Technitium Mesh Released!

Technitium Mesh, a successor to the Bit Chat project, has been released and is available to download directly from the Mesh website.

Technitium Mesh

Introduction

Mesh is a secure, anonymous, peer-to-peer (p2p), open source instant messenger that provides end-to-end encryption with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). Mesh can be used on the Internet or on offline private LAN networks for private messaging, group messaging and file transfers. Mesh is based on Bit Chat and retains it core concepts but has some major changes.

Unlike Bit Chat, Mesh does away with centralized user profile registration based on email address. Instead, users now can create multiple local profiles that can be used simultaneously and require to use a generated User Id. This major change was decided based on many people unwilling to disclose their email address or accused Technitium of harvesting email addresses. To be clear, Technitium never used the collected email addresses provided during the profile registration process to even inform existing users that the Bit Chat project is closing its operations.

The generated Mesh User Id is required to be exchanged to initiate private chat and can be changed anytime to avoid previously used User Id from being abused by anyone to stalk or harass you. Even when joining a group chat, a new User Id is generated each time so that the User Id disclosed in group chat cannot be used to initiate a private chat invitation. This makes sure that you are in total control over who is allowed to initiate private chat invitations and when.

The User Id is generated using an algorithm that uses RSA public key linked to the user profile and a random number. This algorithm allows each peer to authenticate the other peer during the peer-to-peer connection process to ensure their identity.

Mesh also removes the use of BitTorrent trackers that were being used by Bit Chat. Using torrent trackers created connectivity issues since many ISPs around the globe use deep packet inspection to block BitTorrent traffic. This also affected Bit Chat since ISPs could not differentiate between both the applications and blocked any traffic that was found using torrent trackers. Instead, Mesh now completely relies on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT).

Mesh now allows creating anonymous profiles that use Tor Network. Mesh includes Tor binaries to allow the app to use Tor Network anytime its necessary. Anonymous profiles and peer-to-peer (p2p) profiles are the two type of profiles that are now available. Both the profiles are interoperable such that a p2p profile user can communicate with anonymous profile user using the built in Tor support. This interoperability means that you can have a group where both p2p users and anonymous users can join together. Anonymous profiles use Tor hidden service to accept inbound connection requests but use a new hidden service onion domain name each time the user logs in to the profile to avoid being tracked using the onion domain name.

Read more technical details on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

Features

• Completely decentralized, peer-to-peer architecture that works even on offline private LAN networks. No centralized profile registration is needed.
• End-to-end encryption with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS).
• Allows you to create anonymous profiles that use Tor Network.
• Multiple profile support allows you to create many profiles and use all of them simultaneously.
• Allows creating private chat and group chat with file transfer support.
• User profiles are stored locally using strong encryption protected by passphrase. 
• Works peer-to-peer with IPv4 as well as IPv6 networks.
• Automatic port forwarding using your router's UPnP feature.

Open Source

Mesh is open source and source code is available under GNU General Public License v3 on GitHub. The software code is made open source to increase confidence in the security that we intend to provide.

Alpha Version

Technitium Mesh current release is in alpha version. This means the software is not fully complete and will undergo major changes in its protocol or user interface design. There may be noticeable bugs which will be addressed with an automatic update. You are welcome to report any issues by sending an email to support@technitium.com. For any issues, feedback, or feature request you may create an issue on GitHub.

Further, you may like to read the original concept in this old blog post.

Configuring DNS Server For Privacy & Security

Technitium DNS Server is an open source tool that can be used for blocking Internet Ads using DNS Sinkhole, self hosting a local DNS server for privacy & security or, used for experimentation/testing by software developers on their computer. It works out-of-the-box with no or minimal configuration and provides a user friendly web console accessible using any web browser.

With the release of Technitium DNS Server version 1.3 which adds support for DNS-over-TLS & DNS-over-HTTPS forwarders, it is now a good solution to be used by anyone concerned with privacy & security for domain name resolution on their Internet connection for Windows 10, Linux or macOS.

If you are not clear about what DNS is then read on. Domain Name System (DNS) is a decentralized system that allows you to find out the Internet Protocol (IP) address of any website (like www.technitium.com). So, when you enter a website domain name into your web browser, the web browser uses DNS to find out the IP address of that website. Once the IP address is known, the web browser can then connect to the web server on that IP address using TCP/IP protocols and download webpages and other embedded resources to display on to your screen. DNS servers don't just store IP address records but also store different types of records like mail exchange (MX) records which tell email servers where to deliver email for the recipient user of a given domain.

DNS servers and client use UDP or TCP protocol to exchange requests and responses which are not encrypted. This allows anyone on the network to see those requests and even hijack requests by sending back spoofed responses. There have been many instances reported in media of DNS hijacking done by malware, hacked home wifi routers or even by many Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs in certain places have been found to redirect users to "custom" search pages instead of Google Search or even blatantly injecting Ads on websites that are not using HTTPS security. In some countries, ISPs often use their DNS servers to block websites to enforce government censorship orders.

To mitigate these issues, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS protocols have been developed and are currently available to be used by a few DNS providers notably Cloudflare, Google and Quad9. But, currently, no operating system, applications or web browsers have built in support for these protocols.

With Technitium DNS Server installed on your computer (or on your network), you can make all your applications indirectly use these DNS providers with the new secure protocols hiding all your DNS traffic from your ISP. Lets see how to configure the DNS Server to use these services to take control and secure domain name resolution on your computer or private networks.

