Thoughts on this?
If you’re looking for a Meshtastic alternative which was designed with cryptographic security in mind instead of adding it as an afterthought, check out Reticulum and its RNode firmware which lets it use (most) Meshtastic-compatible LoRa devices as a modem.
Reticulum also has much more intelligent routing, can work over things besides just LoRa (including the internet), and (some) applications built on it provide reliable transport.
see also
- Sideband - probably the app to start with, for Linux, Android, Mac, and Windows
- https://github.com/liberatedsystems/RNode_Firmware_CE - more actively developed fork of LoRa modem firmware which supports more devices than upstream
- https://rmap.world/ - despite being older and more mature, it unfortunately still has many fewer (publicly listed, at least) nodes than Meshtastic
- https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/wiki/Awesome-Reticulum - lots more
about iOS support...
- https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/issues/116 - explains some of the obstacles
- https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/discussions/117
- https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum/discussions/307
- https://testflight.apple.com/join/ftgW9n0Z - i don’t know if this currently works; i only skimmed the above discussions
caveat about the license
The license of the Python reference implementation doesn’t meet the free or open source software definitions because it contains these two clauses:
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The Software shall not be used in any kind of system which includes amongst its functions the ability to purposefully do harm to human beings.
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The Software shall not be used, directly or indirectly, in the creation of an artificial intelligence, machine learning or language model training dataset, including but not limited to any use that contributes to the training or development of such a model or algorithm.
While I very much appreciate the intention of these clauses, they will inevitably inhibit adoption somewhat.
There are however already multiple compatible implementations in development under free licenses, as you can see on the Awesome-Reticulum wiki page. (Including one by a company marketing products based on it for military use 😦)
The Sideband app is also under a non-free license (CC BY-NC-SA).
If I’m understanding correctly, they are actually addressing security issues. For example, they have a blog post called that one time at DEF CON where they discussed what happened and how they mitigated it in firmware 2.7.5.
this is never going to be and was not designed to be a secret spy movie text network anymore than it is an instant messager replacement. the encryption has a ways to go yes but its also come a long way. the benefit of the platform is zero licensing entry with cheap gear. that communities can stand up together and use. or organizers can flash devices between uses and swarm a mesh if needed.
its fun building meshes that can cover a hundred miles but, to function like that you have to drastically shorten the messages. and repeat messages to deal with drops. the encryption overall is fine for what the mesh can do and what the appropriate use cases could be. not great but it’ll do.
Is it legal to encrypt communications in the spectrum meshtastic is using?
I had thought it was not and therefore could not be built into the protocol and so securing communications (potentially illegally) is left as an exercise for the reader.
Is that not so?
It’s apparently legal if you don’t enable ham mode. Not a lawyer etc.
in the US at least its about broadcast power level. HAMs can broadcast louder but cant enable encryption. default firmware shipped to the US limits your power level so you remain legal.
*i should add that is MY understanding of the situation and i’m no lawyer.
You have it correct. If you’re using ham mode, you’re allowed to use more power, but hams cannot have encrypted data. Therefore, ham mode is disabled by default.
Also with Ham Mode, if you do enable it, you can only talk to other nodes also using Ham Mode, unencrypted. Therefore, you lose access to the majority of the mesh, which makes it kind of pointless, except for experiments.
