Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signal Foundation

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 298 posts

Re: Signal Foundation

#41

Post by zapita »

gonehome wrote: post #26
cs702 wrote: post #8

This is freakin' awesome: A non-profit foundation with $50 million in the bank dedicated to providing usable encryption to the general public, with no other agenda other than the public good. Go read the blog post by Moxie and Brian Acton (who is joining Signal). Very exciting!

It seems like they have a lot of overlapping goals with Keybase.io. I wonder if they're in contact or work with each other.

Isn't keybase a for-profit startup leveraging advances in cryptography to build yet another social network?

Re: Signal Foundation

#42

Post by tptacek »

cornholio wrote: post #30
cs702 wrote: post #8

This is freakin' awesome: A non-profit foundation with $50 million in the bank dedicated to providing usable encryption to the general public, with no other agenda other than the public good. Go read the blog post by Moxie and Brian Acton (who is joining Signal). Very exciting!

I hope they eventually develop a federated , privacy oriented messaging protocol, once the rapid technological evolution settles down. I know Moxie's position on federated protocols [1], but I think we must eventually agree that an open environment with a multitude of providers and implementations is the only way to provide long term privacy - any single provider is vulnerable. It would also be a very useful tool in…

Signal Protocol is one of the best documented cryptographic message protocols on the planet, and is accompanied by multiple GPL'd implementations.

https://signal.org/docs/

Re: Signal Foundation

#43

Post by windexh8er »

pspeter3 wrote: post #7

I'm really excited about the possibility of a better client. I want to switch to Signal with my friends but the clients feel so behind Facebook Messenger

I've assimilated most friends and all family very easily by educating them about the why. Not to mention if you're a parent explicitly banning sharing of photos with relatives via social media. People accept any small inconvenience or lack of feature quickly. But at this point I'm not following on the "so behind" comment. Care to elaborate?

Re: Signal Foundation

#44

Post by tptacek »

skrowl wrote: post #39
y03a wrote: post #27

Any reason Signal isn't available through F-Droid? It may be unjustified but I'm not a big fan of installing privacy conscious apps through Play. Edit: Wait, haven't installed anything yet, but I read the getting started guide. I have to sign up using a phone number? That throws all expectation of anonymity and thus privacy out the window.

Telegram is available on F-Droid. It's similar to Signal with more functionality and greater ease of use - https://f-droid.org/packages/org.telegram.messenger/ You need a phone number that can receive texts for the initial setup, but once you're set up people can add you by @username and never need your number. Stuff like https://www.textnow.com/downloads works just fine for the initial text. Once you have a single d…

Telegram isn't remotely similar to Signal. Telegram communications aren't encrypted by default, and Telegram group chat messages aren't encrypted at all.

Re: Signal Foundation

#45

Post by JoshTriplett »

mattl wrote: post #32
y03a wrote: post #27

Any reason Signal isn't available through F-Droid? It may be unjustified but I'm not a big fan of installing privacy conscious apps through Play. Edit: Wait, haven't installed anything yet, but I read the getting started guide. I have to sign up using a phone number? That throws all expectation of anonymity and thus privacy out the window.

F-Droid wants to compile their own binaries, and Signal/OWS/Moxie want to provide checksums and the like for Signal binaries.

That's an argument for reproducible builds; building the same source should give the same checksum.

Re: Signal Foundation

#46

Post by meowface »

Moxie is and will continue to go down as a legend of the digital age. He carved his spot way back with work like sslsniff/sslstrip, and has proven himself to be a real philanthropist. Kudos to him.

Re: Signal Foundation

#47

Post by [deleted] »

faitswulff wrote: post #29

This is a bit of a tangent, but I first heard of Intel SGX (Secure Guard Extensions) via Signal's blog post about secure contact sharing[0], so it's almost relevant :p From what I've read[1][2][3], Intel SGX is vulnerable to Spectre exploits. Does anyone know if this has changed Signal's approach to security at all? Granted, contact sharing was a technology preview, but I'm curious if SGX is still considered a feasib…

[deleted]

Re: Signal Foundation

#48

Post by carussell »

walterbell wrote: post #22

What is Signal Foundation's vision for interoperable, open-standard E2E messaging between different central services?

A null vision. Moxie is against federation, and he's against interoperable clients.

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37

Re: Signal Foundation

#49

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Hopefully they fix the huge privacy problem that requires people to give out their phone number in order to exchange messages. It still amazes me that they don’t see why vulnerable people, or even most women, are not ok with doing this. Even Apple lets you use an email address.

Re: Signal Foundation

#50

Post by UseStrict »

y03a wrote: post #27

Any reason Signal isn't available through F-Droid? It may be unjustified but I'm not a big fan of installing privacy conscious apps through Play. Edit: Wait, haven't installed anything yet, but I read the getting started guide. I have to sign up using a phone number? That throws all expectation of anonymity and thus privacy out the window.

I'm not sure of your assumption that lack of total anonymity implies no privacy. They are independently important concepts. You can have privacy (no knowledge of information shared) without anonymity.
Post reply on HN