This is the reference implementation created for the master thesis "Blockchain-based end-to-end encryption for Matrix instant messaging" written by Julian Sparber. The thesis proposes an end-to-end encryption system for the realtime communication network Matrix, which uses the Secret Store feature of the OpenEhtereum Ethereum client.
To use this library an Ethereum network needs to be created. The scripts network/start.sh and network/start_ssh.sh can be used to automatically create a local network or a network on a set of remote computers.
You will need to build OpenEthereum yourself because the binary releases do not enable the SecretStore feature.
Currently, all files have hardcoded values, therefore please check before running any script that they contain correct usernames, paths, server addresses, etc.
Run the command ./start.sh -s [NUMBER_OF_NODES] to create a network with a specific number of OpenEhtereum instances on the local machine. After deploying a smart contract the command ./start.sh -c [CONTRACT_ADDRESS] can be used to set the permissioning contract for the Secret Store.
Run the command ./start_ssh.sh -s [NUMBER_OF_NODES] to create a network with a specific number of OpenEhtereum instances on remote machines found in the file ercolani.txt and runs them all on the remote computers, except one node that is run on a local machine. The instances can be terminated by pressing ctrl+c once, and also the fallback script stop.sh can be used to make sure that all nodes are completely terminated. After deploying a smart contract to the network, the network can be stopped and then started again with the command ./start_ssh.sh -c [CONTRACT_ADDRESS] to set the permissioning contract for the Secret Store.
The crypto-module automatically deploys the smart contract SSPermissions.sol if the file contract-address.txt doesn't exist at the root of the project and it stores the address of the deployed contract in this file.
It may be needed to set the correct port forwarding at the router to make the local Ethereum node discoverable by the remote nodes.
Additionally to the network setup, a node with a user account has to be created (the config file users.toml can be used). This can be done by running parity --config users.toml account new
Before any test can be run, they need to be updated with the correct account address and password and, eventually, also the location for the Secret Store node and the user's node needs to be changed.
To test the setup the command cargo test setup1 -- --test-threads=1 can be used,
which does only check if the library can correctly access the Secret Store and the user's node and deploys automatically the smart contract if the file contract-address.txt is empty.
To run all tests just execute cargo test -- --test-threads=1. The source for tests can be found in the src/lib.rs file.