BitTorrent unwraps chat app Bleep

Why did BitTorrent call their new Windows chat program Bleep?
"We never see your messages or metadata," said Jaehee Lee, the senio
r product manager for Bleep, in a blog post announcing the new app o
n Wednesday. "s far as we!re concerned, anything you say is !bleep! t
o us."
The chat application promises real messaging secrecy that slices thro
ugh the technological "ordian #not of encrypting instant message tra
$ic by using the same decentrali%ed approach behind torrents. Windo
ws & and Windows ' users can sign up now for the Bleep pre(alpha.
While BitTorrent would no doubt love for the entire world to start usin
g Bleep, Lee said that the app should appeal immediately to people in
four #inds of situations) friends who want to #eep a conversation priva
te, reporters loo#ing to have privacy(protected or anonymous convers
ations with sources, private communi*ues among diplomats, and busi
nesses wishing to #eep message content safe from lea#s or industrial
espionage.
BitTorrent!s +irector of ,ommunications ,hristian verill said that the
company is focusing on building Bleep, and it!s not concerned with ma
#ing money from it at the moment.
"We will e-plore the moneti%ation opportunities at an appropriate tim
e," he said.
.n the wor#s for close to a year, the previously(unnamed instant messa
ging app and the engine that powers it improve messaging protocol se
curity by decentrali%ing it, the same way that BitTorrent decentrali%ed
downloads. Bleep is available today as a Windows(only download, but i
t!s a rough pre(alpha. While anybody interested can re*uest an invite,
it!s best to stay away from Bleep until it becomes more stable.
/ther platforms are e-pected to get their own versions of Bleep as the
Windows version becomes more usable. Bleep doesn!t store any metad
ata ever, so it wouldn!t be sub0ect to the legal standards that govern m
etadata collection. ,ontacts connect to each other through others nod
es in the networ#, so there!s no central address loo#up, and its end(to(
end encryption relies on advanced encryption protocol such as curve1
2234, ed12234, salsa15, poly3652. ssuming that they have been prop
erly implemented, this would ma#e Bleep very secure indeed.
,urrently, Bleep supports te-t(based messages and voice calls when a
contact is online, and the app wor#s on Windows & and '. ndroid and
7ac /8 9 support are due when Bleep reaches its alpha release in the
coming months. /:ine support, along with the ability to have more th
an one installation, is due later. 8o for now, you!re not only restricted
at this point to Windows, but to one speci;c Windows computer. Tha
t!s e-pected to change as Bleep develops.
<ou can sign up with an email address, phone number, or even as unlis
ted so that you don!t have to provide any personal identi;able informa
tion. Testers can invite their friends and can import their "oogle addr
ess boo#.
The biggest problems with securing instant message tra$ic on the .nt
ernet have been getting messages to go to the right target (( without r
evealing its contents. 7essages for most chat apps are sent from your
device to a centrali%ed server, and then sent on to the recipient. =owe
ver, traditional implementation of message encryption hides the mess
age content and the addressee, obfuscating where it!s supposed to go
Lee e-plained that Bleep solves both those problems. .t uses the same
#ind of +istributed =ash Table >+=T? that decentrali%es torrents for B
itTorrent and uTorrent, so that while the loo#up and locate component
s of the message are sent to a server, the message contents have been
stripped out and are sent directly to the addressee. The +=T used wit
h Bleep has been updated by BitTorrent to support encryption.
BitTorrent e-plained how the decentrali%ed +=T wor#s in a blog post f
rom +ecember 1536)
With BitTorrent ,hat, there aren!t any "usernames" per se. <ou don!t l
ogin in the classic sense. .nstead, your identity is a cryptographic #ey
pair. To everyone on the BitTorrent ,hat networ# at large, you @A yo
ur public #ey. This means that, if you want, you can use ,hat without t
elling anyone who you are. Two users only need to e-change each oth
er!s public #eys to be able to chat.
By using public #ey encryption in con0unction with forward secrecy, Bi
tTorrent is able to encrypt messages while ensuring they reach their d
estination.
BitTorrent might be in a position to succeed with protected instant me
ssaging where others have failed. lthough companies li#e "oogle are
wor#ing on plans to encrypt chats and emails end(to(end, their busine
ss models depend on the #ind of data mining that BitTorrent avoids
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