Top
Best
New

Posted by us321 1 day ago

Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark(briarproject.org)
527 points | 327 commentspage 4
FridayoLeary 19 hours ago|
I'm still unclear how the stated goal of the title is achieved. My first assumption reading the title that it works something like airtags, but that is obviously nonsense. unless you are standing right next to the guy you want to message, how exactly does it work?
jayd16 18 hours ago|
https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/

Looks like clients re-host posts to their friends in a p2p fashion.

FridayoLeary 18 hours ago||
Thanks. Basically it depends on c travelling to another town. Also taking the risk of being caught with the content on it's phone. It looks like a great app and every little helps but hardly a game changer, unless i'm underestimating how bad it is in Iran?

If it works via tor it's probably also slow, but that's a small price to pay for not relying on a central server for people with legitimate concerns or problems with connecting.

aaravchen 12 hours ago||
I suspect use cases are more likely community organizing and info sharing. It supports forums and private groups that are E2EE, and "blog" posts that can include RSS reblogging.

The forums and private groups do bidirectional syncing and merging of all updates with anyone in the forum/group, so that gives you the equivalent of near-infinite multihop among trusted peers for large forums/groups. And it means every person has a complete copy, so it's nearly impossible to find all copies to censor it. With the blogging of reblogged RSS feeds, you can even have people acting like news carriers for viral-ike person-to-person information transfer as well. Even if that does require a little more manual curation by the "transmission vectors" than forum/group posts.

Remember too that when things get bad enough people become ready to give up thier lives if necessary, and this may just be a way to reduce (but not eliminate) the need to actually sacrifice thier life for their cause. Large groups of people may collectively believe it's worth being individually captured and imprisoned or murdered to ensure the larger group is aware of what's happening.

subscribed 20 hours ago||
Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.
devsda 15 hours ago||
Do you think the govt will not force Google to revoke developer certs once developer verification is in place to prevent sideloading or not order Google/Apple to forcibly uninstall them ?

These are great tools in American toolkit if it wants to do a regime change in other countries. Their effectiveness within America are questionable.

theshrike79 12 hours ago|||
There are fully hardware based meshtastic devices: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/realizing-meshtastics...

The Government can't revoke the certs on those.

aaravchen 12 hours ago|||
The government isn't going to hand to do that, that's already what Google's planning to do anyway. They'd just have to tell Google to take down certain apps so they're no longer on the Google "approved" list, which would deactivate them on your device during next network connection (like most Google "services" on Android, I'm sure these too would bypass the system VPN as well) as well as making them unavailable from the sole allowed download source. You know, like they did with ICE Block already.
codezero 20 hours ago|||
The military can very easily find and eliminate repeaters very quickly and almost certainly would.
torlok 20 hours ago|||
Then get more? Sounds like a fantastic way to waste military resources. I have no clue why this mythical US military might and efficiency idea persists after so many failed interventions.
subscribed 18 hours ago|||
Here's a funny example of making it harder to find: https://youtu.be/W_F4rEaRduk?t=178
bb88 18 hours ago|||
Triangulation is damn easy. If the US can put on bomb on a suspect satellite phone user back in the 2000's (and they did!), they can certainly send a bomb on that today.

Sat phones during the second gulf war (maybe even the first) became a liability. The transmission lit them up like a god damn beacon saying, "Bomb goes here!".

fragmede 17 hours ago|||
Triangulation, the math isn't the hard part. Where exactly on the continental United States are you proposing dropping ordinance? MOVE in 1985 was controversial even back then.
esseph 16 hours ago|||
Good luck if your mesh network is on 2.4/5/6ghz.

It'll blend in with background radiation from home routers.

ssl-3 13 hours ago||
It can have challenges, but triangulation can be done with signals that have recognizable patterns or features -- even in a sea of other co-channel noise sources.

If you can observe the signal strength of your neighbor's home router while standing next to your own even if the signals differ in strength by some orders of magnitude (which is easy on Android; no idea bout iOS), then anyone else can also do the same.

1shooner 17 hours ago|||
>the more people who use it, the more robust and far-reaching and reliable it gets.

I was under the opposite impression, that meshtastic's whole problem is that it doesn't scale well at all.

bigfatkitten 13 hours ago|||
Meshtastic uses naive flooding, which is fine for sparse networks (ie you and your three friends out hiking), but which doesn’t scale well at all.
culi 16 hours ago|||
I'm genuinely interested in learning more about the shortcomings of meshtastic if you have a link to share. Groups like the Anarchist Black Cross seem really supportive of the tech for disaster situations. Even Benn Jordan claimed it played an important role during the floods in NC
1shooner 15 hours ago||
My understanding is that it relates to the flood routing in meshtastic. I haven't heard a real-world failure example, but another comment on this post mentioned defcon being a case (I don't know anything about that).

I did find this assessment:

https://www.disk91.com/2024/technology/lora/critical-analysi...

