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Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

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Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#171

Post by nickik »

cyberpunk wrote: post #28
nickik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/wiki/Reprod...

All well and good for us, but we're probably not the target here anyway. And be honest, did you really bother to do all that?

The hole point about this sort of things is you can detect mass attack. If only one person finds a problem all get the benefits.

Its much harder to make a targeted attack, specially if you are not google or have the full support of google.

Nothing is perfect, but there is very little that is better.

Your other options are only not using the devices at all.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#172

Post by wruza »

arglebarnacle wrote: post #63
visarga wrote: post #60

But downloading Signal after news like these will tag people as trying to hide something from the state.

I think it is a mistake to buy into the logic that using encryption means you have something to hide. Regardless of the framing of the article, many people likely read this and thought, "yes, it would be nice to be confident my messaging is private even from mass government surveillance." This does not mean they are drug dealers. It means that they have concluded wide-dragnet surveillance programs are worth opting ou…

>encryption means you have something to hide

It means for me, but I fail to see why it is bad. Even direct "not your business" does not prove any guilt. It is okay to hide, we don't have to be open book.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#173

Post by kscz »

cyberpunk wrote: post #101
antocv wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's time we just admitted that everything we type/tap/say into any device, regardless of how it's being wrapped up in transit, is absolutely and irrepairably insecure and we're not going to be able to fix that anytime soon. We dont have to set the bar that high. Just lower it slightly and we can achieve great success. Can we make the job of NSA and CIA harder? Not necessarily impossible, just to increase t…

I'm not sure there are many ways to make things harder when the complexity of the systems we have even in our pockets make them so very hard/impossible to even observe let alone protect. There are too many places, even on a phone, where anything at all can be hiding and we don't really have any way of ever knowing what's there without stepping through the binaries.. That's even more difficult when we've got dalvik an…

You're right, anything can be monitored, but we shouldn't take that as a reason that we should lay down and accept it. You should assume that any sufficiently motivated person/organization/state can get access to your information. But what we should absolutely do is make sure that state actors and companies have to demonstrate that they are motivated to take that information. That they have to devote resources to getting it. We shouldn't hand them broad access to everyone's information just because any one person's information is possible to obtain.

But regardless of that point, your other argument feels to me like a discussion against the problems of mono-culture: we should all endeavor to have diversity of implementation, if possible. The more we can work towards federated standards and the ability to quickly pivot when someone loses our trust, the more capable we are of defeating attempts to undermine that trust. If we only have 1 implementation of signal and everyone uses it, then all an "evil" party has to do is find flaws in that 1 implementation. If we have 2 implementations, then some users are protected. If we have 1,000 implementations, and they all inter-communicate, then we have some hope that only some users are affected by each compromise. I'm digging matrix.org as a federated protocol, and I'm hoping that it takes root because it has many clients; an open, federated protocol; and the ability for me to run my own server.

I would advocate that even though we're relatively mono-culture on linux, supporting it at least gives linux access to the source code which would allow other implementations (anyone else keeping a close eye on Redox [1]? I know I am!). Support open protocols! Support federated protocols! I'll advocate that signal is a great, easy-to-use system for secure communication, and that the ideas of Signal are percolating elsewhere (see "olm" [2] the implementation of Signal's crypto protocol for matrix). But I would like to see stabilization in Signal leading to federation.

[1] http://www.redox-os.org/

[2] https://matrix.org/git/olm/tree/

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#174

Post by e12e »

at612 wrote: post #167

Download Signal? No, thank you. The fact that the guy behind it is hyping it via the New York Times, a generalist publication, instead of validating the thing through professional cryptographers (which he isn't) and recognised privacy champions such as the EFF is very telling. The thing has not been properly validated or verified (for a start, because there is no design document to validate against, and no published…

> it is not open source

Huh?

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android

I'd even argue it's free software - the team has managed to create some confusion about distributing modified binaries - with regards to using the servers Signal operates -- but have clarified that it is indeed ok to build your own binary from the source they provide, and use their servers.

I'm not quite convinced about their argument for official app store distribution and updates, but I can understand the argument.

> it requires Google Play services

I'm fairly sure the iOS client doesn't depend on Google Play Services. Sticking with an app store does require trust in the provider though.

Whisper System have made some fairly clear choices, and while it's perfectly fine to disagree, I think it would be best to avoid FUD.

It certainly strikes me as one of the better options for pragmatic secure messaging, that allows for a fairly narrow and reasonable set of threats (Google/Apple/Microsoft (possibly more than one of each, depending on your platform), Whisper Systems themselves, probably most state actors).

The other reasonable option I'm aware of (that make slightly different trade-offs), is ChatSecure/zom.im (where zom.im is a "friendly" fork of ChatSecure).

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#175

Post by at612 »

mei0Iesh wrote: post #158
hackuser wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide something that backs up these claims?

They did in another comment on this page. I do not see any evidence that worries me. Perhaps if you're a famous terrorist, you won't want to use it, because your GIF searches might expose your evil plans. But I only needed a way to talk to family and friends that was more private than Facebook and Google, while not sacrificing features and usability. I think Wire has done an excellent job. I've not found anything els…

Just wondering, but why not just use XMPP? You can choose any server that you like or trust, or run your own (on your own or third party infrastructure, up to you), and use OTR for end-to-end encryption if you feel you need to¹.

