SecureBit.chat - P2P Encrypted Messenger Files

Group chats used to run through whoever created them. That person held a connection to every member, and nobody else was connected to anybody — so when you wrote to someone in the group, your message went to the creator first and they passed it along. It worked, but it meant one person could see when everyone else was talking, and if they closed the app the group went quiet.

Now every pair in a group connects directly, by themselves. It happens on its own a few seconds after everyone has confirmed the group code, and you can watch it in the header: it goes from "2 of 3 connected" to "3 members · P2P mesh". If two of you already had a private chat open with each other, the group just uses that instead of building a second connection.

The practical difference: whoever created the group is now an ordinary member. They can close the app and everyone else keeps talking.

Also in this release

• When somebody can't be reached directly, their messages still travel through another member — and a message that arrived that way is now marked "relayed", so you can see when it happens.
• When somebody goes offline, the group says so once and by name, instead of repeating a notice under every message you send until they come back.
• A connection that drops and can't be repaired is now rebuilt through someone else, rather than staying dead for the rest of the conversation.
• The warning about relayed messages no longer appears when nothing is being relayed — it used to count people who were simply offline.
• Group connections no longer interfere with the display of whichever chat you happen to have open.

Security

• Fixed: any member of a group could add anyone else to it. Only the person who created the group was ever meant to be able to invite, but the check for that was missing — a reply to an invitation was accepted from anyone who knew the group's id, whether or not they had been invited. You would have noticed, because a new member appears in the list and everyone's group code changes, but noticing should not have been the only thing standing in the way.
• The details two members exchange to find each other travel through a third member, so they are now signed. That member can refuse to pass them along, but they cannot swap them for their own and end up sitting in the middle of the connection.
• Nobody is asked to compare a code for each of these new connections. For a group of eight that would be twenty-eight codes, which is not a check anyone actually performs — the group code everyone already compared covers them.