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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

#311

Post by nyolfen »

somberi wrote: post #302

If anyone from Skype product-team is reading this - Please bring back the ability to dial from the local contacts, without having to Sync my entire address book. This is my minimum request. If possible, just put the old Skype interface back. The new design with all its jazz-matazz and sparkles have made the product unusable. It is not a first-world unusable I am talking about. The product is not usable, as in I am mo…

it's unbelievable how badly skype functions as a PC IM client. it just keeps getting worse and worse. there's zero reason an IM client should be using hundreds of megs of ram and a hideous, garish UI that you can't turn off.

the only workaround i found was the pidgin skype-web plugin, which can be a little buggy, but it's far preferable if all you use skype for is IM.

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

#312

Post by ethics_gradient »

Arcsech wrote: post #224
jrhurst wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does look like IBM does own a p2p instant messaging patent[1]. So I think this checks out. - https://www.google.ms/patents/US7675874

There was just a comment thread (on the slack outage article) recently discussing why there are no good p2p chat programs. This might be one reason why. Fuck software patents.

It is more that without centralized servers, if that's what you mean, you have a lot of ux disadvantages.

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

#313

Post by tomaskafka »

gsich wrote: post #309
afuchs wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I am not sure why maintaining a TCP connection to Google or Apple is somewhat more battery friendly then maintaining it to your own server, or providing a TCP-server to provide some service for someone else. (UDP is different here) I am using CSipSimple to my own server, battery usage is the same. Yes this is anecdotal evidence, but one can always check.

I guess this changes the moment you have 100 apps, each doing 'just a quick ping to my server time to time'.

Unfortunate result is hundred of apps waking up the phone ever 20 seconds and transmitting data nonstop. Sigh.

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

#314

Post by dang »

huhtenberg wrote: post #252
afuchs wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Quit the b/s, will you. It's not difficult at all. You use a central server to do the discovery and bootstrap the connection between two devices. For each device it looks like they are connecting out. This works for UDP and this works for TCP. It works both for NAT'ed and LAN peers. For the latter it works 100% of time. This is a 10 year old tech. It worked back then and it works now.

> Quit the b/s, will you.

We ban accounts that are uncivil like this, and you've done it a lot in the past, though happily not in the recent past, so please just don't do it at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#315

Post by ethics_gradient »

beaconfield wrote: post #254

yeah... um. Why would Signal (OpenWhisper) sully their name by coordinating efforts with MS? MS doesn't have a great track record at being an advocate for privacy or user security...

Considering they partnered with facebook, they don't quite see it that way, instead looking at it as a way to bring good e2e crypto to millions of people.

It's a tradeoff.

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

#316

Post by huhtenberg »

dang wrote: post #314
huhtenberg wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quit the b/s, will you. It's not difficult at all. You use a central server to do the discovery and bootstrap the connection between two devices. For each device it looks like they are connecting out. This works for UDP and this works for TCP. It works both for NAT'ed and LAN peers. For the latter it works 100% of time. This is a 10 year old tech. It worked back then and it works now.

> Quit the b/s, will you. We ban accounts that are uncivil like this, and you've done it a lot in the past, though happily not in the recent past, so please just don't do it at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree with your assessment of my remark as "uncivil".

If I read you correctly, you seem to have significantly lowered the plank for what you ban people for. What the OP said was a complete factual garbage showing an utter lack of understanding of the subject he is so confidently commenting on. So this was, by any conventional definition of the term, a bullshit. How can this conceivably be a cause for a ban?

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

#317

Post by izacus »

amygdyl wrote: post #152
izacus wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not a "Skype Lite" for Android... which returns back to previous form. Why that was necessary only Microsoft knows.

I'm running Skype Lite on android.

Err, yeah, the sentence was supposed to be "... there's now ...". Typo :(

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

#318

Post by erikb »

smcl wrote: post #235
erikb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think for the psychological development of a software developer it is very important to also spend some time in an Enterprise company. After 1-2 years of that you know exactly how such kind of software comes to be.

In my team we are currently developing a software where not even we know what it should do. And in every release cycle we spend incredible amounts man hours just to be able to install it again. And still, in the company internal competition we often lose against teams with better political standings to the top, who haven't even written a single line of code yet for their competing product.

I can see that there is a lot of money in Enterprise, and I can see how it's kept alive by each of these enterprises selling their non-functioning tools to each other. But I really don't know where the influx of money to that system is. Nobody with a brain would pay a million bucks for a software that is proud to be installable, if he could spend the same money on hiring an engineer for 10 years and let him learn how to apply an open source solution that everybody knows does what you want after you installed it.

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

#319

Post by mnx »

Zak wrote: post #167
kakarot wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most of this is opt-in and not opt-out. Opting in for E2E encryption in a Facebook message really stands out.

Facebook has that? I can't find it.

In the mobile messenger app (not lite) , click the 'new conversation' button, and top right there's a switch marked with a lock.

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

#320

Post by KeitIG »

lucb1e wrote: post #277
KeitIG wrote: post #170

Maybe a good opportunity to remember what is the main mission of Signal/Open Whisper Systems: they realized at the time that it was extremely complicated for non-technical people to use tools secure enough and respecting your privacy (PGP...), and that the tools used by everyone (Whatsapp, Messenger...) were popular because they were fun and easy to use. They believed that everyone should be able to have an easy way…

While on the topic of things to remember, also remember that they're making compromises in order to keep things hidden from users. The Signal protocol may be sound, but as we've seen with today's WhatsApp news, there are still implementation-specific compromises being made. Not to mention that many of those companies ship a closed source product. They could publish a spec of what should be going over the wire to make…

Though I understand your points, Signal is a protocol, you can implement and build things around it the way you want. Sure you can say that WhisperSystems should enforce a secured architecture around it, but it is not their job, and I doubt Whatsapp, Messenger and Skype would be using Signal if they were forcing that.

And I would definitely not say Telegram is the best tool here [1][2]. If you want something really secure, I would recommend the Signal app [3].

In the end, it is always who you decide to put your trust in.

[1] https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegr... [2] https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf [3] https://signal.org/

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