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Ember: A Serverless Peer-to-Peer End-to-End Encrypted Messaging System over an IPv6 Mesh Network

Hamish Alsop, Leandros Maglaras, Naghmeh Moradpoor

Abstract

This paper presents Ember, a serverless peer-to-peer messaging system providing end-to-end encrypted communication over a decentralised IPv6 mesh network. Ember operates without central servers, enforces data minimisation through ciphertext-only local storage and time-based message expiration, and prioritises architectural clarity, explicit trust boundaries, and practical deployability on Android. The paper describes the system architecture, cryptographic design, network model, and security properties -- including dynamic testing results demonstrating that no plaintext is recoverable from captured network traffic -- and discusses limitations and future work

Ember: A Serverless Peer-to-Peer End-to-End Encrypted Messaging System over an IPv6 Mesh Network

Abstract

This paper presents Ember, a serverless peer-to-peer messaging system providing end-to-end encrypted communication over a decentralised IPv6 mesh network. Ember operates without central servers, enforces data minimisation through ciphertext-only local storage and time-based message expiration, and prioritises architectural clarity, explicit trust boundaries, and practical deployability on Android. The paper describes the system architecture, cryptographic design, network model, and security properties -- including dynamic testing results demonstrating that no plaintext is recoverable from captured network traffic -- and discusses limitations and future work
Paper Structure (176 sections, 1 figure, 11 tables)

This paper contains 176 sections, 1 figure, 11 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Problem Statement
  3. Research Objectives
  4. Contributions
  5. Related Work and Background
  6. Secure Messaging Threat Models and Security Objectives
  7. End-to-End Encryption Protocols and Ratcheting-Based Security
  8. Group Messaging and Multi-Device State
  9. Serverless and Peer-to-Peer Secure Messaging Systems
  10. Decentralised IPv6 Overlay Networking and Yggdrasil as an Enabling Substrate
  11. Ephemerality, Deletion Semantics, and Data Remanence on Android
  12. Mobile Implementation Reality: Push Notifications, Metadata Leakage, and Android Key Storage
  13. Push Notifications as a Metadata Leakage Vector.
  14. Android Key Storage: Empirical Use and Misuse.
  15. Implications for Ember.
  16. ...and 161 more sections

Figures (1)

  • Figure 1: Mean cryptographic overhead per operation from unit-test micro-benchmarks (non-instrumented).