redlight

"The red light means STOP!"

CAUTION: This software is alpha quality and shouldn't be used by anybody.

An advanced abuse mitigation tool. It's a Synapse module that allows server owners to either run a "redlight server", or to act as a "redlight client" to prevent their own users from accessing abusive rooms. It's designed to block child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other abusive content on the Matrix network.

This software attempts to resolve the complex problem of how to share pointers to rooms containing abusive content in order to block or report activity. These room lists are sensitive and sharing them can not only aid people in blocking this content but also direct bad actors to said content.

The goal of this tool is to block abusive content across many small to medium sized servers without exposing the sensitive room_ids in the "source list" to those servers/users. It will also "freeze" abusive accounts and provide real-time alerts about their activity to the homeservers owners.

Features

Easy, setup for homeserver owners via Synapse Module
Private, hashing is used to prevent redlight clients from sharing user_ids and room_ids with redlight servers
Decentralised, many people can run redlight servers with their own blocking policies, redlight clients are free to pick a provider
Safe, access restrictions and ratelimiting are used to guard the sensitive content of the source list
Real-time alerting, attempts to access abusive rooms and account freezes are sent to an "alert room" on the redlight clients homeserver

How it Works

"Redlight servers" will be trusted homeservers that are modified, they'll cache the source list in memory while providing an API interface to "Redlight clients". Redlight servers will pick their own "content tags" that they are filtering, which by extension will allow clients to pick a level of filtering that suits them.

Redlight clients will be untrusted homeservers that are whitelisted by their desired Redlight server. When a user on a client homeserver attempts to join a room, the hashes of the user_id and room_id as well as an auth token will be sent to the redlight server, which will confirm or deny if the room is abusive, the client then denies the user entry to that room. If a user attempts to access abusive rooms multiple times their account will be "frozen" by the redlight server and attempts to access any further rooms will be denied. Real-time alerts about users accessing abusive rooms or account freezes will also be sent to an "alert room" on the redlight clients server.

For a more detailed description of how it will work please consult the Technical Specification.

Coming soon...

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Contributing

We warmly welcome contributors who are interested in improving Matrix Lantern. Whether you're fixing bugs, improving documentation, or proposing new features, your efforts are greatly appreciated. Please ensure that new contributions follow our Style Guide.

Acknowledgements

Redlight is a community-driven project aimed at protecting the Matrix network's users from harmful content. Our thanks go out to the Matrix network, Glowers Club, and all our contributors who make this project possible.

Roadmap

1. Get a basic prototype working. [DONE]
2. Use Synapses SimpleHttpClient instead of importing/using twisted directly -
3. Fix the hashing scheme and make it smarter -
4. Get a database on the redlight server -