release of Cwtch Stable we would like to provide another update on the ongoing work, and the remaining blockers to certifying a Cwtch Stable release.
We also have a new nightly to test, and improved Whonix instructions!