Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

whispersystems.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 386 posts

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#361

Post by Mafana0 »

pilif wrote: post #334
Mafana0 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whatever you're sending over WhatsApp is likely going to be used by FB The article links to the technical white paper[0] which explains why your points are invalid. > I'm still inclined to trust apple's iMessage a bit more Do you have any proof why iMessage is more secure or is that statement also baseless? [0]: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...

The white paper doesn't say anything about additional public keys messages are encrypted for. It states that: - The private keys remain on the devices (which is good, but they don't need them to read your messages) - The messages can't be read by WhatsApp (they don't say anything about their parent company Facebook or governments though). If you read all the whitepapers and alert messages, you can totally read them i…

That's actually a good explanation of your point. Thanks.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#362

Post by pa7ch »

ianmiers wrote: post #267
pa7ch wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he already made a strong point why CONIKS style transparency isn't all that great for end-users. See this mailing list thread that includes the author of CONIKS talking about it with moxie before CONIKS was published: https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/000226.... https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/000234.... Basically, users change their identity key in practice so often th…

So I think CONAME solves 90% of this. It's set up in such a way that third party verifiers only have to check that the update counter for each key is monotonic. Users can check just that, for the current epoch, the write counter is correct and their key is there. So only a user themselves should see a warning. (and warning cans be disabled by default ... as long as the attacker doesn't know if the user has them on or…

Oh thats really interesting. I've never read CONAME before so I'll check it out. It sounds like its definitely worth evaluating more.

I've wonder if things like multi-device support or deriving a private key from a passphrase (mini-lock style) will eventually make user identity far less likely to change. Then it might be safer to complain louder when your in the situation that someone's identity has changed.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#363

Post by wolf550e »

rakoo wrote: post #351
lmm wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're right that it's not a good idea for generalists to pick up Noise and go to town with it. Noise isn't misuse-proof. Nor is SSL. Couldn't an opinionated SSL library (supporting exactly one protocol version, one cipher only, etc) provide the same simplicity of use while remaining interoperable and reusing an already-validated protocol?

FYI there is an RFC (currently a draft) for a suite of parameters considered secure for some time, ie some kind of LTS: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gutmann-tls-lts-02 The idea is more or less what you want, hardcode some known-good configuration for servers that can't or won't be upgraded every other month.

That appears to not fully interoperate with regular TLS implementations, and does not require the use of the most popular secure ciphersuite ECDHE_RSA_AESGCM. If they need to make changes to make it secure, define an extension and say this profile makes the extension mandatory (like MAC-then-encrypt), but don't just change the protocol.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#364

Post by dave2000 »

teaneedz wrote: post #360
dave2000 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll monetize Facebook with the phone numbers they get from WhatsApp users.

That's kind of what I was fearing. Would love to see an official response from Moxie on the meta and contact data handling of WhatsApp's implementation.

This is presumably why Facebook bought it in the first place, though. They don't need to see anyone's message content for this. They get all the info they need the first time you use it; confirming phone number 123-456-7890 belongs to person@domain.com, so they can tie together your facebook usage with whatever customer surveys, browsing etc you've done. I don't see this as remotely altered by the recent encryption work, other than the latter will entice more people to use the app.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#366

Post by russgray »

antihero wrote: post #335
moxie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They seem to have replaced TLS/SSL between client and server with "Noise Pipes". WhatsApp was already using a custom protocol instead of TLS. We worked with them to transition over to Noise Pipes, which has some advantages over what they were doing before. Also, we've renamed Axolotl to Signal Protocol: https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and-out/

For me the biggest thing is - how do we have any idea that WhatsApp is actually using this wonderful crypto tech under the hood? For example my WhatsApp is claiming my messages to my friend are encrypted, whereas his phone is claiming they are not. This is not exactly conducive to trust!

Mine did that for a while, then it resolved itself. Maybe it takes some time for all instances in a group to agree they are encrypted; I also think at least one of my groups marked itself encrypted after everyone in it had posted at least one comment since yesterday.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#367

Post by dave2000 »

One thing that's odd about this is that it's phone only, so they need your phone number. It would be a million times better if it were an android app you could sideload onto any device and use anonymously; exchanging your contact details anonymously. It's hard to see how whatsapp can legally/technically defeat a request for `which contacts does this person communicate with`. The same goes for the Signal app too. Am I missing something here? Clearly none of the protocols require phone numbers, so why do the implementations?

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#368

Post by kobayashi »

kobayashi wrote: post #286
stelonix wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because said liberal democracies are known to spy on that someone more than Iran, North Korea and China combined.

That's an absolutely ridiculous and ignorant statement.

Downvote me all you want, but it doesn't make you right. It just goes to show your own lack of knowledge regarding the intelligence efforts in support of social control in totalitarian states.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#369

Post by teaneedz »

dave2000 wrote: post #364
teaneedz wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of what I was fearing. Would love to see an official response from Moxie on the meta and contact data handling of WhatsApp's implementation.

This is presumably why Facebook bought it in the first place, though. They don't need to see anyone's message content for this. They get all the info they need the first time you use it; confirming phone number 123-456-7890 belongs to person@domain.com, so they can tie together your facebook usage with whatever customer surveys, browsing etc you've done. I don't see this as remotely altered by the recent encryption w…

And I think that's really the messaging that needs to have some PR light shed upon. Facebook has access to the meta and contact data (confirmation, Moxie?). For all the hoopla over WhatsApp E2E crypto, users shouldn't forget that they may be handing over phone number, contact data and other meta to the largest ad-tech platform with a real name policy.

Re: WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

#370

Post by theshrike79 »

jszymborski wrote: post #62
cft wrote: post #50

Looks like they feel threatened by Telegram growth, which means Telegram is doing quite well.

All they need to do to supplant Telegram (at the very least for my use-case) is to have a decent desktop app, preferably native. Their current web interface (is that still active?) is a UX nightmare. Of course it's "for the sake of encryption" but it comes at the cost of adoption.

Also Telegram has built-in bot support, which is a big plus in my book.
Post reply on HN