Secushare Box
Operating system extension of Secushare for hardware devices
An operating system extension for hardware devices that turns them into automatable nodes in a distributed social mesh network, independent of central control. The objective is to offer an alternative to cloud-controlled IoT, empowering the owner of a device instead of its manufacturer. IoT devices are cryptographically linked to their owner's smartphones, PCs or other interfaces, using an initial vicinity rendez-vous procedure, akin to how bluetooth devices "pair". This integrates the new IoT device into the owner's social graph as a resource that can potentially be shared with others without the hassle of exchanging unsafe passwords.
- The project's own website: https://box.secushare.org
Why does this actually matter to end users?
The SecureShare project implements a social messaging service based on the GNUnet peer-to-peer framework offering scalability, extensibility, and end-to-end encrypted communication. The scalability property is achieved through multicast message delivery, while extensibility is made possible by using PSYC (Protocol for SYnchronous Communication), which provides an extensible RPC (Remote Procedure Call) syntax that can evolve over time without having to upgrade the software on all nodes in the network. Another key feature provided by the PSYC layer are stateful multicast channels, which are used to store e.g. user profiles. End-to-end encrypted communication is provided by the mesh service of GNUnet, upon which the multicast channels are built. Pseudonymous users and social places in the system have cryptographical identities – identified by their public key – these are mapped to human memorable names using GNS (GNU Name System), where each pseudonym has a zone pointing to its places.
SecureShare aims to provide an easy to use, secure and censorship-resistant communication infrastructure that can easily be operated by normal end users. It combines a number of proven technologies and new innovative ideas into a new privacy-shielded communication infrastructure.
For "SecuShare Box" the final target community is consumers who want to buy IoT devices that do not require them to trust manufacturer companies but rather work entirely between the devices the consumer owns. Indirectly the technology should be of interest to the IoT community and free software developers in general. It is relevant for companies who don't want to be left behind and preferring to offer ethical solutions instead of questionable cloud-based ones.
This project was funded through the Internet Hardening Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
