FEDAnet project

A new version of the source code tarball has just been published. The changes are minor this time, but they affect the protocol, breaking backwards compatibility; hence it is given the vers. number 0.0.20 (not 0.0.11 as it could be expected for a minor change).

In a nutshell: I decided to obfuscate the nonce part of encrypted datagrams. The obfuscation is not intended to be “secret” in any way, it doesn't use any keys etc., and actually it can not be “secret” as nonces are open information by their very nature. However, before this change, the nonce was a 64-bit unsigned, stored in the LSB-first byte order, sequentially incrementing by 1 dgram to dgram, starting anywhere between 0x0100'0000'0000'0000 and 0x01ff'ffff'ffff'ffff (as the MSB is always set to 0x01 as the communication starts, while the other seven bytes are filled randomly). The actual nonce passed to the crypto functions is still just that; but in the datagrams it now looks much like random data, and one needs to know how to deobfuscate it to see the sequential numbers.

From the cryptographic point of view, this doesn't add anything to security, as the (de)obfuscation functions are open (just like all the source code here) and they do very simple things. Well, let it be :-)

Thanks to everyone who supported the project.

Today is the first time the full source code for the FEDAnet project is published. Welcome to the download page to get the archive named fedanet-0.0.10.tbz2. Besides everything else, there's the source code for the FEDAnet server (fedaserv), which, as of present, is only capable to respond to NAT check requests; well, actually it is also capable to establish cryptographic associations with peers, so that the NAT checking process, which requires more than one server, becomes possible. See the documentation within the archive.

The License text is also slightly changed. Only the wording (some broken English) has changed, but in its terms and conditions the License remains the same.

Thanks to everyone who supported the project with donations.

No beautifully-looking timestamp was any close to today's date, so let's celebrate Friday 13 :-)

You're welcome to the download page, where the feda-ng-0.0.03.tgz tarball is available. As usual, it contains everything needed to compile the node key generator (that feda-ng program), the challenge table manipulation program (feda-ct) and the cryptographic key&cert manipulation program (fedakeys); but the main novelty today is the program named natcheck, which lets the user to determine what type of NAT (if any) is in effect at the present internet connectivity. Run it as natcheck -v -v.

The check requires a system of servers (at least two of them), collaborating with each other. The servers I currently run are named nc1.feda.croco.net, nc2.feda.croco.net and nc3.feda.croco.net. By default, the first one is used as the main, and the other two play the sibling role. However, if the main server is for any reason not available, please try any of the other two, with a command like natcheck -v -v nc2.feda.croco.net.

Please expect all kinds of malfunction, the code is not mature enough now. And, well, NO, I'm not going to publish the server's source code right now: in its present state such a publishing would be a kind of exhibitionism. Definitely I'll make the server code available when the time comes; please be patient.

And one more thing guys: please share your results in comments here.

P.S.: For those who don't remember: the HTML tag you need to enclose listings and terminal output logs is <pre> :-)

Today is 1733333333 seconds since the Epoch, and being converted to the FEDAnet time, which is in minutes since Epoch, it gives the beautifully-looking number 28888888. This number is easy to remember, so it will perhaps be convenient to use it as the Earliest Possible FEDAnet timestamp.

Not much stuff we have to the date, unfortunately, but at least the key and certificate manipulation program named fedakeys is now able to create all types of the keys and certificates it is supposed to handle. It is far from being finished, as actually it is still unable to actually sign user messages nor encrypt files, but even this is more than nothing. So, you're welcome to the download page, where the feda-ng-0.0.02.tgz tarball is available. The current snapshot of the fedakeys program is included there.

The site devoted to the FEDAnet project is finally up and running. Not much of content is available now; stay tuned.