Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: pharmacypowder on August 28, 2013, 05:55 pm

Title: How to send a bitmessage?
Post by: pharmacypowder on August 28, 2013, 05:55 pm
Hey everyone! :) So, I have recently found about bitmessage and before anyone goes off on how it is not a safe alternative to tormail or anything, I am not using it for a alternative to tormail. There will literally only be one other person I am going to be communicating with using it, they will be the only one who knows my address and it is not going to be used to send sensitive information AT ALL. So please, I do not need any warnings on that.

I have downloaded bitmessage and so has the person whom I am going to be communicating with. We both easily figured out how to generate an address, added each others addresses to our address books and when I tried to send him a message to test it out, it just says "requesting encryption key, waiting on response" and the same thing happens when he tries to send me a message yet neither one of use is getting any "request for an encryption key" Is the key something that needs to be created first or something? I have read the wiki and many other things and just do not understand...Please I hope someone can help. I am sure it is a simple fix and I really want to get this working....

Thanks guys!
Title: Re: How to send a bitmessage?
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 28, 2013, 06:26 pm
just use the web interface it works just like tormail

https://bitmessage.ch/squirrelmail/src/login.php
Title: Re: How to send a bitmessage?
Post by: pharmacypowder on August 28, 2013, 07:45 pm
I do not remember setting up a name and password for bitmessage...? I assume the name is an address but what about the password?
Title: Re: How to send a bitmessage?
Post by: Kiwikiikii on August 28, 2013, 10:34 pm
the name is the string they give you and the password is what you have to enter to get the name. if you dont have a password then you dont have a bitmessage account.
Title: Re: How to send a bitmessage?
Post by: dotgoat on August 28, 2013, 11:57 pm
the name is the string they give you and the password is what you have to enter to get the name. if you dont have a password then you dont have a bitmessage account.

I think there's some confusion here.  There's the bitmessage protocol (clearnet)https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page  and then there's bitmessage.ch.  I'm guessing pharm you downloaded the client from bitmessage.org?  That works in a similar way to the bitcoin-qt app does where it needs to spend a few hours to get the initial stack of messages.  That's why you see the requesting encryption key.  You've both made your keys, and put the public key in this cloud of bitmessages.  and you're just waiting for it to catch up.

It's still not very popular so a good indication is when you don't see the counts in the network status page increase really fast.  Once all synced up I tested sending a message to the echo address and round trip is a few minutes.

Now, bitmessage.ch is a gateway, kinda how onion.to is for onion sites.  You can go on that site and get an address.  You say the password and they give you the address.  You'll have an address like BT-adsfasdfasdfafdasfasfasdfadfadsfafd@bitmessage.ch  anyone with a bitmessage client can send to the user part of that and it goes through bitmessage P2P network.  People can also send email to the full address from a gmail or whatever.  Likewise you can send to a bitmessage address by <that persons address>@bitmessage.ch.  Even if they didn't create it there it will route it in the bitmessage P2P network.  As I tested that exact thing.  I got an account at bitmessage.ch, then sent it to an address I made on the windows client and it went through no problems.

TL;DR: have both of you keep your clients open and go to bed or something.  Once it's synced messages will go back and forth faster.

(edit)
To clarify something else because I've seen people confused on this.  People will think you're waiting to download all messages ever sent and that isn't true.  All messages basically have a time to live on the network of 2 days.  After 2 days clients drop the message and stop sending it.  The original client that sent the message, never receiving a confirmation, will try to send it again "forever".  I hope it's actually possible to stop that because it's possible to send to an address that never gets a confirmation.  I assume you can delete it from the sent tab and it would stop retrying...  But any rate that means that you need to keep bitmessage at least every other day to get things in a timely manner.  Those retries exponentially back off so if you haven't had it open for a month and someone sent you a message in that time period it may take a while for you to get it.  Again perhaps there's a "retry now" option on pending messages.  That's actually why I haven't bothered setting it up for my undernet personas because I don't want to keep running this app to get things.

Now all this is "solved" with bitmessage.ch.  What they're basically doing is running a bitmessage client on their servers.  That's how they get messages on to and receive messages from bitmessage addresses.  I did end up making one for dotgoat for the heck of it.  But I don't really use it.  The one I made for my "clear identity" I have setup in a mail client and such, although don't use it for anything.  One of the big disadvantages with the bitmessage.ch gateway is it's not simple to make multiple addresses.  You have to basically create a new account each time you want a message.  Ideally you'd want to give a separate address to every person you talk to make it harder to link relationships.  Same reason you should always send to a new bitcoin address every time.