Technitium DNS Server is not configured out-of-the-box with these settings since you have to make a choice yourself of which DNS provider to use. All public DNS providers have their own privacy policies that you must understand before choosing it.

Cloudflare privacy policy promises that DNS query logs are only maintained for 24 hours with not personally identifiable data. They also promise to not sell the data to 3rd parties.

Google's privacy policy claims to maintain a temporary log for 24 to 48 hours which contains user's full IP address details. And a permanent log which redacts the personally identifiable data. There are no details mentioned how this data is used or whom its shared with.

Quad9's privacy policy promises that they do not keep any logs but, only anonymized statistical data on specific domain names which contains things like domain name, timestamp, geolocation, total hits, etc.

Below is a list of DNS providers grouped by the protocol they support. You can configure one or more DNS providers as forwarders but they must use the same protocol.

DNS-over-TLS protocol providers:

• Cloudflare IPv4 {cloudflare-dns.com (1.1.1.1:853), cloudflare-dns.com (1.0.0.1:853)}
• Cloudflare IPv6 {cloudflare-dns.com ([2606:4700:4700::1111]:853), cloudflare-dns.com ([2606:4700:4700::1001]:853)}
• Google IPv4 {dns.google (8.8.8.8:853), dns.google (8.8.4.4:853)}
• Google IPv6 {dns.google ([2001:4860:4860::8888]:853), dns.google ([2001:4860:4860::8844]:853)}
• Quad9 Secure IPv4 {dns.quad9.net (9.9.9.9:853)}
• Quad9 Secure IPv6 {dns.quad9.net ([2620:fe::fe]:853))

DNS-over-HTTPS protocol providers:

• Cloudflare (https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query)
• Google (https://dns.google/dns-query)
• Quad9 Secure (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query)

DNS-over-HTTPS (JSON) protocol providers:

• Cloudflare (https://cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query)
• Google (https://dns.google/resolve)
• Quad9 Secure (https://dns.quad9.net/dns-query)

To make the configuration quick, easy and error free, there is Quick Select drop down list available which lists all the above options. Just selecting the desired option in the Quick Select list will populate the settings automatically for you.

See these examples below to know how the configuration looks like:

DNS-over-TLS Using Cloudflare

DNS-over-TLS Using Quad9 For IPv6 Internet

DNS-over-HTTPS Using Cloudflare

DNS-over-HTTPS (JSON) Using Google

As you may have noticed, Cloudflare provides support for all three protocols. Not only that, it is possible to use Cloudflare DNS over Tor hidden service too! Technitium DNS Server v1.3 adds support for configuring proxy server which can of course be made to use Tor running on your computer and use Cloudflare DNS hidden service because WHY NOT?!

You just need to configure dns4torpnlfs2ifuz2s2yf3fc7rdmsbhm6rw75euj35pac6ap25zgqad.onion hidden service address as forwarder and since all hidden service requests over Tor network are inherently end-to end encrypted, you can use DNS-over-TCP protocol with it. Tor is not included with the software so you will need to install Tor separately and configure it as a SOCKS5 proxy.

This option hides your query from your ISP as well as hides your identity from Cloudflare. But seriously, if you are really that paranoid, just use Tor Browser for all your web browsing.

DNS-over-Tor Config For Cloudflare DNS Hidden Service

Once you have configured forwarders, make use of the DNS Client on the web console to test the setup by making a test query to "this-server". If everything is configured correctly, you will see the IP address for the test domain you entered inside the "Answers" section of the JSON formatted output.

Finally, to make all your computers and applications to use Technitium DNS Server, you need to configure it on your Ethernet or WiFi network adapter. You just need to setup loopback IP address (127.0.0.1 for IPv4 & ::1 for IPv6) as DNS Server in your network adapter settings as shown below:

IPv4 DNS Server Network Configuration

IPv6 DNS Server Network Configuration

For more queries, write comments below or send an email to support@technitium.com.

How To Configure Bit Chat To Use Tor Network

Bit Chat now has Socks 5 proxy support which can be used to route all the network traffic via Tor network. Tor software provides a Socks 5 proxy service to allow the Tor Browser to access Internet via Tor network which can be used by any application on your computer.

Bit Chat Registration Proxy Option

The Bit Chat registration window allows you to configure a Socks 5 proxy even before creating a profile. To configure Tor, just click on the Enable Proxy check box and you will get a proxy configuration window. Just select Socks 5 Proxy as proxy type, set proxy address as 127.0.0.1 and proxy port as 9150 as shown in the window below. You can click the Check Proxy button to confirm if Bit Chat is able to access the Tor Socks 5 proxy.

Socks 5 Proxy Config for using Tor network

Once you have confirmed the settings, just click OK and proceed with the registration process. Bit Chat will configure the same proxy settings for your profile. If you already have a profile and want to configure Tor, just click the main menu and click Profile Settings. You will find proxy settings which you can use to configure for using Tor.

Profile Settings for using Tor network

You can click the Check Proxy button in Profile Settings window and confirm if Bit Chat is able to access the proxy. Once this is configured, all new network connections will start going through Tor.

Tor network supports only TCP protocol due to which Bit Chat will not be able to use UDP based torrent trackers. You will have to rely only on HTTP based torrent trackers and DHT to find peers.

For any queries write an email to support@bitchat.im or leave a comment below.