361–370 of 437 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Used to be, called LibreSignal. They ran into legal issues. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal There is a bounty for modifying the signal app source to drop play services. https://www.bountysource.com/issues/35722527-create-proper-p...
They can't use the name LibreSignal because it has the word Signal in it? Wow, even Microsoft didn't behave that juvenile about LibreOffice.
I think all this is by-the-by. The gist of The Guardian's article was that WhatsApp has full control of when, if and how your messages are encrypted, and if you're a dissident working against an oppressive regime and you use WhatsApp to collaborate with your allies, your ass is grass, because there isn't anything physically preventing security agencies from getting hold of your communications. That such security agen…
Isn't Signal in the same boat? They are a US company and they control what version of the app is in the play/apple store. They could be force to push a version of a flaw and no one could verify it. The source looks good but the app that has been distributed is not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wire uses the signal protocol. [1] I am not sure if they require google play services but I thought saw something a while back on their github regarding a fallback if google services was not installed and battery consumption. [1] https://wire.com/download/
They don't use the signal protocol, they don't even use X3DH or Double Ratchet. That citation of yours is just a download link, not an actual reference to your point. The project is also kind of a mess. Check out their privacy policy, Wire maintains a server side copy of your entire contact list, all the groups that you're in, the plaintext metadata for your groups (membership, plaintext group title, plaintext group…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are in Europe (or at least some countries in Europe), it's illegal to read in-transit messages even if the recipient is at work and the interceptor is their employer.
Reference? I've worked at several companies claiming they are allowed to do this (which I don't necessarily believe, of course). Has it been tested in court?
We can learn one important thing here - it is not possible to trust closed source software. Enough said, next issue please.
It isn't possible, in most cases, to trust open source software either. Have you verified that the binaries on your phone were indeed built from the source you can read on github or wherever?
On desktop and servers, however, it certainly is possible (and not-too-impractical) to verify binary blobs against known PGP signatures. See Debian's reproducible builds, for instance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wire uses the signal protocol. [1] I am not sure if they require google play services but I thought saw something a while back on their github regarding a fallback if google services was not installed and battery consumption. [1] https://wire.com/download/
They don't use the signal protocol, they don't even use X3DH or Double Ratchet. That citation of yours is just a download link, not an actual reference to your point. The project is also kind of a mess. Check out their privacy policy, Wire maintains a server side copy of your entire contact list, all the groups that you're in, the plaintext metadata for your groups (membership, plaintext group title, plaintext group…
My understanding is that the developers sit in Berlin, but the legal entity is in Switzerland.
Their privacy policy [1] states that they retain logs for 72h, and not much else. Only hashed contact info (emails/phone numbers) are uploaded, after opt-in. It all sounds very reasonable.
Your argument seems to be that they're an untrustworthy mess - but I don't see much evidence of that, except for possibly some braggadocio in that old article.
> Check out some of the code.
Yes, it is on github [2], so you can do that, which is nice.
[1] https://medium.com/wire-news/simple-privacy-policy-72-hour-l...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can't use the name LibreSignal because it has the word Signal in it? Wow, even Microsoft didn't behave that juvenile about LibreOffice.
Yeah, they just sued some high school kid because of the domain name he chose: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of the merit of this specific accusational-and-denial cycle, the fact remains that Whatsapp is closed source crypto and there is no way in principle for the user to verify any security claims. I happen to trust Moxie's principles, but not as much as I distrust the relationship-with-government imperatives implied by FB's vast business interests.
There's "no way in principle"? How is this whole story not evidence to the contrary? The person who found this didn't use WhatsApp source code. Why do you feel that there's no way to verify closed-source software?
I need a way to verify that binary I am installing is the same as the binary that has been thoroughly vetted by security researches. In the modern mobile app ecosystem, on a major OS, running a major app, I can't carefully pick and choose which binary version to install. I get whatever the OS company's server pushes to me, and I can't downgrade to a known good version.
We can learn one important thing here - it is not possible to trust closed source software. Enough said, next issue please.
The problem is that we can't trust open source software either. Software being closed source doesn't make it impervious to analysis. Software being open source does not mean it has been analyzed.
I don't ever want to change the tires on my car, but I think it's essential that I have the ability to change the tires on my car.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAICT that's (at best) research level stuff. I'd love to be proven (heh) wrong, though. I think what lisper was after was actual practical applications, e.g. something along the lines of the CompCert C compiler[1]. [1] Which I'll note was written and verified in Coq a high-level proof-oriented language.
I don't know what "(at best) research level stuff" means. Here's a well-regarded LLVM lifter by a very well-regarded vuln research team that's open source: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2014/08/07/mcsema-is-officially... There are a bunch of other lifters, not all of them to LLVM. Already, with the idea of IR lifting, we're at a point where we're no longer talking about reading assembly but rather a higher-level langu…
The evidence you have presented does not support this conclusion. All you've shown is that it is possible to reverse-engineer object code, but this was never in doubt. It is still an open possibility (indeed it is overwhelmingly probable) that it is a hell of a lot easier to audit code if you have access to the source. All else being equal, more information is always better than less, and, as I pointed out earlier, the constraints imposed by some languages can often be leveraged to make the verification task easier.