Private messages

Not really a message type, but a different method of saving a message in the SSB ecosystem.

One of the cool things about Secure Scuttlebutt is that it takes privacy seriously. The cryptography techniques employed by the SSB stack allows a group of people to message each other using encrypted text that is only visible to the involved parties, everyone else will just see undecypherable text.

How does it looks like?

{
  "key": "%OEZvP6IBUvadgsgCW16wN44TTMu0tntgS2YjOadCSLE=.sha256",
  "value": {
    "previous": "%YQJ+N13OCg14ixpsgsgdjrhe4t/lCI9+6P6oYPtZM=.sha256",
    "author": "@zurF8X68ArfRM71sdgsgW0xDM8QmOnAS5bYOq8hA=.ed25519",
    "sequence": 2529,
    "timestamp": 1560619975563,
    "hash": "sha256",
    "content": "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.box",
    "signature": "G6YHYOsdgsdgsdgqrgb7kANjZyegf5ZWM0B6kaQr/GjQ7ormNeOVAdw4jemYqSmW6GXezaR1UC70OymEvBBA==.sig.ed25519"
  },
  "timestamp": 1560619916779,
  "rts": 1560619916779
}

As you can see from the message above, the content is encrypted. Only the intended recipients for that message are able to decrypt it. All the other users will fail to decrypt it and ignore the message.

Once decrypted by one of the intentend recipients, the message will be just like the other messages on SSB.