By Cointime.com 237

In the past decade, the Internet has become the platform for the transmission of most information. At the same time, disclosures of widespread surveillance and interference in the area of security technology have increased public concern about the security and privacy of communications. Many people want to be able to maintain control of their information on the Web, but few are able to do so.

In response to these needs, new secure communication protocols, components and applications have emerged in recent years. The purpose of these end-to-end encryption protocols is to establish encrypted sessions between communicating endpoints, making messages within the session difficult to decipher easily from the outside. They also provide mechanisms to check message integrity and confirm that messages have not been tampered with outside of them.

However, integrity mechanisms often provide irrefutable evidence that someone did send a particular message. As a result, some teams following the example of OTR developers have started to work towards the unification of integrity and deniability during normal communication, i.e., leaving no cryptographic evidence that the sender sent a particular message, at least if the communicating participants can confirm that the message has not been tampered with.

And Vault1317, which we will introduce today, is one of the newcomers.

Vault1317: Secure Messaging for Secure Messaging

Vault1317 is an authenticated key exchange protocol with public key concealment and participant deniability designed for secure messaging.

As a secure communications protocol, Vault1317 is designed to provide end-to-end cryptographic protection and metadata protection, while maintaining deniability. The protocol is based on the Signal protocol, which is widely regarded as one of the most secure and privacy-conscious communication protocols. vault1317 extends the Signal protocol by adding additional features such as metadata protection and deniability. Metadata protection is implemented through the use of an additional handshake protocol that helps hide the cryptographic identity of the sender and receiver, as well as other metadata associated with the communication.

By using a symmetric encryption scheme and considering deniability, along with the additional handshake protocol mentioned earlier, Vault1317 ensures that the sender can deny the message sent if necessary, even if the message is intercepted or leaked. vault1317 is a promising solution for those who want to protect metadata and provide message deniability while communicating securely and privately. .

Principle Introduction

1. What is deniability?

In the field of communication, "deniability" refers to the ability of a party to deny a message sent or received by it during the communication process. Deniability is divided into deniability of the sender and deniability of the receiver.

Sender's deniability means that they can deny the fact that they sent a particular message, thus affecting the trust and cooperation of other participants.

The deniability of the receiver, on the other hand, means that they can deny the fact of receiving a specific message, which may lead to disputes and controversies.

To address the issue of deniability, technologies and protocols such as digital signatures, encryption, and timestamps are used in communications to ensure trustworthiness and traceability of communications.

In addition, at the legal level, deniability also involves legal regulations and requirements for contracts, electronic commerce and digital evidence.

2. Solution Principle

In fact, although instant messengers such as Signal and WhatsApp employ good encryption, they still lack the ability to provide deniability, which is essential for secure communication. If an attacker takes control of one of the parties or the server and leaks the chat during their communication, both parties can deny their chat, making it difficult to hold either party accountable.

Vault1317 solves this problem by implementing a provably secure deniability mechanism that ensures the authenticity of the chat content while providing both communicating parties with a reasonable possibility of denial.

3. Metadata Protection and Centralization Issues

Another key issue in modern communications is metadata protection. During communication between two parties, their long-term identity public keys are often exposed, which makes it easier for attackers to identify and track them.

Vault1317 solves this problem by hiding the long-term identity public key, ensuring that metadata remains private and secure.

Finally, Vault1317 is designed to address the centralization of modern social media and instant messengers, which can make them vulnerable to censorship and surveillance. By adapting Vault1317 to decentralized platforms such as Nostr or XMPP, the project ensures that communications are not controlled by a single entity and that users can communicate freely and securely.

Team Introduction

Vault1317 is being developed by HardenedVault, a full-stack infrastructure-focused security company that specializes in Linux system security baselining and auditing, OS runtime threat protection, hardware/firmware root-of-trust technology, sub OS layer security (hardware/firmware root-of-trust), trusted computing (proof of services), confidential computing (trusted execution environment), multi-party computing, zero-knowledge proof (ring signatures/SNARKs/homomomorphic encryption/etc), self-custody upon entropy as a service, and other technology modules. Their achievements in security work have been recognized by the open source community and the security industry.

HardenedVault has spent 9 years in continuous development of advanced security protection technologies that effectively allow home computers to enjoy Tier-4 level security.

Technically, HardenedVault's technology solution covers the complete FIRST HALF system security, where the root of trust is anchored in multiple hardware components during the boot process of each node (machine), based on which the chain of trust extends from firmware and operating system to applications, with each critical component meeting industry compliance while effectively blocking known and unknown vulnerabilities through the integration of modern defensive mitigation technologies and access control The chain of trust extends from firmware and operating systems to applications, each critical component meeting industry compliance while effectively blocking known and unknown vulnerabilities and exploits through the integration of modern defensive mitigation technologies and access controls. In addition, to meet advanced threat protection scenarios, Cyber Fortress' secure communication solution not only enables communication between each node (including for applications such as Trusted Computing Remote Proof) to ensure confidentiality and integrity, but also provides additional secure communication protocols with zero-knowledge proof-based metadata protection (to protect machine privacy) and deniability to help customers build a decentralized, confederation-based Data Center.

Conclusion

As concerns about communication security and privacy continue to grow, new secure communication protocols and applications are emerging that offer promising solutions for protecting personal information and enabling deniability.

Vault1317, an authenticated key exchange protocol, is dedicated to providing secure messaging and maintaining deniability. By extending known secure communication protocols such as Signal, Vault1317 introduces metadata protection and deniability features that enhance the privacy and security of the communication process. The development of this protocol makes it possible to communicate securely and privately while protecting communication metadata and providing deniability.

In the future, as more people become aware of the importance of communication security, we can expect similar innovative solutions to emerge to further enhance the level of security and privacy protection of communications and ensure that personal information is better protected on the network.