Twister is an experimental

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

microblogging Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...

program. It is decentralized; consequently it cannot be shut down by an attack as there is no single point to attack. The system uses

end-to-end encryption End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, malicious actors, and eve ...

to safeguard communications. It is based on both BitTorrent- and

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...

-like protocols and has been likened to a distributed version of

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. In 2020 author Miguel Freitas posted that he would not be leading Twister development for the foreseeable future, although the Twister network continued running, and suggested that others might wish to

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca ' pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ...

the project. He said that the Web site might go offline as hosting was due to expire. The Twister core had been at version 0.9.40 since 2018. Twister remained on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

Overview

Twister is a Twitter-like microblogging platform that utilizes the same blockchain technology as

, and the file exchange method from BitTorrent, both based on P2P technologies. The website seobloggingpro.com ranked Twister as the number 13 microblogging site, while seosandwitch.com ranked Twister as the number 4 microblogging site. (In the case of Twister, the ranking is not of the website itself, which exists primarily to facilitate downloads of the Twister platform.) Twister was experimental software in alpha phase, implemented as a distributed

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

system. User registration and authentication is provided by a Bitcoin-like network, so it is completely distributed and does not depend on any central authority. Distribution of posts uses

Kademlia Kademlia is a distributed hash table for decentralized peer-to-peer computer networks designed by Petar Maymounkov and David Mazières in 2002. It specifies the structure of the network and the exchange of information through node lookups. Kademli ...

distributed hash table A distributed hash table (DHT) is a distributed system that provides a lookup service similar to a hash table: key–value pairs are stored in a DHT, and any participating node can efficiently retrieve the value associated with a given key. The ...

(DHT) network and BitTorrent-like swarms, both provided by

libtorrent libtorrent is an open-source software, open-source implementation of the BitTorrent protocol. It is written in and has its main library interface in C++. Its most notable features are support for Mainline DHT, IPv6, HTTP seeds and μTorrent's ...

. Included versions of both Bitcoin and are highly patched, and intentionally not interoperable with the already existing networks. Miguel Freitas, aiming to build a censor-resistant public posting platform, began development on Twister in July 2013 to address the concerns of free speech and privacy. Building on the work of Bitcoin and Bittorrent, he built the core structure in October 2013. Lucas Leal was hired to create HTML and CSS for the user interface, with Miguel writing required JavaScript code. 2,500 user accounts were registered in the first six days of operation. As a completely decentralized network, Twister cannot be incapacitated since there is no unique point of attack to the system. Twister uses end-to-end encryption to protect communications. Twister is designed to prevent other users from knowing a user's

GSM localization The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

, and who the user is following. Users can publish public messages as with other microblogging platforms, but direct messages and private messages to other users are protected from unauthorised access.

History

The Brazilian computer engineer and programmer Miguel Freitas started developing the new social network after learning about the massive spy programs of the USA's

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

(

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

), as revealed by the NSA whistleblower

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and s ...

. He started to worry about the accessibility of that amount of information under the control of a single company under American jurisdiction. According to Freitas,

is the social network that has been most prominent in promoting democracy and organizing protests. Freitas built Twister using on privacy-preserving technology due to the risks involved in providing personal information on social networks in light of the mass surveillance conducted by the NSA. Freitas and his developer, Leal, built the alpha version of the application for Android,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

and

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

. Versions for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

and iPhone are not planned, but as it is

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

anyone can create alternative operating system versions for the application. While the project was in alpha phase Brian Armstrong, co-founder of

Coinbase Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headquar ...

, believed that it was a great example of how the open protocol of

can be used with diverse purposes.

Technology

Protocols

Twister is a distributed system, it works as a

program. Unlike other decentralized networks (like pump.io/

Identi.ca identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several ...

, StatusNet/ GNU social or

Diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews afte ...

), it does not require the user to use their own server and does not require a user to trust a third-party server in order to use it.

Bitcoin

This is achieved through the

protocol, though not through the network used by the

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It ...

. The protocol handles the registration of users. In the same way miners verify transactions on the Bitcoin network to combat double spending, the Twister network verifies the users' names and that the message posted by a specific user is really from that user.

