Chat for cats
This is proof-of-concept code to see if you can exchange messages across networks with IPv6. Surprisingly, this sometimes works.
You need some kind of >0 score. I've only seen 10/10 and 0/10 in very limited spot checking with friends and family. If it says 0, nothing here will work. If it says 10, it's worth finding a friend with ipv6 to see if this works. If this does work, your computer is available to the internet via ipv6. Maybe this is great, maybe it's a problem. Maybe it's a little of both. Worth knowing about, either way.
You need npx, nodejs and npm. Run npm i to get dependencies. The code so far
was developed on nodejs 15.6.0.
To generate a basic config, run:
npx ts-node ts/index.ts genconfig
This will output something like:
{
"localHttpPort": 3030,
"localWebSocketPort": 3030,
"internetListenPort": 2679,
"secretKeyBase64": "<will be generated for you>",
"publicKeyBase64": "<will be generated for you>",
"friends": [
{
"ip": "",
"port": 2679,
"displayName": "",
"publicKeyBase64": ""
}
]
}
Make a .data directory and save the file as .data/config.json.
You are free to use any ports for localHttpPort and localWebSocketPort. Those services explicitely listen on 127.0.0.1.
- localHttpPort
This is the port you will connect to locally to access the web UI. http://127.0.0.1:3030
- localWebSocketPort
This also listens on 127.0.0.1 and communicates with your browser when there are new messages. There is no security on your 127.0.0.1 communication.
- internetListenPort
This is the port node.js will listen on for remote connections from the internet. If you try this and are able to communicate with someone, any device on your home/LAN network that is using ipv6 is probably also accessible.
- secretKeyBase64
This is your decryption key. Anyone with this key can decrypt and messages encrypted with the public key. In non-proof-of-concept code this would probably at least be stored like the keys in ~/.ssh. Writing this key with crypt and requiring a password are probably reasonable next steps.
- publicKeyBase64
This is you, kitty cat! Give this to friends so they can send you messages.
This section is where you put in the information of your ipv6 friends.
- ip
Likely will be of the form 2601::/64. Do not enter /64.
- port
This is the port your peer has entered for internetListenPort. 2679 by default.
- displayName
The name you want to see in your local UI that is associated with the publicKey.
- publicKeyBase64
Their public key. When you give them your "publicKeyBase64" this is what they give back.
You can add yourself in the friends section for testing.
{
"ip": "::1",
"port": 2679,
"displayName": "me",
"publicKeyBase64": "<generated public key from genconfig>"
}
Run the following to get a config to trade with your ipv6 friends
npx ts-node ts/index.ts whoami
npm run start
This is an entirely experimental project. All I know about tweetnacl is what their website says, and what a site says they link to from their website. I haven't read the nodejs or express source code. I don't know anyone that has. I don't even know that much about ipv6. This code is entirely for testing.
This project started from 6eer test code.
https://github.com/TypeStrong/ts-node https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v15.x/docs/api/net.html https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v15.x/docs/api/http.html https://expressjs.com/en/starter/basic-routing.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLOptionsCollection