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I am a big privacy activist and the amount of privacy concerns in the internet with the discussions around European Chat Control, Meta removing e2ee in Instagram and corporations harvesting personal data for AI training is on the rise. The closed source social media companies keep managing and storing our private keys, allowing them to effectively access all of our personal communications..
Many open source alternatives exist, but the problem I kept running into was not a lack of good private messengers. Signal, SimpleX, and other projects already do important work
The problem was getting the people to move.
A messenger is only useful when the person you need to reach is there. Asking friends, family, coworkers, or customers to abandon their existing chats is a very high barrier.
Ekko takes a different approach. It runs as a browser extension on top of existing messengers. Both people still need Ekko, but they do not need to move their conversation. You can continue using the Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Messenger chat they already share.
Actively building this and trying to achieve a seamless automatic encryption in the UI across all popular messengers and adding support across all browsers, IOS, android and social media..
Under the hood, Ekko uses hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-768 and XChaCha20-Poly1305. Private keys are generated and kept on your device.
You can claim an Ekko handle to make exchanging public keys easier, exchange invitations directly without an account, or self-host the public-key directory.
Currently:
- A Chromium browser extension, Experimental Firefox and Safari builds
- Instagram, WhatsApp Web, Telegram Web, and Messenger integrations
- A self-hostable key directory
- Open-source client, protocol, and server code
Early version Chrome Web Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ekko/oaihgpmbkeafbp...
Source code:
https://github.com/useekko/ekko-core
Website and demo:
I would genuinely appreciate direct feedback especially from people familiar with applied cryptography, browser security, key verification, messenger integrations, potential solutions for iOS UI integration (faster than using browser w/ Safari extension)
If you try it, please tell me what breaks or what feels confusing. Actively trying to make this better as a side project! If you discover a security issue, email kirill@useekko.app rather than posting it publicly.
Looking for feedback! :)
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