node.js (sic) is a really cool runtime environment that allows for asynchronous, event driven coding. It uses JavaScript and runs on Google’s open source V8 JS engine.
I love the chat service ChatStep, but they advertise privacy and encryption without being willing to put their money where there mouth is and open source the system for full transparency.
I was frustrated with ChatStep’s purported security but unwillingness to open up their backend, so I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world. I wrote an open source, mobile friendly, elegant chat that can handle image messaging. I tried also to comment my code (perhaps a bit too) liberally, as I wanted to be helpful to others who were starting in the same place I was.
Cool Frontend Things
- It’s repsonsive and mobile friendly!
- It’s built on bootstrap and underscore, so manipulating it is easy
- It’s 100% HTML5 W3C compliant
- It’s IOS web app capable
Cool Backend Things
- It runs on node.js & socket.io 1.1.0 – up to date!
- It’s easy for beginners to extend!
Cool Things
- 100% encrypted with the Rabbit cipher – encryption can be trusted even over untrusted connections!
- The key never leaves the user side, nor is there any logging performed whatsoever – extremely anonymous
- It supports the drag and drop sending of images with the HTML5 File API (encrypted, of course), with fallbacks for mobile
- It’s open source and MIT licensed – you can edit, inspect the code, and tweak to your needs
- Because it’s open source, it’s transparent. Don’t trust your data to a chat service that is purportedly secure, but unwilling to open the code for you to examine.
This is my first node.js app after a number of years doing PHP dev, so it was an interesting change of gears, but lots of fun. Hopefully you can find it useful!
hi jack,
u mean chat step is not safe as they say?
I certainly don’t want to claim that it’s not safe or secure. They have not made their source code available, though, so for all the users know, they could be logging all messages and IP’s without telling users. I’m not suggesting that they are; only that until the source is visible and audited, nobody knows. FreeStep aims to avoid this issue by being entirely open source, so even if you don’t trust me that I’m not logging anything (which I’m not), you can avoid me altogether and run your own chat installation on your own server, with code that you control.