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Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

sandervenema.ch

41–50 of 350 posts

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#41
The author of this post believes that by making a stand over Signal policies he doesn't like (the superficial GCM dep, the OWS-only server policy, the contact list discovery system), something more like LibreSignal will grow to take Signal's place.

The author is wrong. LibreSignal won't replace Signal. Something like Telegram will: an "open source" messaging system with inferior cryptography, "opt-in" end-to-end messaging, a long-term dependency on the telephone system for authentication, and a far "cuddlier" personality with its users and, more importantly, with people from the app development community (like the author). Telegram will continue to gain adoption, because sexy beats sound in every end-user match up. Signal is the closest thing sound cryptography has to a palatable solution for end users.

Iran has already compromised Telegram users, because it systemically trades security off for user adoption. They'll get more of them, and people will hang from cranes as a result.

It's not wrong to criticize Signal. Signal does things I don't love, too! But we should be clear-eyed about the market.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#42
"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies. PRISM is also still a thing. I’m pretty sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or version of Signal to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none the wiser that they installed malware on their phones."

Isn't part of the reason that Moxie went with the Google Store is that he gets to sign the god damned binaries, making it impossible for Google to modify the app.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#43
Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure, then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers instead of usernames.

He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use GCM because it routes messages via Google who he doesn't trust (fixing that is the point of the encryption) and then talks about an attack that'd apply to any app regardless of whether it used GCM or not.

He finishes with a call to action: "We as a community need to come up with a viable solution and alternative to Signal that is easy to use and that does in fact respect people’s choices ... this tool should not have dependencies on corporate infrastructure"

But like a lot of armchair moralising, he isn't willing to debate the hard choices that go into building successful software. He says it should "respect people's choices" as if Signal is built by people who are disrespectful, he says it should not have dependencies on "corporate infrastructure" as if volunteer run datacenters actually exist, and then says his motivation is avoided paywalls, ignoring that both Signal and WhatsApp are free.

It reads like a collection of talking points rather than a coherent argument.

Signal is unusual because it combines cutting edge cryptography with consumer friendliness and is actually successful. It's pragmatic, not ideological. Crypto-warriors have a long history of producing secure software that nobody uses and then blaming the general public for not getting it; this sort of blog post is just a continuation of this decades long trend.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#44
post #7
post #4

I am also very unhappy with the direction Signal has gone, but there's currently no alternative. I'd be interested in contributing to work attempting to replicate it, though.

Why isn't there an alternative? Signal uses the Axolotl protocol for encryption. There are already several XMPP clients that support the OMEMO protocol which is based on Axolotl ( https://conversations.im/omemo/ ). And for Matrix (a modern alternative to XMPP) there's Olm which is also based on Axolotl.

You mean the Signal Protocol. That's its name. Axolotl was a name for a major component of Signal Protocol. Moxie and Trevor Perrin designed the protocol for Signal, and it's under active development. They own the protocol, its direction, and its documentation.

Other projects can adopt parts of the Signal Protocol, and doing that is certainly better than just making stuff up. But Signal owns the protocol, because the experts who own the protocol are attached to Signal.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix's protocol design is terrible for realtime messaging though (I'm sure there are other uses for which it's more adept); it's effectively a giant, inefficient, JSON datastore that syncs data everywhere. It's also pull based so it consumes battery like crazy. If that's what you need, fine, but for realtime messaging I'd argue that it's really unacceptable.

Okay. Tox, anybody?

I haven't looked into Tox, but I'd be curious to find out the highlights. Really I've just never understood why people complain about XMPP; yes, it's XML which is ugly, but it's also the right tool for the job (easy to stream, very fast SAX-style parsers, event based, etc.), it certainly has its warts, I won't pretend it's perfect, but for the most part it's been around for 20+ years getting the kinks worked out. If we just keep creating new protocols because it's not perfect, we'll never get a more or less universally federated chat protocol like we have for more long form messages (email). I don't know anyone who would say email was the most wonderful modern thing in the world, but they still use it because it's good enough and was lucky enough to become ubiquitous. Similarly, I feel like people should just use XMPP even if they don't like it for that reason (although I'd still love to find out more about Tox, what it's strengths and weaknesses are, etc.)