And here is Meshtastics explanation of the rationale behind 'managed flood routing':

https://meshtastic.org/blog/why-meshtastic-uses-managed-floo...

I think I first heard about the differences from Andy Kirby, one of the MeshCore creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNWf0Mh2fJw

kevin_thibedeau 18 hours ago||||
The intervention part is an administrative problem the military isn't designed for. For the core mission of collecting intelligence, eliminating targets, and occupying land, the US has an unrivaled track record over the last 85 years.
bb88 18 hours ago||||
No, just blast the hell out of the ISM bands on which they operate. This seem certainly feasible for a military apparatus the size of the US.
torlok 17 hours ago|||
I'm sure everybody's going to stay on ISM bands to remain compliant with government regulations while being attacked by the government.
ozfive 16 hours ago||
This deserves a /s
esseph 16 hours ago|||
The economic impact of that would be massive re: business operational impact.

Directional radios would still win out on p2p links.

ungreased0675 18 hours ago||||
You must have missed the S-tier op that went down January 3rd.
torlok 17 hours ago||
That was a single mission planned over months. We're talking about a continuous subjudagtion.
kingkawn 19 hours ago|||
The interventions fail only after enormous slaughter, which people are understandably keen to not be subject to
anigbrowl 19 hours ago||
As if compliance had such a great success rate.
computerthings 18 hours ago||
[dead]
subscribed 18 hours ago||||
I don't think it's going to be military killing a Americans. As of now it more looks like federal government.

Nevertheless, sure, in the rural areas, but less so in the cities, reflections and bending of the waves make it much harder, and a single repeater with solar panel and battery could plausibly be made under $50.

bb88 18 hours ago|||
A military won't be killing all Americans, just the ones it can label as "terrorists" to the people who elected them.
ozfive 16 hours ago|||
They are being made. I have a four node network already in my suburb. There is a software project that is written in Python that essentially turns lorawan nodes into BBSs similar to briar.
aaravchen 12 hours ago||||
Why would they bother? Super low bandwidth unencrypted communication they can triangulate if they really need to sounds like a perfect thing to let keep running and just monitor. Then you can triangulate just the "seditious" people who incriminate themselves.
aaravchen 12 hours ago||
I guess if you were relying on the meshtastic network as a backbone network replacement, which I'm not sure much of anyone is even currently setup for and I've heard isnt really feasible with the naive meshtastic toy implementation, you could be sending encrypted traffic. But then you have to have pre-shared encryption keys for participants and it will significantly lose it's usefulness for adding new adopters.
NoiseBert69 8 hours ago||||
You can build a Meshcore/-tastic station for less than 15€ if you are into PCB design. It's like fighting against off-the-shelf drones.
culi 16 hours ago||||
They're incredibly easy to build and even disguise as lawn ornaments as Benn Jordan showed in a recent video. When it costs us less money and time to build them than it costs the gov't to find/destroy them it's a worthy investment
ozfive 16 hours ago||||
Maybe ham repeaters but when we are talking lorawan they will have a hell of a time taking the networks down that are already established. Just in my suburb we have more than 6000 nodes because of the helium network.
bigfatkitten 13 hours ago||||
At no time from 2001-2021 did the Taliban find themselves short on VHF repeaters. If one gets taken down, put up another one.
vfclists 19 hours ago||||
Isn't stopping abuses of the power of the military the reason for the 2nd Amendment?

Why don't the people in Minnesota go open carry and let ICE agents think twice before drawing their weapons on people?

soulofmischief 19 hours ago|||
Renee Good was killed after dropping off her six-year-old child at school. I agree with you, but people like her have children and are not trying to die in the street just for looking at somebody the wrong way. And it's one thing to open carry, it's another thing to become a trained and confident marksmen.

And as someone who has had half a dozen police officers simultaneously pointing guns at my head, mistaking me for someone else in public, once you're in that situation, escalation is only going to lead to death. Out here, police shoot you if your hand goes anywhere near your waist.

bb88 18 hours ago||||
>Isn't stopping abuses of the power of the military the reason for the 2nd Amendment?

It was for establishing well ordered militias. They could be used to help defend the country in a time of war.

> Why don't the people in Minnesota go open carry and let ICE agents think twice before drawing their weapons on people?

Most of the demonstrators believe that "the pen is mightier than the sword", and non-violence is the way to achieve political means. (Ghandi, MLK jr.)

When the peace-niks start amassing guns, that's when you have a tipping point in this country.

hrimfaxi 17 hours ago||
What's the definition of a well-ordered militia? A bunch of farmers that go shooting together?
futuraperdita 13 hours ago|||
Alexander Hamilton explains his definition of what "well-regulated" is - and the purpose of a citizen militia - in contrast to the standing army in the Federalist Papers, No. 29. Most of the idea has become much more federalized than intended with the National Guard, but it has long since been misused for its intended purpose.
bb88 17 hours ago|||
A bunch of farmers that go shooting drunk. /s

Seriously though, everyone back in the 1700s realized that all Americans were American. I'm not sure that's true any more.

akho 11 hours ago|||
I think the most you can say is that they recognized that many male propertied white protestant Americans are American. Maybe some more qualifiers are necessary.
hrimfaxi 16 hours ago|||
> Seriously though, everyone back in the 1700s realized that all Americans were American. I'm not sure that's true any more.

