Hello friends, hoping you guys are safe and well!
Dropping by just to let you know that Hive-Mail has been updated to version 2.1:
https://hassemer-g.github.io/hive-mail/
*In case you missed the previous posts: The original post (presenting a prototype) The first version with a GUI (v. 1.0)
A quick recap: What is Hive-Mail?
Hive-Mail is a project I initiated in early 2025 with the modest aim of improving the built-in Hive encrypted Memo messages, especially to make use of post-quantum cryptography.
Initially meant for the use of just myself and some people I know IRL, later decided to make it openly available to all.
After the publication of the "prototype" in August 2025, and listening to feedback and criticism from several people, I decided to make Hive-Mail simpler by removing on-chain sending of messages (arguably unnecessary and a potential security risk) and add a very easy-to-use GUI so anyone could encrypt messages and safely send them to the desired recipients by any means, including e-mail and messaging apps. This all was implemented in version 1.0.
In sum, Hive-Mail is a protocol that allows anyone to exchange encrypted messages (and now, in v. 2.1, also files!), for free, using any communication means, requiring just a Hive account.
What's new in Version 2.1?
First and foremost: file encryption. Now, in addition to the ability to encrypt text content, Hive-Mail can also encrypt files.
But that's not all! The new version brings a lot of improvements, such as:
• Encrypted output can now be a file or encoded text (user can choose), irrespective of the "plaintext" itself being text or a file (encrypted output as a file requires no encoding, thus considerably more economic)
• All keys, private and public, are now encoded using a custom Base87 implementation, optimised for Hive-Mail
• The use of HQC (Hamming Quasi-Cyclic — a post-quantum asymmetric encryption algorithm) is discontinued. This was a hard decision, but the gargantuan size of the HQC keys was causing more harm than good. Ultimately, Hive-Mail continues fully quantum-resistant, as ML-KEM-1024 (Kyber) remains in use.
• Several improvements applied to our customised hashing routines and the symmetric encryption pipeline, aiming at stronger security and reduced encrypted outputs
Important: if you already have a Version 1 Hive-Mail key registered to your Hive account, you will need to update it to Version 2. This is very simple, just generate a new Hive-Mail key using the button "Create or Change Hive-Mail Key". And that's all, no further action required.