from Hacker News

Ricochet: Peer-to-peer instant messaging system built on Tor hidden services (2017)

by philonoist on 2/14/25, 8:34 AM with 30 comments

• by karel-3d on 2/14/25, 11:25 AM

  > From 2019 to 2021, Ricochet was used by the admins (as well as an undercover investigator) of the child porn onion site Boystown. To identify the perpetrators, German police used a correlation analysis attack. By sending Ricochet messages to perpetrators and monitoring several hundred Tor nodes for simultaneous traffic of the correct size, authorities were able to identify intermediate Tor nodes and then also the perpetrator's entry nodes, revealing the perpetrators' IP addresses.

  From wikipedia.

• by 3s on 2/14/25, 8:06 PM

  The problem with all anonymous communication systems is that they suffer from network effects even more than traditional communication systems. By having few people use it you immediately expose yourself by being part of a small group of people using it, becoming an easy target. Unfortunately the reality is that it’s often easier to hide as a needle in a haystack on something like WhatsApp than it is to use a theoretically anonymous communication system that lacks the “haystack” altogether

• by aleksjess on 2/14/25, 10:50 AM

  Looks like a good idea... sadly the latest release is from 8y ago. :(

• by jqpabc123 on 2/14/25, 1:11 PM

  You should support The Tor Project, EFF, and run a Tor relay.

  More people might run a Tor relay if there was a way to do so without compromising their privacy.

• by mycall on 2/15/25, 1:25 AM

  It would be fun to get Ricochet P2P messaging to work over Ricochet P2P packet radio devices.

• by k__ on 2/14/25, 7:34 PM

  Half-OT:

  How well do Onion services work with regular HTTP and DNS?

  Can I use Onion IDs use just like a regular domain?