I have been using XMPP since 2000/2001. My current address is nine years old (and I control the server). I have a choice of clients on every platform that I use. All my contacts have the same set of choices regarding provider, accounts, and clients. As a bonus, not just my human contacts but also my infrastructure uses it for messaging and monitoring, so I can literally control some of my servers from my XMPP clients.

There must have been at least thirty major IM "solutions" going in and out of fashion during these 16 years. Individually, each might have been somehow "more convenient", but if start counting the cumulative migration effort, I'm not sure the convenience argument holds much water.

¹ I used it in anger once myself, initiated by one of my contacts. It was an interesting experience.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#176

Post by garrettr_ »

at612 wrote: post #167

Download Signal? No, thank you. The fact that the guy behind it is hyping it via the New York Times, a generalist publication, instead of validating the thing through professional cryptographers (which he isn't) and recognised privacy champions such as the EFF is very telling. The thing has not been properly validated or verified (for a start, because there is no design document to validate against, and no published…

I'm probably just inviting myself to get trolled by replying to this, but this comment is just ridiculously wrong on so many levels.

> The fact that the guy behind it is hyping it via the New York Times, a generalist publication, instead of validating the thing through professional cryptographers (which he isn't) and recognised privacy champions such as the EFF is very telling.

Cryptographer Matthew Green on Signal's crypto and code quality (it was called RedPhone/TextSecure at the time of this writing): https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/03/09/here-com...

Version 1.0 of EFF's Secure Messaging Scorecard gave Signal 7/7: https://www.eff.org/node/82654.

> The thing has not been properly validated or verified (for a start, because there is no design document to validate against, and no published goals to verify against)

Signal has been analyzed, with favorable results, by academic researchers at least twice:

- https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/904.pdf - https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf

> it uses an ad-hoc encryption scheme from a non-cryptographer

Moxie Marlinspike and Trevor Perrin probably wouldn't call themselves "cryptographers," but almost anybody in the field would agree that they are experts on applied cryptography.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#177

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

Forbo wrote: post #90
xnull2guest wrote: post #68

I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…

> I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. I see these two subjects as being inseparable. Before I feel comfortable asserting a dissenting opinion in a public forum, I would much rather discuss the subject among my peers where I don't feel I will be immediately eviscerated for a…

> Before I feel comfortable asserting a dissenting opinion in a public forum, I would much rather discuss the subject among my peers where I don't feel I will be immediately eviscerated for a poorly constructed thought.

While I certainly emphasize with the anxiety of publicly expressing an unpopular opinion, I believe it is, especially in times like these, your moral duty to endure in spite of the repercussions and speak your mind. Even though I went to Stanford and had direct access to Milgrom's famous prison experiment, the lesson from it didnt hit home until many years later I read this article: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-desire-to-fit-in-is-the-root-of-al...

Now, the phrase "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent" resonates with me.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#178

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

Perixoog wrote: post #141
xnull2guest wrote: post #68

I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…

If you speak to a large group of people anonymously it's not private. If it's not private, what you say, how you say it and when you say it can be analyzed to identify you. It's a people problem not a technical one.

Would it not be trivial to algorithmically obfuscate this identifying information? As I write this, Im thinking of Ender's siblings finding their voice under the pseudonyms Desmothenes and Locke

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#179

Post by at612 »

reacharavindh wrote: post #9
unicornporn wrote: post #4

Or you could download https://wire.com/ which allows developers to build their own clients and still use their infrastructure. Also, it doesn't force you to use a phone number for registration. It supports audio/video calls. Also, if you're really privacy minded, it doesn't need Google Play Services. That way it can be used in CopperheadOS.

Do you know how Wire makes money to sustain what they are doing? Don't want to invest my time into something that will eventually sell out and do that opposite of what they stand for today.

> Don't want to invest my time into something that will eventually sell out

And what do you think the gentleman behind Signal is out there for?

His modus operandi:

* Start a company, call it something catchy, like Whisper Systems.

* Get media coverage and some users.

* Sell to Twitter

* Start a company, call it something catchy, like Open Whisper Systems.

* Get media coverage and some users.

* ...

Start to see a pattern? :-)

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#180

Post by eggie »

uselpa wrote: post #131
zi0nman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I'm seeing a lot of people criticizing Telegram on Twitter and in media. But after doing some research I couldn't find any proof of their claims that Telegram have a broken crypto. You can use secret chats, those messages are not stored on the company server.

It seems to be official now that Telegram has been hacked over and over again (article in German): https://netzpolitik.org/2016/bundeskriminalamt-knackt-44-tel...

That's not the e2e encryption protocol that they hacked, but the SMS-based authentication and unencrypted chats that are stored on the server in the plain. The state has control of SMS, so it can impersonate you. This would seem to be a potential problem for any service that's backing itself into SMS, but here the attack would not be possible as messages aren't shared across devices on e.g. Signal and WhatsApp.
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