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

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

#231

Post by equalunique »

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).

Please note that of the technologies tptacek listed, the only one which can operate in distributed fashion is Matrix.[0]

Wire is attempting to pursue decentralization, but federation is not (yet) in their roadmap.[1]

[0] https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse

[1] https://medium.com/@wireapp/wire-server-code-now-100-open-so...

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

#232

Post by VirtruTyler »

kwindla wrote: post #110

Over the last couple of years, there's been huge progress in making end-to-end encryption practical for "real world" apps -- especially stuff running in web browsers. Signal is part of that, of course, as is WebRTC, a standard that to its great credit did an excellent job with the encryption pieces from the very beginning. We built our video calling app, Daily.co, on top of WebRTC and so we could relatively easily in…

If you wouldn't mind, what server framework are you using to route video? Did you custom roll one? Using a service like twilio for calls with more than a few people?

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

#233

Post by ChrisRus »

throwwwwaway9 wrote: post #220
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.

>> How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now Backdoors require quite a few MSFT people with--way more than--FU money agreeing to it. I would bet that something like this would leak. All it takes is one to annon leak a screenshot or a memo

Need to know. Members of the kernel team generally have zero knowledge of what happens in the build lab between the sources and the product that's released to the world.

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

#234

Post by nickthemagicman »

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).

Moxie Marlinspike is one of my tech heros.

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

#235

Post by smcl »

erikb wrote: post #91
ryanpcmcquen wrote: post #3

Ugh, people are still using Skype?

You know that Skype is still the better cousin? Some of us have to use Skype4Business (previously Lync) at work. After you do that you get a boner at how good the consumer Skype is in comparison. E.g. in consumer Skype if you send a message you can be relatively sure the other party receives it!!!! What a great feature.

It is insane how awful Skype for Business is. In a previous company we started out using some open source XMPP based server for instant messaging which was cheap and reliable. Every year or so someone got the bright idea to "upgrade" to something more corporate/enterprisey. Each time this happened we adopted something worse, more expensive and less reliable. A couple of different rebrands of Cisco Webex Connect, Lync and culminating in the worst of the lot ... Skype For Business.

I cannot fathom how an IM app could be so poorly implemented, it seems almost intentional.

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

#236

Post by corford »

mtgx wrote: post #131
Zhenya wrote: post #12

Great news. More funding for Open Whisper to provide us Signal.

They could get 100x the amount they've gotten so far from these companies if they had launched their own crypto-asset, which is probably by far the best way for an open source project to get funding.

Moxie Marlinspike is involved in: https://www.mobilecoin.com/

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

#237

Post by rsync »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #171
pvg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EFF's handing out of 'grades' for this stuff is probably something everyone is better off forgetting.

Their grades are based on objective assessment of properties of underlying technologies. They are very useful for most people, who are not going to study cryptography for several years and then manually reading and checking source code of every communications software product out there.

"Their grades are based on objective assessment of properties of underlying technologies."

What were the grades for apps/protocols that run on closed, proprietary basebands with, in some cases, DMA ? Or on devices with embedded, parallel computers that can run arbitrary java programs uploaded, at any time, by the carrier, without the users' knowledge[1] ?

All fails, right ? Straight "F"s ?

[1] These are called "SIM chips"

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

#238

Post by qznc »

afuchs wrote: post #226
huhtenberg wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't explain why after the change Skype started routing calls between machines on the same LAN through Microsoft servers.

It is difficult to make a p2p app on a mobile device work even between devices on the same LAN . A simplified explanation: Mobile devices will often ignore almost all incoming network traffic to reduce battery usage. The only way to reliably communicate with the device is through a centralized push notification service (e.g. APN and GCM).

SyncThing seems to do fine on my smartphone in my home LAN.

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

#239

Post by geocar »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #227
geocar wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all the mobile traffic is being routed through a single Microsoft-controlled "super-duper peer", then there is no P2P traffic. Or to put it another way: If I accept the choice is between routing mobile traffic to Microsoft, or no mobile-Skype support, I don't understand how it follows that all traffic needs to move through Microsoft, or no mobile-Skype support.

Because centralized and P2P architecturally are different beasts altogether. It'd be very hard to make a protocol that essentially did both, and centralization covers all use cases, so, as a company, it makes most sense to go with that. I'm sure there were other reasons involved in the decision, I don't pretend to know them, but from a business perspective alone, you choose one connection methodology and you stick wi…

> It'd be very hard to make a protocol that essentially did both

They already had a protocol that essentially did both.

Once you have forwarding/routing i.e. what Skype called "super-nodes", P2P is a clear superset of "centralised".

Anyone who says different doesn't know what they're talking about.

> I'm sure there were other reasons involved in the decision, I don't pretend to know them, but from a business perspective alone, you choose one connection methodology and you stick with it. Anything more is wasteful of resources.

I'm not speculating.

I've seen engineers do stupid things that don't make sense; I'm not arguing that there are stupid reasons for it, and I'm not going to argue that there's non-technical reasons for it.

But technical reasons? I don't buy it. I need some convincing: If one protocol (the P2P one) does both use cases, then you don't need another protocol just to handle one use case. That's just not how protocols work.

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