Anonymous Chat Over Signal: A Real-Time, User-Friendly Mobile Application With Unique Cryptographic Algorithm For Enhanced Security

Introduction to Chatting Applications and Security Issues

In the 21^st century online chatting applications plats a very important role in people’s life. Some of the applications which have been developed are Wechat, Skype, MSN, and Windows Live Messenger. The kind of communication service is based on the Internet Transfer Protocol (ITP) and it supports several users in real time.  These messaging applications have worrying weakness; first most users have in one way been locked of their accounts due to massive flaws that exists with the applications. Forbes have reported that attackers are able to lock anyone on their Whatsapp application with just their phone number. Another issue which has been reported was the SMS-based two factor authentication. Most of these applications specifically Whatsapp has an issue with SMS-based 2FA authentication. Another issue was the dubious pseudonym malware which has spread to over 25 million mobile phones across the world as result of using Whatsapp application. Computer security analyst stated that the malware was secretly downloaded onto android devices as users attempted to download certain apps like WhatsApp. The malware also known as Agent Smith replaces WhatsApp application one people’s phone without their knowledge. Some of the countries which was hit by Agent Smith attack was the India. In lieu to this, this project aims at creating anonymous chat application which is not prone to the listed risks. Anonynmous chat over signal is a tool which takes advantage of the current technology advancement thereby allowing users to share media and communicate. The tool offers will offer a wonderful experience, whereby one is able to keep in touch with individuals that they know. The application will be used for placing video, voice, and messages. Also people will be able to share their locations, share photos and updates and at the same time enhance local socializing.

A real-time systems means receiving and sending information or data instantly over a network among single or multiple clients. Anonymous chat over signal is a project that employs the use of the wide area network to send multimedia and location messages to users via cellular mobile phones. With gradual acceptance of technology across the world, Anonymous chat over the signal will be a user friendly application which will also include less privilege in the society.

Developing and starting any service or application has lots of issues but one of the major issue is to know which tool, framework, language to build the application on and security of the application. Most chatting applications like WhatsApp are costly faced security concerns such as attacks. This project will involves building a real time application by incorporating one unique security feature dining cryptographic algorithm.

They are various aims and objectives for this project. These will be;

• Messaging: One of the primary goal of anonymous chat application over signal is messaging. Just like other chatting application, this project will include one way of conversation that users will engage in. This aim is pivotal as one can add people in a variety of ways. However different from other applications, the chat will entail one security feature to ensure first security level. Users will have a unique barcode known as QR code. An individual will have to scan another person QR code to add them into the application. After this, users will be required to use their friends’ phone number to add the person into their contact list. In addition to this, users will be required to add their friends’ email
• File transfer: This is the second aim. Here people will be able to share files ranging from videos, large documents, and images. This will be only be done so long as one has an account with the application
• Social barrier breaker: The application will introduce one unique feature which is not available in the current chatting applications, known as Pidgin English feature. This feature is specifically intended to ensure that we all socialize within our limits and the same time create more friends who are not in our ranks  
• Security concern

The project will deliver the following

• Economic boost
• A friendly and easy User Interface
• Privacy protection of individuals
• Speed in the usage of the application
• An application that uses multiple processes on the same sockets and machine
• Implementing and designing an anonymous chat on top of API
• Designing an API for performing dining cryptographers or shared secret

As highlighted in the previous section, various chatting applications have been developed. Additionally, messaging app have now become global than traditional social networks. Example in 20167, about 2.6 million people have used at least one messaging app. This translates to one-third of the entire population. Today, it is a common place for offices to use chatting application to coordinate meetings, plan happy hours, and for internal communication. It is also important to note that with the latest bit technology, chats apps are becoming a hub for workers not to performing their daily activities without using chat console. For most individuals, chat application are given part of their workday (Rocha, 2019).   

Anonymous Chat over Signal: A Brief Overview

Chatting application dates back in 1980s. In 1980 CompuServe released the first chatting application known as CB Simulator. Later in 1985, there was the launch of Commodore Quantum Link which allowed multi user chat, games, and file sharing. Late 1990s brought about dramatic changes in chatting application market. This is when MSN and Yahoo launched their won instant messaging application. Additionally in late 1990s, AOL br4ought about Chatbot which was named SmarterChild. This brought competition to MSN messenger at that time. This resulted to re-launching of SmarterChild messaging application.

In early 2000, it is when Whatsapp came into being. The chatting application which is the highlyt used chatting application was founded by Jan Koum and Brain Acton; they were former employees of Yahoo Company. Initially the application was not intended to be a messaging application. However in 2009, Koum purchased an iPhone and it is at this time that Koum came up with the idea of providing dynamic data and information about the people listed in his address book. Additionally, Koum re-named the application to WhatsApp to sound like “What is up”. On 24^th February 2009, he incorporated the application to what is known in California (Sarang, 2019).

