Security of the Network

Strengths of the current implementation

Because all the important private information is distributed amongst users, this prevents one central server having all the information, this prevents one company/person having too much information and potentially selling it / misusing it.

Despite everyone having a copy of each message sent, the asymmetric encryption used ensures only the right person gets the right messages.

The signature used also helps to ensure a message is from the claimed sender

The weakness of the current implementation

Still depends on the central server for authenticating public keys used for signatures. If the central server is compromised the authenticity of all the users can be forged.

Having to send a copy of a message to everyone that is online also poses stability issues both in terms of bandwidth and also if, at a certain time, no one is online except for the user, this means the entire system is down.

The whole system working also depends on other clients having implemented features correctly. If no one online at a particular time has implemented check messages, then any messages sent during that period is lost.