Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#181

Post by squarefoot » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:47 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #4

Aissen wrote: post #2

I can't help but read this with a cynical voice in my head: Skype used to have an incredibly bleeding edge P2P E2E encrypted protocol, and Microsoft threw it all away. Some might say for good reasons (mobile use case, supernodes straining routers, legal wiretap compliance issues); I'd respectfully disagree and observe that there's just going full-circle.

Yeah, Microsoft moving to a model where "lawful intercept" is no longer possible would be hugely surprising.

Compromised software is no longer needed when backdoors can be built-in or injected in hardware or firmware/drivers.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#182

Post by cpach » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #158

ReverseCold wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but decentralization is a difficult problem. I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. NAT, Firewall, etc all make it very difficult to do true P2P as well.

You might use GMail, but I can communicate with you perfectly fine even if I don't use GMail.

And that’s why end-to-end encrypted e-mail is so very hard

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#183

Post by antimatter » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

wilhil wrote: post #137

Now if only they can partner with someone to get chat working as well as it used to or get syncing between multiple devices working...

This. I wish Signal's own native apps had the user experience of Telegram.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#184

Post by dsacco » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:00 PM UTC

cJ0th wrote: post #90

tptacek wrote: post #45

Just to get a sense of the track record here, Signal Protocol powers: * Facebook/WhatsApp * Google/Allo * Microsoft/Skype * Signal Signal is also the basis for the protocols for Wire (Proteus) and Matrix (Olm).

Can't say I am really happy about it. The more the Signal protocol is used the more money is spend on attacking it.

That's a good thing. Well-studied protocols are safer protocols, and significant money can pay for the best expertise in the world.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#185

Post by aeorgnoieang » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

kenning wrote: post #136

legionof7 wrote: post #16

I made a request for e2e to Discord a while back. It became one of the most voted suggestions but got denied. Maybe this will push them to take another look.

I'm not knowledgeable about this -- is signal's e2e encryption even viable for a service with N users, and one where new users are being added? Put another way, if I have a group with 10 users and it's encrypted and then another person joins and can see the old messages, was it actually securely encrypted in the first place?

> if I have a group with 10 users and it's encrypted and then another person joins and can see the old messages, was it actually securely encrypted in the first place?

Sure, why not? Assume, just because it's the first thing that came to mind, that message history is encrypted using GPG and every message is encrypted with everyone's individual public keys. When a new user joins, one user just encrypts the message history with the new user's public key.

Or am I missing something? Do the existing users in the group not have access to their own message history?

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#186

Post by fwn » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

It is probably opt-in and a crippled version of the default chat interface.

This way the few users of the feature will be visible like a Christmas tree in a dark forest and the general userbase will think it's their laziness not to use encrypted Skype.

That's also how Facebook implemented it in messenger.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#187

Post by romanovcode » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

Would be cool if MS would just drop Skype and adopt Signal.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#188

Post by yoavm » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:05 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #158

ReverseCold wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but decentralization is a difficult problem. I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. NAT, Firewall, etc all make it very difficult to do true P2P as well.

You might use GMail, but I can communicate with you perfectly fine even if I don't use GMail.

If by "perfectly fine" you mean highly likely to get into your recipient's spam folder - you're probably right. Having tried to self host my own mail server I can tell you it's never an easy task to actually get your message across.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#189

Post by ju-st » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

paule89 wrote: post #160

The thing is. How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now. As far as I understood the reason Microsoft broke Skype so badly was because they used centralised servers with backdoors for countries who wanted them. Not always the good countries. But this. This baffles me. Deeply.

I suppose the Skype client won't become open source with reproducible builds.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#190

Post by geocar » Thu, Jan 11, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

Systemic33 wrote: post #177

paule89 wrote: post #160

The thing is. How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now. As far as I understood the reason Microsoft broke Skype so badly was because they used centralised servers with backdoors for countries who wanted them. Not always the good countries. But this. This baffles me. Deeply.

Microsoft used centralised servers because the Skype prior to that was a curse to mobile devices running on battery power. Particularly cellphones. Skype worked as a p2p network, where some peers where marked as super peers and would help with peers behind firewalls (UDP-holepunching), and routing through the super peer. If your phone became a super peer, you could expect to essentially work like a server, with the "…

> So Microsoft had to change the architecture (which wasn't designed with mobile devices in mind) into a more centralised approach that could work with mobile devices.

As an engineer and software developer, I find this to be extremely unlikely.

If "super-peers" can already route traffic for others, it seems very likely they could simply route all traffic for Mobile users through some "super-duper peer", instead of routing all traffic for all users through some "super-duper peer".