Hemloc

The login page

Inspiration

We were inspired by platforms such as Signal, Discord, and TOR.

What it does

Our project lets people communicate between computers anonymously, securely and without a server. The metadata is also secure, meaning a man-in-the-middle cannot tell anything about the messages being sent, not even who the recipient or senders are.

How we built it

We coded it with a pair of PHP servers, one for relaying incoming messages and checking if it's their recipient, and a second for running the browser-based UI and managing encryption and decryption. All the serious compute is done in a Julia backend that is called on demand for password verification and cryptography.

Challenges we ran into

It was challenging passing data between the many different programs securely, and we had to make compromises with peer discovery for a truly decentralized network. Additionally, with the current network topology, the platform is not truly scalable, as messages cannot be directed towards their recipient and instead must be randomly bounced.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We implemented a professional-strength encryption system, and created a network traffic masker that is stronger than TOR.

What we learned

We learned that php may not be the right coding language for projects like these, and that extreme network anonymity comes at the cost of performance and storage.

What's next for Hemloc

Elliptic curve or lattice cryptography for quantum resistance, and better network topology for a larger user base. We can also digitally sign the messages, so that sender id is guaranteed.