PairSonic

PairSonic is an open-source smartphone app that enables two or more users meeting in person to spontaneously exchange or verify their contact information. PairSonic supports the secure exchange of cryptographic public keys, which is crucial for protecting end-to-end encrypted communication, e.g., in messenger apps (so called authentication ceremony).

PairSonic simplifies the pairing process by automating the tedious verification tasks of previous methods through an acoustic out-of-band channel using smartphones' built-in hardware. It does not rely on external key management infrastructure, prior associations, or shared secrets.

Demo Video

Click on the gif below to open the full demo where you can hear what it sounds like:

Using PairSonic

This repository contains a demo implementation of the PairSonic contact exchange protocol. The app is written in Flutter and targets Android devices. Try it out yourself by following the build instructions below and installing the app.

When you start the app, you can create a profile (name, avatar, bio) and exchange it with nearby users (see live demo). The app itself doesn't have any functionality besides implementing the contact exchange, so you cannot do much with your newly exchanged contacts – except appreciating that your smartphone just sounded like R2D2, of course. And that this sound helped exchange your contact information via local ad-hoc communication, without relying on the Internet.

In the future, PairSonic could be integrated into other apps as an option for in-person contact exchange/verification.

Features

• Verify end-to-end encryption. Securely exchanges cryptographic public keys.
• Decentralized. Operates without needing external key management infrastructure, prior associations, or shared secrets. Does not require an Internet connection.
• User-friendly. Automates verification tasks, making the process simpler and more secure.
• Group compatibility. Designed to work efficiently with both individual users and larger groups.
• Customizable profiles. Developers can customize the type of contact information exchanged.
• Broad compatibility. Supports most Android devices with WiFi Direct, as long as they run Android 6 or newer (~2015).

Build & Develop

Requirements: - Flutter 3.22 - Java 17

In order to build & run the app, make sure to have Android Studio as well as adb installed and set up. For Android Studio, the Flutter and Dart plugins are recommended. Then, either run flutter run or click the play button next to the main function in lib/main.dart in Android Studio and choose "Run main.dart".

Project structure & documentation

The doc/ directory contains more documentation, such as a description of the code structure and an overview of the state machine used during the PairSonic exchange.

Localization (l10n)

Localization strings are placed inside the l10n directory in language-specific .arb files. The Android Studio plugin Flutter Intl automatically compiles these files into Dart code and outputs it into the generated/intl directory.

To manually generate these Dart files, run flutter pub global run intl_utils:generate in the project root.

Powered by

The PairSonic protocol is based on the secure foundation of the excellent SafeSlinger protocol. PairSonic internally uses the ggwave library for acoustic communication.

Authors

• Florentin Putz (email, web)
• Thomas Völkl
• Maximilian Gehring

References

• Florentin Putz, Steffen Haesler, and Matthias Hollick. Sounds Good? Fast and Secure Contact Exchange in Groups. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 8, CSCW2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3686964 [PDF]
• Florentin Putz, Steffen Haesler, Thomas Völkl, Maximilian Gehring, Nils Rollshausen, and Matthias Hollick. PairSonic: Helping Groups Securely Exchange Contact Information. Companion of the 2024 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW Companion ’24), 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3678884.3681818 [PDF]
• Project Overview

License

PairSonic is released under the Apache-2.0 license.