Contact name of Device 1 changes on Device 2 after advert from another user in the Mesh

[andries230]

I’m running two MeshCore devices (T-Echo Companion & T-Deck Plus (running MeshOS))

Twice now, I’ve noticed that the contact name of my T-Deck suddenly changes to the name of another user in the mesh inside my iOS app connected to the T-Echo (after an advert).

This made me wonder:

1. Are contact names solely associated with the first byte of a public key in the app? In other words, if a user has the same first byte, does the app change the name to that user after an advert?
2. Could this result in private messages being delivered to the wrong user, even if they can’t read them due to encryption?

Is there a plan to fix this in the future? I’m asking because I live in the Netherlands, and we essentially have a country-wide mesh network at this point with thousands of repeaters and users, so I can't be the only one seeing this issue...

[recrof]

MeshOS 1.08 had low entropy that can cause multiple users to have same private key - it's important to erase the radio before doing upgrade to MeshOS 1.10

[andries230]

MeshOS 1.08 had low entropy that can cause multiple users to have same private key - it's important to erase the radio before doing upgrade to MeshOS 1.10

Interesting... I will try to clear flash before flashing MeshOS 1.10 !

[gordol]

i've had a somewhat similar issue, on my t-deck, every contact in the t-deck list gets out of sync (seems like an off-by-one error or something)

scrolling the contact list will show users A, B, C, but clicking on A will show user B, and clicking on B will show user C, etc... sometimes it's worse than off by one, and is off-by-many.

is it possible that your t-deck is wrong and the other device is correct?

i need to dig into the code but it seems like there's some kind of internal mapping of user/hash by index perhaps? maybe once it hits 299 contacts it goes wonky on the t-deck?

[andries230]

Thanks for sharing your experience, @gordol. I think what I was seeing is a bit different. In my case, my T-Deck's name suddenly changed on another device after an advert from another user...

It seems like the problem isn’t an off-by-one display issue, but more related to how the app maps contact names to public keys.

Luckily, @recrof’s explanation helped me figure it out! I flashed the latest MeshOS firmware, and the problem did not occur anymore since.