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 * HOW IT WORKS
 * SCREENSHOTS
 * HANDBOOK
 * FAQ
 * CODE
 * CHANGELOG
 * GET CWTCH


SURVEILLANCE RESISTANT INFRASTRUCTURE

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CWTCH /KƱTƩ/

Cwtch (/kʊtʃ/ - a Welsh word roughly translating to “a hug that creates a safe
place”) is a decentralized, privacy-preserving, multi-party messaging protocol
that can be used to build metadata resistant applications.




Decentralized and Open


Participants in Cwtch can host their own safe spaces, or lend their
infrastructure to others seeking a safe space. There is no “Cwtch service” or
“Cwtch network”. The Cwtch protocol is open, and anyone is free to build bots,
services and user interfaces and integrate and interact with Cwtch.

Privacy Preserving


All communication in Cwtch is end-to-end encrypted and takes place over Tor v3
onion services.

Metadata Resistant


Cwtch has been designed such that no information is exchanged or available to
anyone without their explicit consent, including on-the-wire messages and
protocol metadata.

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HOW IT WORKS

Existing secure messengers provide end to end encryption so that eavesdroppers
can't see the contents of the communication. But these centralized platforms,
much like a post office, act as clearing houses for messages.

They need access to metadata about your activities such as who you talk to, when
and how much in order to offer features like group messaging and offline
delivery.

Communications metadata is known to be exploited by many adversaries to
undermine the security of systems; to track people; And to conduct large scale
social networking analysis that feeds into mass surveillance systems. These
systems have grave consequences for freedom, autonomy and sometimes...even life
itself.

Cwtch is a metadata resistant privacy platform designed to hide this metadata
and help you resist surveillance.

Like other systems, Cwtch uses end to end encryption. but the journey its
messages take is different. Cwtch is a decentralized peer to peer platform built
on Tor onion services. With no need for a centralized server to route messages
through, and onion routing provided by Tor, Cwtch establishes direct connections
between peers while minimizing and sometimes even eliminating the metadata that
3rd parties can see.

Cwtch uses cryptographic identifiers that anyone can anonymously generate for
themselves as many times as they want. This means they can't be tied to your
real world identity by anyone but you.

Cwtch is designed to put consent first. This means we never want the app to do
something you don't expect or want. Cwtch gives more control over what
information is shared, how and who can communicate with who. We'll never
included unsolicited content such as advertising or trends.

Cwtch is designed for people who need to protect, not only the *content* of
their communication, but *who* they are talking to as well. Cwtch provides a
safe space for you and your friends, family, comrades, and fellow
rabble-rousers.

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SCREENSHOTS





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FAQ


HOW IS CWTCH DIFFERENT TO SIGNAL / WHATSAPP / IMESSAGE?

Cwtch is decentralized and focused on metadata-privacy in addition to
communications privacy. Unlike other communication platforms, none of your
messages are routed through a centralized server that has access to metadata
such as your social network of friends, or who sent and received a particular
message.

Even in experimental group chats which do rely on a routing server, the server
learns no information about which messages belong to which group, who is a
member of which group, or who messages are intended for.

We believe that our tools should help people resist surveillance. Communications
metadata is known to be exploited by many adversaries to undermine the security
of systems; to track people; and to conduct large scale social networking
analysis that feeds into mass surveillance systems. And because of that, we
explicitly designed Cwtch for metadata privacy.


HOW DO I PRONOUNCE CWTCH?

Like "kutch", to rhyme with "butch".


WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PEER-TO-PEER CONNECTION AND A CWTCH GROUP?

Cwtch peer-to-peer connections allow 2 people to message each other directly.
Behind the scenes peer-to-peer connections use Tor v3 onion services to provide
an encrypted, and metadata resistant connection. Because of this direct
connection, both parties need to be online at the same time in order to message
each other.

Cwtch Groups allow multiple parties to participate in a single conversation
using an untrusted server (that can be provided by 3rd party or self hosted).
Server operators cannot learn how many people are in a group, or what is being
discussed. If multiple groups are hosted on a single server then the server is
unable to learn which messages belong to which group without the collusion of a
group member. Unlike in peer-to-peer conversations, group conversations can be
conducted asynchronously, so everyone in a group doesn't need to be online at
the same time.


