Secure Chat Room Application Using AES-GCM Encryption and SHA-256

This research paper investigates the security principles of a chatroom application. The study aims to ensure the security and privacy of user information while maintaining user convenience and ease of use. A literature review and analysis identified potential security vulnerabilities, including unauthorized access to user accounts, insecure transmission and storage of messages, and possible man-in-the-middle attacks or data breaches. To address these challenges, a new secure chatroom application is proposed. It integrates an in-depth security strategy to ensure high communication protection. It includes a) Deployment of user authentication and password security level verification, b) Integration of encryption to ensure secure messaging and user data storage using Advanced Encryption Standard and SHA-256 hashing, respectively, c) Adoption of no message history features to ensure the availability of only current conversation and no older message are retrieved, d) Integration of client handler to manage the interaction between client and server and ensure efficient and smooth chatroom operations, and d) a user-friendly GUI that serve the basic of communication with high-security level and low resource consumption. The research findings suggest that a balance can be achieved between security and user convenience, resulting in a chatroom application that is both secure and easy to use.

I. Introduction

Increased online communications and social media platforms promote the development of numerous chatroom applications. However, these applications raise concerns over the security and privacy of user information, particularly in light of increasing cybercrime incidents, cloning apps, and data breaches [1]. Choosing the optimal chatroom can be very challenging since new attractive features are developed over time, making the users explore them without being aware of security and privacy concerns. Chatrooms are generally designed to establish user communication through a specific platform that follows different architecture, such as request-response [2] or publish-subscribe [3]. Request-response platforms are based on direct communication between the client and the server. At the same time, the publish-subscribe uses a broker, an intermediate entity that handles data exchange. Regardless of the adopted architecture, chatroom applications have several challenges concerning privacy where the user does not have control over conversation access. Also, some chatrooms can be attacked. by man-in-the-middle or phishing or incur data breaches due to the lack of efficient security measures.