ShiTTYchat is a barebones terminal chat room written in C. I wrote it for fun, and to learn more about the client-server architecture, sockets, and encryption.
ShiTTYchat is designed as a simple client-server model, meaning it is actually composed of two separate programs: a client and a server. The client and server communicate with each other using the Linux sockets API. After a brief handshake, all communication between the two is encrypted using a *textbook RSA algorithm that I implemented with the help of GNU's Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library. The client's user interface was written using the ncurses library.
pute:~$ git clone https://github.com/krglaws/shittychat
pute:~$ cd shittychat/
pute:~/shittychat$ make client
pute:~/shittychat$ ./client.out -u jeff -i 73.178.35.36
Use ctrl+w to toggle the selected window (top or bottom). The up and down arrows are used to scroll the top window when the top window is selected. All four arrow keys may be used to navigate your text when the bottom window is selected.
Several important application settings may be modified (carefully) in the shared/include/settings.h header file, where you can change things like the encryption key bit length, the maximum number of users permitted into a server, the maximum username length, and others.
- ncurses
sudo apt install libncurses5-dev - GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library
sudo apt install libgmp3-dev
* "Textbook" meaning I ripped the algorithm straight off of Wikipedia, and is probably easily exploited if you know what you're doing. Obviously, you should NOT send sensitive information using this application, as its safety will not be guaranteed. I decided to encrypt the client-server communication for the sole purpose of learning a bit about encryption.