BitTorrent

The messages are driven through the BitTorrent protocol. This allows for a distribution system of a great number of messages along the network in a fast and efficient way; and also, allows the users to receive notifications almost instantly about new messages and alerts – all without the need for a central server. Since Twister uses

, if intercepted, the private direct messages cannot be read by any other person apart from the addressee. The code used is the

elliptic curve cryptography Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide e ...

(different from the one used by the NSA) that is used in Bitcoin. It is thought to give a

security level In cryptography, security level is a measure of the strength that a cryptographic primitive — such as a cipher or hash function — achieves. Security level is usually expressed as a number of "bits of security" (also security strength ...

similar to a

RSA RSA may refer to: Organizations Academia and education * Rabbinical Seminary of America, a yeshiva in New York City *Regional Science Association International (formerly the Regional Science Association), a US-based learned society *Renaissance S ...

code of 3072 bits. The data is not stored anywhere, so it cannot be used by any other cut. As a consequence, if a user loses their entry password, it is impossible for them to access their private messages. Because it is a

system, there is not a central server from which the publications may be compiled (see

PRISM Prism usually refers to: * Prism (optics), a transparent optical component with flat surfaces that refract light * Prism (geometry), a kind of polyhedron Prism may also refer to: Science and mathematics * Prism (geology), a type of sedimentary ...

). As Freitas explains, the system is designed in a way that the users cannot know if the other is online, their IP address, or what messages have been read. This information is not registered anywhere. Despite this, Freitas warns users that total anonymity may not be possible depending on the circumstances.

Platforms

Twister was developed under the

environment, migrated successfully to Android and

. One of the long-term objectives of the program is to move the whole cryptographic code of the implementation to the interface of the user of the browser. This way, users would be capable of accessing Twister through any client platform that they use, choosing any third-party server and still maintaining the security of their private passwords at all times.

Functionality

The first Twister prototype is intended to reproduce the basic characteristics of any

platform, including: * Searching users and profiles of navigation * Follow/unfollow * Sending text messages limited to 140 characters * Broadcasting and answering messages * Browsing through mailing routes, mentions,

hashtags A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...

and direct messages (private) Private messages require the addressee to following of the speaker, which is a common requisite in most of the existing platforms. Some other characteristics can be difficult to implement in a completely decentralized system, requiring more effort. This includes the arbitrary register of the words in the posts and the recompilation of hashtags to find out the main tendencies.

Security

Twister uses the same parameters of elliptic curves as

: . This is not the curve that was implicated by the

, called sec256r1. A 256 bits of

public-key cryptography Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic a ...

, ECC must proportionate a security similar to a key

of 3072 bits (at least that is what is said by the experts) . They usually stimulate the people who try to break the security in the systems with something that everyone desires, money. There are millions of $ USD on the table, coded with keys secp256k1 Bitcoin. The direct application of messages encoding is based on an example code that was published on the Internet by

Ladar Levison Lavabit is an open-source encrypted webmail service, founded in 2004. The service suspended its operations on August 8, 2013 after the U.S. Federal Government ordered it to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private keys, in order to a ...

of Lavabit. It is known that Ladar took his service down because he denied cooperating with the US government that allows the control of all its clients.

Decentralized Net

Twister is a peer-to-peer microblogging platform with communication established between computers without going through a central node.

Censored

People who run a node can delete a user's posts in the DHT, but not block the user's account.

Completely private

Due to the fact that the messages are sent directly from user to user in an encrypted way, the messages travel in a private way through the web as a black-box, and all IP directions are protected.

Anonymity

In this application, the IP address is not recorded at any time, which avoids being tracked by an entity or company. According to Freitas, this guarantees anonymity but does not mean that the IP address will not be detected from the ISP (Internet service provider); rather, it means the content of the message will not be visible except to someone who can decrypt it, breaking the algorithms. In order to be 100% anonymous, the user would have to use a browser that masks the IP address, such as Tor or similar.

References

External links

*
Community

Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU Social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister
{{microblogging Distributed computing Text messaging Social networking services Free software Microblogging software Android (operating system) software Anonymity networks Peer-to-peer computing Brazilian inventions Software using the BSD license Software using the MIT license