Ok, I was able to get on hypeirc via yggdrasil. /connect y.irc.cjdns.fr.

Good enough.

I've been trying to get on cjdns for a bit with no luck.

I think the issue is that I haven't been able to find peers that are actually up and working.

Here's my peering credentials, if you want to instead connect to my cjdns node. Perhaps if you're on the wider cjdns network, then I will be able to connect?

"138.197.93.75:63494": {
    "login": "default-login",
    "password":"p0kmqxkc22up5hsbyp6xlv2fc1s7zv7",
    "publicKey":"nnkcmt4pmbyjy4su20bkfqt6gkm554h9np7xnvhk03uk1m20mx90.k",
    "peerName":"evbogue.com"
}

How does that work? (That lite clients are able to read all private messages?) - @bobhaugen

Hmm, not quite true. The lite client can't read everyone's private messages.

The issue is that with ssb-ws you could websocket into another sbot and request their indexes, which contain decrypted private messages.

So with a lite client from a pub, you accidentally end up sharing private messages sent to the pub with the public web.

Here's an example exploit, just to be clear:

Alice and Rob are on the same local network, or otherwise know how to directly contact each other's sbot.

Alice requests Rob's query indexes over ssb-ws.

Rob's ssb-query sends his indexes over muxrpc to Alice.

Alice records the ssb-query index to her computer.

Later, when Rob isn't around, she reads all of Rob's private messages that he'd decrypted on his own machine with his private key.

@ev, can I do that easily from a script? - @kas

I'm not sure, I'll give it some thought. I remember there was an ssb statistics chart way back in the day kept track of active participants, but if I remember correctly it was an expensive computing task to run.

The reason why it's completely unacceptable for lite clients is that everybody is able to read both their own and everybody else's private messages. - @kas

Correct.

@ev does the problem of exposing private message data only appear in lite clients? - @bobhaugen

This should be true now in the latest versions of ssb-server.

However, between March and September 2018 it was possible to request private messages from friends over ssb-ws.

While it's unlikely that use this attack over ssb-ws, I think it's wise for the current ssbc to disclose that private messages could have been insecure during this time.

But @Christian Bundy your merge referenced in https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-ws/pull/15#issuecomment-469061078 fixes the vulnerability in the server but also kills lite clients?

Yes, one way to fix this vulnerability is to kill lite clients.

Another way would be to disable private message indexing. This is the solution that I'd prefer, if I'm to continue to use the latest ssb-server.