White Noise – secure and private messenger
23 comments
·July 9, 2025heavyset_go
SchemaLoad
There was a project called Bitmessage which solved this problem by not having a recipient field. Your client would just try to decrypt everything, and when it succeeds, that means the message is for you.
The then immediate issue is routing becomes very inefficient since every node now needs to receive and attempt to decrypt every single message. Which they solved by having channels to split up the network and only require decrypting of every message on the same channel as your address.
shark_laser
This criticism of Nostr is quite outdated.
I haven't looked into the White Noise code, but Gift Wrapping is just one way this issue was solved a long time ago: https://nips.nostr.com/59
hugs
(fwiw, I'm not the creator of this, but am a casual user of Nostr...)
tl;dr: the answer you're looking for is probably in the explainer doc [1].
At its core, Nostr is simple: it's "just" JSON over WebSockets. But there are dozens of optional proposals to add additional functionality. And a few of those proposals are related to encrypted DMs, specifically, NIP-04 [2], and NIP-17 [3]. Most of the online criticism of encrypted DMs on Nostr is about NIP-04 (which is why it's deprecated.)
White Noise is using a different encryption standard: MLS (Messaging Layer Security) [4]. They explicitly say in their docs: "White Noise is an implementation of the NIP-EE spec." [5]. The NIP-EE proposal itself is on GitHub [6]. The explainer doc [1] I first mentioned is linked to from the proposal [6].
This is all to say: given all the links I posted here, an AI chatbot could probably give you a better answer using the prompt: "How is NIP-EE (Messaging Layer Security for Nostr) different or better than NIP-04 or NIP-17?"
(I'm a little surprised that wasn't already in the FAQ for the project.)
[1]: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/001c516f7294308143515a494a35213fc45978df/EE.md
[2]: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/04.md
[3]: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/17.md
[4]: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9420.html
[5]: https://github.com/parres-hq/whitenoise?tab=readme-ov-file#the-spec
[6]: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/1427EGreg
So you wouldn't call Signal private, right? Just wanted consistency.
heavyset_go
No, if you're doing something sensitive that can get you or other people arrested, locked up, hurt or killed, you should not be using Signal for that. You should reconsider using a phone or computer at all. If you must, you must be desperate and I pity the situation you must be in, and I hope you really understand what your risk profile is, what technology can address actually it, and if that technology actually exists.
States use metadata from Signal and ISPs to confirm that party A was in contact with party B and at what times, for example, in charges of criminal conspiracy. Once devices are confiscated, messages are decrypted on both ends of the Signal app and authorities can grab the message content they used the metadata to get a warrant/subpoena/order for.
collinmcnulty
Signal has sealed sender. So you can tell that a phone number is a signal user but not who they message.
rendaw
How does sealed sender work? I couldn't find details. The explanations I saw seemed to start from the assumption that Signal doesn't keep logs of messages moving through their system.
hiimkeks
Congratulations on the release!
As someone who used to be in the Secure Scuttlebutt community an now works on OpenMLS, I wonder how they (you?) deal with concurrency of Commit messages. I spent quite some time thinking about ways to detect and resolve forks, and the current iteration of MLS doesn't really have good answers here.
miloignis
I looked up the spec, and it seems like they just tiebreak on time and hash and throw away the losing commit:
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/001c516f72943081...
globalnode
i admit i havent looked at the app, but i assume is centrally run.
firstly: i think the only way secure p2p messaging can work is if its decentralised. no 3rd parties to communication, how this would be done i have no idea. maybe like email but without the server?
secondly: you'd need to ensure a secure os on each end that you can trust to not take screenshots and send to hq before transmission or after reception.
since its not possible to use the internet without a source ip. its almost provably insecure (in terms of privacy), no matter what protocols are dreamed up. a 3rd party will have to be trusted to distribute packets. and thats the weak point. (unless you force the source IP to be 0.0.0.0 or something before it goes out)
couldnt we just use dns to point to recipients, force zero the source ip and send udp packets directly?
what about pgp through a tor relay?
botanical76
As I understand it, it's just a nostr client, so it uses nostr's decentralized network of relays.
shark_laser
This is decentralised as it runs on Nostr.
Nostr can run over TOR.
ktallett
As much as I love the idea of these secure messaging apps, until I see how a company responds to government intimidation I am always wary of being too invested and trustworthy of the marketing.
SeriousM
Austria's goverment agreed on spying messengers for the public safety. How does white noise protects itself from getting legally hacked?
shark_laser
White Noise is open source, and built on Nostr, a decentralised and open protocol.
Run your own fork if you don't trust this one.
esafak
Apparently it uses a new protocol called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messaging_Layer_Security
skeptrune
Wow, Nostr is back in vogue on the all time highs?
journal
title: secure and private terms: we're not responsible
gblargg
Software advertising itself as "A truly secure and private messenger" raises my skepticism. It might be truly secure. Its creators might believe it is and have zero doubt that they've made no errors and there are no flaws. Or it is neither and they want me to think it's those things. The only thing definite is that it claims to be truly secure.
patchtopic
interesting but still very alpha. It doesn't have any desktop/PC clients yet, but I assume it will?
hackernudes
Looks like a flutter app that can build for desktop Linux https://github.com/parres-hq/whitenoise_flutter .
I started my reply thinking it was still using Tauru but apparently things change fast!
> White Noise stands out by merging Nostr’s decentralized network with advanced encryption.
How does White Noise address criticisms surrounding Nostr's implementation[1]:
> While nostr offers the ability to send encrypted DMs to user pubkeys, the metadata of these messages are broadcast publicly via relays. This is the same as a bitcoin transaction being viewable on the public ledger. The contents of the direct message will be encrypted, but other metadata like the sender and recipient can be viewed by anyone.
Even assuming if metadata is encrypted, does WN's implementation broadcast messages across public relays?
If you can map out social networks based on publicly available data, can tell if one user messages another, or correlate when messages were sent to/from whom, I would not call that private.
[1] https://ron.stoner.com/nostr_Security_and_Privacy/