Secure Scuttlebutt

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SSB was created by Dominic Tarr in 2014 as part of experimental development in alternative databases and distributed systems.{{cn|date=June 2023}} Tarr lived on a sailboat with unreliable internet connection, and became interested in creating an offline-friendly secure gossip protocol for social networking.{{cite web |last1=Anadiotis |first1=George |title=Manyverse and Scuttlebutt: a human-centric technology stack for social applications |url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/manyverse-and-scuttlebutt-a-human-centric-technology-stack-for-social-applications/ |website=ZDNet |access-date=20 January 2019}} The word scuttlebutt is slang for "water-cooler gossip" among sailors. SSB gained popularity on the wave of privacy controversies raising against the traditional social media.{{Cite web|url=https://scuttlebot.io/more/protocols/secure-scuttlebutt.html|title=Secure Scuttlebutt - Scuttlebot|website=scuttlebot.io|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.facebookcollapse.com/2018-05-22-open-source-alternative-to-facebook-called-scuttlebutt-gaining-prominence.html|title=Open-source alternative to Facebook called Scuttlebutt gaining prominence|website=Facebook Collapse|language=en-US|access-date=2019-07-16}}

Secure Scuttlebutt operates as a database of immutable append-only feeds, which allows resilient replication over the Internet, local area networks, and sneakernets. Messages are hashed with SHA256 and verified with an Ed25519 signature; this makes it impossible to forge a message without the private key of the author.{{Cite journal|last=Tschudin|first=Christian F.|date=May 2019|title=A Broadcast-Only Communication ModelBased on Replicated Append-Only Logs|url=https://ccronline.sigcomm.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/acmdl19-295.pdf|journal=ACM Computer Communication Review|volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=37–43 |doi=10.1145/3336937.3336943 |s2cid=167217579 }} Users only download messages from peers that they follow (and optionally friends of friends), which prevents harassment and spam. This makes the network invite-only, meaning that new peers who join the network aren't visible until someone follows them.{{Cite web|url=https://miguelmota.com/blog/getting-started-with-secure-scuttlebutt/|title=Getting Started with Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) » Miguel Mota {{!}} Software Developer|website=miguelmota.com|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Cite web|url=https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/patches-carved-into-developer-sigchains|title=Patches carved into developer sigchains|last=Ryabitsev|first=Konstantin|date=2019-07-05|website=Konstantin Ryabitsev|language=en|access-date=2019-07-16}}

User content in SSB is organized as an append-only sequence of immutable messages, where messages cryptographically sign adjacent messages for the purpose of guaranteeing unforgeability of the sequences as they are replicated to other peers. SSB peers exchange asymmetric keys and establish authenticated connections between each other using an Authenticated Key Exchange protocol, Secret Handshake.{{cite web |last1=Tarr |first1=Dominic |title=Designing a Secret Handshake: Authenticated Key Exchange as a Capability System |url=https://dominictarr.github.io/secret-handshake-paper/shs.pdf |website=GitHub |access-date=20 January 2019}}

The reference implementation was written using Node.js, as code that runs on a JavaScript engine.{{Citation|title=The gossip and replication server for Secure Scuttlebutt: a distributed social network|date=2019-07-16|url=https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server|publisher=Secure Scuttlebutt Consortium|access-date=2019-07-16}} There are active implementation efforts in the Go programming language, as well as in Python, and Rust.{{Citation|title=A full-stack implementation of secure-scuttlebutt using the Go programming language.|date=2019-07-15|url=https://github.com/cryptoscope/ssb|publisher=cryptoscope|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Citation|last=Ferreira|first=Pedro|title=Secure Scuttlebutt protocol suite implementation in Python: pferreir/pyssb|date=2019-06-14|url=https://github.com/pferreir/pyssb|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Citation|title=meta information about the Sunrise Choir|date=2019-06-18|url=https://github.com/sunrise-choir/meta|publisher=Sunrise Choir|access-date=2019-07-16}} Documentation for these implementations can be found at the official SSB development site.

Many independent applications have been implemented on SSB, including a social network, music sharing, chess, a Git subsystem, and an npm registry.{{Cite web|url=https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/applications|title=Applications · GitBook|website=www.scuttlebutt.nz|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Cite web|url=https://staltz.com/an-off-grid-social-network.html|title=André Staltz - An off-grid social network|website=staltz.com|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Citation|last=noffle|title=Installing & using npm with secure scuttlebutt|date=2019-07-03|url=https://github.com/noffle/ssb-npm-101|access-date=2019-07-16}}{{Cite web|url=https://infourminutes.co/whitepaper/scuttlebutt|title=Whitepaper In Four Minutes - Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB)|website=infourminutes.co|access-date=2019-07-16}}

• Nostr
• AT Protocol
• Briar
• Comparison of distributed social networks
• Dat
• Freenet
• Git
• IPFS
• ActivityPub
• Perkeep
• RetroShare
• Urbit
• ZeroNet

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• {{cite journal |last1=Mannell |first1=Kate |last2=Smith |first2=Eden T. |title=Alternative Social Media and the Complexities of a More Participatory Culture: A View From Scuttlebutt |journal=Social Media + Society |date=July–September 2022 |volume=8 |issue=3 |doi=10.1177/20563051221122448 |publisher=SAGE Publications Ltd|s2cid=252145979 |doi-access=free }}

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• {{Official website}}

Category:Peer-to-peer computing

Category:Mesh networking