WHY ARE CWTCH GROUPS EXPERIMENTAL?

Metadata-resistant group messaging is still an open problem. While the version
we provide in Cwtch Beta is designed to be secure and metadata private it is
rather inefficient and can be misused. As such we advise caution when using it,
and only provide it as an opt-in feature.


WHAT HAPPENS IF I FORGET THE PASSWORD TO AN ENCRYPTED PROFILE? OR UNINSTALL THE
APPLICATION? OR DELETE MY PROFILES FOLDER?

Unlike a traditional centralized service that can offer password overrides,
Cwtch stores all your data locally on your device.

Without the password, and the encrypted file, it is practically impossible for
anyone to derive the key to decrypt the profile. As such that profile should be
considered irretrievably lost.


HOW CAN I RUN MY OWN CWTCH SERVER?

The reference implementation for a Cwtch server is open source. Anyone can run a
Cwtch server, and anyone with a copy of the server key bundle of public keys can
host groups on that server without the operator having access to group related
metadata.


WHY DOES CWTCH USE DATA WHEN I'M NOT USING IT?

At startup Cwtch launches a Tor process so that it can setup and connect to v3
onion services.

All Cwtch activity takes place through these onion services, and are reliant on
Tor, we setup Cwtch in a background service that can be managed by Androids
lifecycle management and can be reconnected to the foreground application when
it is unpaused, or restarted.

Without this background process management Cwtch would require Tor to be
reinitialized every time the app is loaded which would make it slow to start,
and would make peer connection unusable on Android, as everytime the app went
away you would go offline.

Note: Group connections are synchronized every time cwtch is online and it is
not necessary to be online all the time when using them.

When a Tor process is running it will download some amount of data in order to
retrieve consensus from the Tor network. Any active onion services will also
require a small amount of data to maintain their circuits and introduction
points independent of any app use.

In the future we plan to allow cwtch clients to opt-in to using an external Tor
connection such as Orbot to manage Tor processes separately from Cwtch.


HOW CAN I SHUTDOWN CWTCH?

The front-pane of the app has a "Shutdown Cwtch" button (with an 'X') icon.
Pressing this button will trigger a dialog, and on confirmation Cwtch will be
shutdown and all profiles will be unloaded.


HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED IN TESTING CWTCH?

For information on the libraries, protocol, threat model and open questions
please check out the Cwtch Security Handbook.

FuzzBot is our development testing bot. You can add FuzzBot as a contact:
4y2hxlxqzautabituedksnh2ulcgm2coqbure6wvfpg4gi2ci25ta5ad .

Sending Fuzzbot the command testgroup-invite will cause FuzzBot to invite you to
the Cwtch Testers Group!

For more information on FuzzBot see our Discreet Log development blog.


HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED IN SUPPORTING CWTCH?

 * Report Bugs and Issues and Feature Requests:
   https://git.openprivacy.ca/cwtch.im/cwtch-ui/issues
 * Submit Pull Requests: https://git.openprivacy.ca/cwtch.im/cwtch-ui
 * Volunteer to Translate: Contact team@cwtch.im to be added to our Lokalise
   translation team. We currently have translations for the following languages
   (help for other languages/locales welcome)!
   * Brazilian Portuguese (100% Translated)
   * Dutch (100% Translated)
   * English (100% Translated)
   * French (100% Translated)
   * German (100% Translated)
   * Italian (100% Translated)
   * Polish (100% Translated)
   * Russian (100% Translated)
   * Spanish (100% Translated)
   * Welsh (100% Translated)
   * Danish (89% Translated)
   * Norwegian (89% Translated)
   * Romanian (89% Translated)
   * Luxembourgish (26% Translated)
   * Greek (19% Translated)
   * Portuguese (16% Translated)
 * Donate to Open Privacy Research Society to help us fund the development of
   new features!



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

 * Handbook
 * Security Handbook

FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT

 * Source Code
 * Report an Issue
 * Mastodon

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