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#46

Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure, then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers instead of usernames. He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use GCM beca…

People need to get the fact that all traffic across the Internet traverses lots of people's systems. There is no difference between it relaying off Google vs Verizon, AT&T, Amazon, OVH, or dozens of other carriers and cloud providers.

Like you say that is the point of end to end crypto.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#47
post #16

This. I didn't know much of the insides of Signal. But, When WhatsApp decide to go in bed with FB to share my contacts and usage, one of the alternatives I explored was Signal. Threw it out the moment it asked for ownership of my contacts (no way to opt out). I for one am not going to trust a guy's pinky promise to be good with my contacts and meta-data. If I'm going to give up the convenience of reaching anybody by…

I doubt you'd want to use it if it didn't use your contacts, though. Not many people are prepared to deal with a whole separate set of contact ids for the sake of a small amount of arguable extra privacy.

Discoverability is complicated issue.

If I want someone I don't know yet to reach me, I expect them to Google search my phone number/email to make initial contact.

For those I already established initial contacts with, I'd like an account on a service that knows practically nothing about me other than my username(like coolkid654) and lets me send messages to others(coolkid655).

Given the state of data leaks[data snooping by the Gov or anyone else], and spam, it wouldn't be a terrible idea for someone to have a username that they reveal to only the people they trust(are worth). More like a Blackberry key. If packaged well, and made to look 'cool', it could even catch on and everybody would create one(or many).

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#48
Hmm... he mentions the Giphy thing at the beginning of the article, then never again.

The Giphy mention seemed really dangerous to me. Now I don't use Signal but I imagine it's 1) optional and 2) requests are proxified/anonimised through an intermediary (the Signal servers in this case). And why is this dangerous? Because this "don't build cool stuff on this serious app" is what makes people not use the app. It's creating boring, dull apps what stops them from becoming mainstream successes. If we are trying to make the public using secure apps because we believe in privacy, we have to make them appealing.

This is similar to the case of how nobody uses PGP because how horribly bad it is, UX-wise.

That said the rest of points he brings up are good. I just didn't like the Giphy mention, especially taking into account he didn't say anything else about it, he just brought it up.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#49
Can't wait for moxie to jump into the commentary. :)

>Lack of federation

Moxie's pissy because he trusted the kangbangers at Cyanogenmod to to keep in sync with his development. They didn't. Someone will need to volunteer to run their own server that's kept updated, then buy Moxie a Snickers and hope he stops being moody.

>Dependency on Google Cloud Messaging

Fun fact: The iOS client doesn't use GCM, it uses Pushkit. GCM was chosen for Android because what else is as robust and doesn't eat battery? Moxie's voiced support of Websockets if someone implements it correctly and he can merge it as a fallback option when Play Services are missing. If you can't code and want it, contribute to the bounty on it:

https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37

https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/43

> Your contact list is not private

https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/

TL;DR, it's a tradeoff because nobody has a better idea that works at scale and is usable. Redphone used to have a good way of blindly doing contact discovery but it would require too much data for their current userbase.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#50

Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure, then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers instead of usernames. He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use GCM beca…

I agree overwhelmingly with what you wrote, except that I want to point out that this isn't "crypto-puritanism". It's just hipsterism. The author isn't a cryptographer, and if you asked a panel of 10 cryptographic engineers what messaging system they'd recommend, 9 of them would say "Signal".

The 10th wants you to use something else because they're working on an attack for that "something else", and want their paper to be splashier when it's released. :)

When reading critiques of messaging software, keep in mind that messaging is a fucking midnight back-alley knife fight of a market. For whatever reason --- I think because (a) basic chat software is pretty easy to write, with a near- hello- world payoff similar to, say, blog software for Ruby on Rails and (b) because there have been multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of messaging tools --- there are a lot of different messaging products. Messaging is a network-effect market, so all the different vendors are fighting for users.

I don't think Signal has sockpuppets (it's just not their style), but I know several other "secure" messaging applications do.

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