Consent

Nostr Privacy

22 Dec 2022
nostr privacy

I have observed a few privacy issues with nostr protocol and apps related to privacy. This post is not an attempt to FUD although this could help in more users being aware of the problems and possible solutions.

IP leak using profile image

It is possible for an attacker to save a malicious link as profile image and most of the nostr clients leak IP address for the users if they view the profile image in an event or elsewhere.

Steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Create a canary token by selecting ‘custom image bug’

    canary

  2. Open astral.ninja and save the URL you get from step 1 as profile image

  3. Post something and wait for canary token email notifications.

  4. You would see notifications like this:

    notification

Metadata leak in encrypted DM

Attackers can spy using public keys to see who is sending DMs to whom and the time. Although they wont know the content of messages.

Wiz had even tweeted about it and there are some NIPs, suggestions etc. to fix metadata leak for improving privacy in DMs.

NIP 21 (fiatjaf): https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/20

NIP 24 (Jeff): https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/56

Private DMs (phyro): https://gist.github.com/phyro/73a5db45dfaa29e96e5b4b0beb503957

Contact lists

Contact lists are defined in NIP-02 and public information. There are no ways to create private contacts lists right now in the protocol however some workarounds like saving them as encrypted DM.

Relays

Relays know IP address, user agents, public keys trying to read/write, websocket request info etc. about clients so joinstr uses below things:

  1. New keys for posting every event
  2. Random subscription id for getting events
  3. Websocket connection is closed after each task
  4. A new tor circuit is created for each request

You could also run your own relay for some use cases although its always good to use multiple relays. Use clients that care about privacy and VPN/proxy. If you are running a relay, being anon could be helpful if government agencies have issues with some events being published in the future when nostr gets too big.

Encrypted Channels

NIP-28 defines public channels but there is no way to create encryped channels in the protocol right now. Vishal is working on a NIP, implemented in nostr-console however it is still being reviewed and tested.

Acknowledgements

  • fiatjaf
  • Jeff
  • phyro
  • Vishal