Bitchat for Gaza – messaging without internet
55 comments
·November 14, 2025jabroni_salad
big-and-small
Another problem is what happens when police stop to search you. You don't want to have "please beat me dead" app installed when it's happens.
krautburglar
HERE is the techforpalestine github that is worth focusing on
https://github.com/TechForPalestine/boycott-israeli-consumer...
karel-3d
Is it actually being used in Palestine?
My problem is that when you are actually locally near someone you don't really need live chat; and if you're far, it might become too unstable to use.
But I might be wrong!
adroitboss
The name choice is unfortunate. I read it incorrectly the first time.
Unicironic
I read it correctly, but got a laugh after reading your comment. Maybe it could be marketable to two very different demographics
setopt
Same here. Imagining now bitch@ as the logo.
EDIT: Name aside, what an awesome project.
rich_sasha
Anything with "bit" in (with the T pronounced) is a bit unfortunate for French speakers: https://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/la+bi... .
adrodbort
Also anything with chat (chatte). Unfortunate or intentional..
kragen
"Pour info, j'ai pas la bite qui fouette."
zamalek
Or intentional and awesome.
jayd16
Its almost better when you read it that way. Its at least coherent.
null
flaburgan
Source code is MIT: https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat-android
I guess if a serious audit is done then it could be a nice solution. I would love to read more technical details about it, especially how it can be sure the messages are transmitted to the good person.
NoiseBert69
A lot of Meshcore/Meshtastic stations popping up lately too all over the world too.
Repeaters/Router can, if you put a bit of love in to highly efficient 3.3V generation, forever an a 6V solar cell and a 18650 LiPo.
I've tested 60km with a 868MHz LoRa station using a shabby 5dBi omni antenna. Just run out of hills to test more.
But not as easy to use as BLE(+BLE Meshing) which is basically integrated into every smartphone.
kpcyrd
I looked into Meshtastic a while ago and they use AES with no authentication tags. Also decryption happens on the LoRa device, which is a lot easier to crack with physical access compared to my phone. Even if you delete the messages it's still possible to decrypt sniffed LoRa traffic if, at some point in the future, one device gets captured.
I'd rather the protocol gets updated so the crypto key can stay on the phone.
0x1ch
There's a few issues that have been brought to light in the last couple years at Hackfest and other events related to LoRaWAN / Meshtastic (and derivatives). I think most notably was the failure in entropy generated during the flashing process, detailed here - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-52464
I think we're a bit past the initial AES issues, at least the Meshtastic project promptly alerted people to their crypto issues and encouraged everyone to update firmware asap.
It's not too hard to use, as long as the hardware is flashed and ready. For the end user, it's an app that connects to a bluetooth connection. I think it would very trivial to have a few good LoRaWAN ops in the community, flashing nodes en masse and handing them out to peers.
iamnothere
Jesus, this post has somehow attracted all of the “haha project has funny name” morons as well as both sides of the Israel/Gaza propaganda war. Now all we need is the Apple vs Google people and some inter-FOSS drama to make this the worst thread ever.
Bitchat is a neat project and I’m glad it’s helping someone IRL. In a way this is really proving the usefulness of the tech. Every time one of these alternative comms projects is posted, people pile on claiming there is no real world use case. Here! Here is a use case!
ryanisnan
What an awesome piece of technology. I've been wanting to create something similar, just on the technical merits. We have some pretty amazingly capable technology these days, but so much of it relies on IP infrastructure, which is fine when things work and you are either aligned with your government, or live in a society where there are strong checks and balances on government overreach.
iamnothere
Exactly. With Chat Control being revived again in the EU, various VPN bans being proposed in US states, and ID verification rolling out seemingly everywhere, this kind of tech may end up being more useful than people expect. If it works in the extremely adversarial environment of a warzone, it should work fine here.
howmayiannoyyou
How will they prevent the application from being used by Hamas and PIJ for repressing ordinary Palestinians, and for coordinating more attacks against Israeli civilians?
krautburglar
This gives me the same vibe as OLPC. We had these places where people didn't even have electricity, running water, or public sanitation, yet some nerds at MIT thought (?) to themselves, "Hey, you know what these people need? Laptops!"
But even worse, you can install it from App Store or Google Play! Israeli territory or Israeli territory! What will these dipshits do next? Send the Palestinians some more pagers out of Budapest?
almog
Other than the cold start problem which isn't discussed (what's the userbase size in Gaza?), the main argument for Bitchat (or any other off-grid network such as Meshtastic, Briar, etc.) in Gaza when mainstream E2E encrypted messaging apps already exist and are widely used, is to not be dependent on Israel for cell service.
While I do really like the idea of off-grid networks in general but for this use case, is it really that hard for a state actor to jam Bluetooth (or all ~2.4GHz communication) on a large scale?
osobo
I never thought I'd see FidoNet again.
This will be very interesting if they can conquer the distribution issue.
During the Hong Kong protests I recall several such solutions were created, but the dominant thing ended up being airdrop because it is what so many people already had locked and loaded.