Message routing on Loki depends on if the receiving party is online or offline. When both users on online, higher bandwidth communication can take place as the message do not need to be stored on service nodes. A public key acts as both a long term encryption key and a routing address. In order to ensure protection against a 'man in the middle' attack, this key should be exchange out-of-band, either in person or through another secure exchange mode. 

Messenger Routing

Once a person has the other's public key, they can create a path towards them by querying the DHT of any service node and obtaining the introduction set corresponding with the other's public key. Once finding the introduction set, the initial user can choose three random Service Nodes to act as an intermediary hops between their and the receivers. The path is now established, and the two can exchange messages with high level privacy. 

Online Messaging

Offline routing uses a modified version of Postal Services over Swarm. Swarms are logical groupings of Service Nodes, based both on their public keys and the hash of the block that their staking transaction first appeared in. Each swarm has a swarmID and consists of nine nodes. The sending user must calculate which swarm the receiver belongs do, done using the public key. They can then anonymously route a message through the network to a random Service Node in that swarm. That Service Node will then distribute that message to the other 8 nodes in the swarm, all of which store the messages for their allocated time-to-live. The receiver can then query any two nodes in the swarm for messages that he can decrypt.  

Offline Messaging

- Messenger Encryption
- User Authentication

Messenger Encryption and User Authentication

- Messenger Routing
- Online Messaging
- Offline Messaging
- Messenger Encryption and Authentication

University of Connecticut

An end to end encrypted private messaging application, Loki Messenger provides a platform for users to send messages without revealing their contents. Although some already exist, they rely on a centralized network, and present high risk for potentially revealing the communicating parties. Loki uses the service node architecture to deliver the same encryption but with more privacy and censorship resistance.

Loki Messenger

https://loki.network/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LokiWhitepaperV3_1.pdf

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