Keybase, an encrypted chat app for geeks

In the next article we are going to take a look at Keybase. This is one open source chat app for computers and mobile phones that is powered by public key encryption. It's free and has a clean and modern user interface on all GUI-compliant devices. You also have the ability to start conversations with people around the world without using a phone number or email address. It will allow us to use the Tor anonymity feature on command line, use #tags and @mentions, create groups, among other possibilities.

Keybase offers users a end-to-end encrypted chat and cloud storage system, called Keybase Chat and the Keybase file system. The files placed in the public part of the file system are served from a public endpoint and locally from a file system mounted by the Keybase client that we use on our device.

Keybase general features

This application offers users a GUI with well organized panels, tabs, animations and settings.
We can have conversations with people from all over the world without needing to know their phone number or email address.
We will have the possibility to chating in groups, using #tags and @mentions to facilitate communication and search.
We will be able search people profiles easily on different social networks.
We can chat securely with any user of Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, Reddit and Hacker News.
The application will offer us end-to-end encrypted conversations.
It's free to download and use Whithout ads.
This available on multiple platforms, including Chrome / Firefox, GNU / Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS.
It is a open source app. Your code is available to contribute in GitHub.
We can use Tor on the command line. Users will be able to protect our identity thanks to Tor's famous anonymity algorithm. Yes indeed, you will need the Tor SOCKS proxy to run locally on your machine before you can use Tor with Keybase on your command line. Tor has the configuration in its documentation and you can follow the guide provided by Keybase.
Admits native notifications like @channel and @mentions popup.
We will be able sync data automatically through our connected devices.
We will have the possibility to manage attached media files.
Keybase is advertised as a Slack end-to-end encryption combined with dropbox, all of it in a single application for everyone. So anyone can benefit from its features in the open source spirit.

Install Keybase on Ubuntu systems

If someone wants to know the installation of this software in other operating systems, they can take a look at the Gnu / Linux installations on the project website.

We can install the latest version of Keybase on both 64-bit and 32-bit Ubuntu operating systems. We will only have to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and follow the following instructions according to the architecture we need.

64 bits

curl -O https://prerelease.keybase.io/keybase_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i keybase_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -f
run_keybase

32 bits

curl -O https://prerelease.keybase.io/keybase_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i keybase_i386.deb
sudo apt-get install -f
run_keybase

Note: the installation of Keybase will add its own package repository. With this, when the system is updated, the Keybase package will also be updated. If you prefer to avoid this, run in terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) before installing:

sudo touch /etc/default/keybase

For restart Keybase after an update writes:

run_keybase

This command will kill and reset everything, including the KBFS fuse assembly. The code of the key for the signature, you can get it here y check it here.

Uninstall Keybase

Eliminating this program from our operating system is as simple as opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T). In it we will only have to write the following command:

sudo apt remove keybase

If someone needs to know more about this project, they can consult the project website. Any user can report a bug in case it is found during the execution of the program.

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