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Switching chat addresses

David Hawig edited this page Jun 30, 2018 · 2 revisions

The current version of Chiota switches automatically the chat address after 10 or more messages on one address. The reasons for this is, on the one hand, to make it less resource intensive to load only the latest messages and on the other hand to make Chiota even more secure.

The next chat address is partly generated based on the decrypted messages. Therefore, only the chatting persons know the next chat address. That’s why an attacker has a maximum of 10 messages to find a private key, which should be impossible even with a quantum computer. In this case, even if somebody would know an NTRU key reuse attack similar to RLWE the number of messages he has access to is far to low to derive a private key based on them.

Furthermore, switching address helps a lot to improve the long-time performance, since you need to load only 10 messages at once instead of all messages stored on one address.

You can find the code which switches address automatically here The next address is generated based on three parts:

  1. Basically, a tryte string number which gets incremented
  2. Letters, which are taken from three decrypted messages on this address
  3. Filling up the new address to 81 characters based on the current address

If you notice any security flaws with the current implementation, please open a GitHub issue.