What was an American in the 1700s? A person born in America?

theshrike79 12 hours ago|||
Because the pro 2nd amendment people with "Don't tread on me" tattoos are going to "Tread on me harder, daddy!".
trhway 19 hours ago||||
Repeater coupled with [autonomous] drone to change [hard-to-get-to rooftop, treetop and the likes] location every 10 minutes like in a combat zone.
hrimfaxi 19 hours ago|||
Repeaters built into collars and put on feral cats.
monkaiju 19 hours ago|||
Is this a real thing???
trhway 19 hours ago||
In Ukraine - pretty close.
esseph 16 hours ago|||
It would be futile. It's a big country full of 340,000,000 people.

Great way to waste resources though.

aaravchen 12 hours ago|||
It seems very unlikely the US would take the approach of shutting down the internet to prevent communication. All the internet infrastructure is hardwired for US surveillance data collection, so it's already a perfect honeypot. Why shutdown your honey pot?

More likely to be useful in the US is communication that is actually private, secure, and not centralized, but the underlying communication channel if unlikely to be relevant. Signal for example would almost certainly have thier IP blocked in the area, or their servers taken down because their completely centralized and therefore easy to block. Realistically something that can leverage an adversarial network to implement mesh communication that can be obfuscated (so it's not easily detected and blocked) is more useful in the US.

idiotsecant 18 hours ago|||
Meshtastic is both extremely range limited and trivial to DDOS. It's a fun toy protocol but it's not resistant to nation state disruption at all.
NoiseBert69 8 hours ago|||
I've tested >60km links with Meshtastic without problems and had plenty of SNR left.
lukeinator42 18 hours ago|||
It's only line-of-sight, but isn't the range 10s-100s of kilometres in open areas? Some repeaters on hills/mountains etc. could connect large areas potentially.
nunobrito 11 hours ago|||
Nope. Uses only one frequency that quickly gets crowded and if you are in urban areas you'd be lucky to get more than 200 meters.

It is a toy. A cheap Quangsheng/Baofeng for 20 euros can reach a few kilometers in urban area, use multiple frequencies and go for 100 kilometers easily on LoS. They even reach Australia from Europe when using a wire antenna large enough.

fragmede 17 hours ago|||
It's trivially jammable, as evidenced by the network not working at popular events such as Defcon with default firmware settings.
monkaiju 19 hours ago|||
I looked a bit into meshtastic and was told that if a node was physically compromised then messages could be intercepted. That cant be right, right?
subscribed 18 hours ago|||
From what I understand no, the relay node has no access to the messages.

If you compromise sending or receiving node then sure, of course.

bb88 18 hours ago||||
Why bother? Just jam the fucking hell out of it. Most critical infrastructure is not on the ISM bands.
esseph 16 hours ago||
A lot of things are.

You could theoretically even shut down airplane printers in the cockpit if the jamming was strong enough.

You'd be surprised the things that are tied to ism wifi and bluetooth

idiotsecant 18 hours ago|||
There was a well known crypto weakness, CVE-2025-52464, that allowed man in the middle decryption of meshtastic traffic. It was fixed by a firmware patch that improved crypto discipline.
Aachen 17 hours ago||
Bad randomness in generating keys, for anyone else wondering
TacticalCoder 19 hours ago||
[flagged]
assaddayinh 12 hours ago||
[dead]
hindustanuday 13 hours ago||
[dead]
dominojab 7 hours ago||
[dead]
NedF 18 hours ago||
[dead]
TacticalCoder 19 hours ago||
[flagged]
monkaiju 19 hours ago||
[flagged]
1over137 18 hours ago||
"domestic"? That could be anywhere, what do you mean?
monkaiju 16 hours ago||
I am in the US but I think the statement applies for >70% of the earth. China, Europe, the UK (big time), India, etc. Maybe not so bad in like, Japan -_(--)_-
FridayoLeary 18 hours ago|||
Can you expand on that? I'm from a developing country and we're very worried about what's going on in America. Is the situation really as bad as Iran?
idiotsecant 18 hours ago|||
No. It's nowhere near Iran, but it's bad by typical US standards.
macintux 18 hours ago|||
Our situation has disturbing echoes, but thankfully thousands of protesters haven't yet been murdered here.

The death toll, especially of non-citizens, is piling up however.

FridayoLeary 19 hours ago||
[flagged]
monkaiju 19 hours ago||
Who am i scoring a cheap shot on? ICE?
ukblewis 22 hours ago||
Good
freakynit 10 hours ago|
Aggregated discussions for easier reading: https://hn-discussions.top/briar-mesh-iran/