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The friend address is what the byte string that you give away for people to add you will be called. 1. Every friend address now contains a number set by the friend. This is to prevent someone from randomly spamming people in the DHT with friend requests and makes it so you need the person to actually give you the address in some way to send the friend request. This number is expected to be encrypted with the friend request. All requests that do not contain this number will be rejected. This means the spammer can no longer use the DHT to collect lists of valid addresses to spam. It also enables users to quickly change the number in case a spammer gets hold of the address and starts spamming it. 2. A 2 byte checksum will be added (not implemented yet) to prevent people from accidentally adding random strings as friends. (NOTE that this has nothing to do with the spam problem I just decided to add a placeholder for it now.)
Project Tox, also known as Tox, is a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) instant messaging application aimed to replace Skype.
With the rise of governmental monitoring programs, Tox aims to be an easy to use, all-in-one communication platform (including audio, and videochats in the future) that ensures their users full privacy and secure message delivery.
IRC: #tox on freenode, alternatively, you can use the webchat.
Website: http://tox.im
Developer Blog: http://dev.tox.im
Website translations: here
Qt GUI: see nurupo's repository
How to build Tox on Linux: YouTube video
How to use Tox on Windows: YouTube video
For Mac OSX read INSTALL.md
Objectives:
Keep everything really simple.
The Complex Stuff:
- Tox must use UDP simply because hole punching with TCP is not as reliable.
- Every peer is represented as a byte string (the public key of the peer [client ID]).
- We're using torrent-style DHT so that peers can find the IP of the other peers when they have their ID.
- Once the client has the IP of that peer, they start initiating a secure connection with each other. (See Crypto)
- When both peers are securely connected, they can exchange messages, initiate a video chat, send files, etc, all using encrypted communications.
- Current build status:
Roadmap:
- Get our DHT working perfectly. (Done, needs large scale testing though)
- Reliable connection (See Lossless UDP protocol) to other peers according to client ID. (Done, see
DHT_sendfiletest.cfor an example) - Encryption. (Done)
- [ ] Get a simple text only IM client working perfectly. (This is where we are)
- [ ] Streaming media
- [ ] ???
For further information, check our To-do list
Why are you doing this? There are already a bunch of free skype alternatives.
The goal of this project is to create a configuration-free P2P skype replacement. Configuration-free means that the user will simply have to open the program and without any account configuration will be capable of adding people to his friends list and start conversing with them. There are many so-called skype replacements and all of them are either hard to configure for the normal user or suffer from being way too centralized.