The application kept on crashing and Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job but his co-founder Acton kept on encouraging to wait for more few months. At this time the application was being used by only a handful Fishman’s Russian speaking friends  

Whatsapp. On August 2009, the two realised the WhatsApp 2.0 which was mainly designed as a messaging component and at this time its usage increased to two hundred and fifty. The two kept on working for the application. However in 2014 19^th February, the application was bought by Facebook and was installed on its Meta platforms. The application was acquired for 19 billion US dollars; one of the largest acquisition till to-date. Since then the application has been designed till the recent Whatsapp web where users are able to use the application on their personal computers.

Other chatting applications have been developed such as Wechat. The application was developed by Tencent about five years ago. It has over one billion active users where 92% use the application on daily basis. Most of the application developed have constantly being faced with an attack in way or another due to the usage of Rabin Karp, Boyer Moore, and Knuth Morris Pratt (Dewi, 2020). This will be highlighted in the next chapter  

As highlighted in the previous section, the current designed application uses data or the internet to pass communication or messages from one to another. WhatsApp for example is built using ERLANG programming language. The code has been continuously revised to use extensible messaging and what is known as Presence Protocol. There three commonly used algorithms which have been used to develop these chatting applications, these are Rabin Karp, Boyer Moore, and Knuth Morris Pratt. These algorithms are native string algorithm

These algorithms have inherent issues and this translates the reason as to why these chatting applications have been constantly faced with security concerns. One of the issue is what is known as pattern matching; this is a popular issue among native string algorithms. These algorithms do not work well where there is a lot of matching characters followed by mismatching character. The algorithms are efficient on exact pattern searching however for various patterns the algorithm has to be applied several times.

Aims and Objectives

To solve this issue, this project suggests implementation of dining cryptographers’ algorithm when designing the chatting application. The algorithm is specifically used for security purposes. The algorithm uses two stages protocol. The very first state the protocol determines random one-bit shared secret. The second stage implements the protocol for a number of X arranging it on a ring. It is important to note that one way to provide security to a messaging application is to establish keys. One way is to toss as many possibilities as possible and to use a cryptographic pseudorandom –sequence generator. This can be provided by dining cryptographers’ algorithm (Wayner, 2016)  

Software requirements

To develop the application, the following software requirements will be used as indicated by the table shown below

 Hardware requirements 

PERT chart 

The project will be organized in a series of tasks, activities or events. The following PERT diagram shows graphically the order of activities to be performed. This will enable calculation of critical path. Also it will enable estimation of cost and time along the path. Figure one below shows PERT organization of the activities

Figure 1: projected PERT CHART

The projected Gannt chart is as show by figure two below. The figures shows slack time

Figure 2: Projected slack time of activities 

As indicated in the previous sections, testing will paramount in this project as no software system design is perfect. In this case testing will be carried out into phases. The very first phase will be during software engineering which will after creation of the application GUI. The second phase will after the design of the application. The first part of testing will be

This will involve a close examination of the application logical parts. Here errors will be corrected using this type testing. Also this will involve testing of the various application units.

The second part will be black box testing. Here all functional requirements of the application will be tested. Additionally, it will involve alpha testing which will be done until requirements as specified are verified if they are met

This type of testing will done when about five users starts using the application. It will done among a number of potential application users who agree to use the application. These individuals will then be promoted to report any issue they face while using the application. It will also involve detection of errors which might be anticipated by the application developer (Sneha, 2017).  

Conclusion

As highlighted from this project proposal paper, the current chatting applications are faced with various cases of attacks. This because the chatting applications have continuously implemented Rabin Karp, Boyer Moore, and Knuth Morris Pratt algorithms. However this project aims at developing the application using dining cryptographers’ algorithm. This is based on simple cycles referred to as rings. Message secrecy is ensured via intended recipient public key

References

Dewi, A. M. (2020). Chatting facility development on computer aided instruction (CAI). New York : Springer Press.

Rocha, C. V. (2019). A Chatbot Solution for Self-Reading Energy Consumption via Chatting Application. Journal of Control, Automation and Electrical Systems 33.1, 13-90.

Sarang, P. (2019). Practical liferay: Java-based portal applications development. Chicago.

Sneha, K. a. (2017). Research on software testing techniques and software automation testing tools. 2017 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing, 71-89.

Wayner, P. (2016). Disappearing cryptography: Being and nothingness on the Net. Chicago: Springer press.

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