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Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

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Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#91

Post by snthd »

esaym wrote: post #60
subway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, the service is centralized, but there's no reason that Signal, the protocol can't be. In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage, Signal was federated with a server hosted by CyanogenMod.

>In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage Do you have link or source for that? (I'm always interested in listening or watching stuff from Moxie)

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

>Nothing about any of the protocols we’ve developed requires centralization; it’s entirely possible to build a federated Signal Protocol-based messenger, but I no longer believe that it is possible to build a competitive federated messenger at all.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#93

Post by renaudg »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #33
xkarga00 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe that Facebook (US company) has not complied with the US goverment and WhatsApp is safe for private communication?

Right!? Anyone who believes Facebook's WhatsApp is actually end to end encrypted and gives no access to the message data is laughably naive.

I don't usual respond to conspiracist posts, but maybe you're going to take Moxie Marlinspike's word for it ?

https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#94

Post by subway »

esaym wrote: post #60
subway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, the service is centralized, but there's no reason that Signal, the protocol can't be. In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage, Signal was federated with a server hosted by CyanogenMod.

>In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage Do you have link or source for that? (I'm always interested in listening or watching stuff from Moxie)

The posts that really left me disappointed are:

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

https://whispersystems.discoursehosting.net/t/how-to-get-sig...

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

I suppose "only I can do security right" is perhaps overly harsh, but my take away was that he considered a walled garden that could be iterated on by his team preferable to allowing even forks of his team's own client to communicate with users on the OWS network.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#95

Post by Xylakant »

joeblow9999 wrote: post #92

I won't be using a 'secure' messaging app built by the govt any time soon...

AFAIK, this is mostly intended as a secure messenger _for_ the government. Which makes sense - what are they supposed to use? WhatsApp? Twitter DM? Skype for Governments?

But even if you’re not in the target demographic, you might benefit: The government will run a large installation and hopefully some code will find its way back to the OS version.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#96

Post by severus_snape »

kuwze wrote: post #70

It's sort of ironic considering France's history with Minitel[0] and encryption[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel [1]: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/1201/6012058a.html#75b6a6... Specifically from [1] is the line: "Its illegal in France to encrypt any communication in any way unless you have permission from the government. How is electronic commerce going to get off the ground in such a society? Good…

Thankfully, since 2004, the law for trust in the digital economy[0] (LCEN) mostly liberalized the use of cryptography[1].

[0]: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography_law#France

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#97

Post by Karrot_Kream »

alexkavon wrote: post #72
doomrobo wrote: post #54

What protocol? If you look at spec on their website[0] you'll see 4/5 of the protocols are still marked unstable. Take room state resolution as an example. It has pretty important security implications and it's nontrivial in a distributed setting. The algorithm is not stabilized, and it comes with a warning in the specification: Warning: This section documents the state resolution algorithm as implemented by Synapse…

Yep. Their docs inspire little hope that the protocol will be little more than niche. How to build on top of this protocol without requiring someone with domain specific knowledge is beyond what's offered. Cue XKCD protocols comic.

Matrix is gaining adoption throughout the open source world super quickly. There are screenshots, guides, and links to join all over the place. Given that, I'm really impressed that anyone looks at Matrix and thinks of it as "little more than niche".

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#98

Post by [deleted] »

esaym wrote: post #60
subway wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, the service is centralized, but there's no reason that Signal, the protocol can't be. In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage, Signal was federated with a server hosted by CyanogenMod.

>In fact before Moxie went on his silly "only I can do security right" rampage Do you have link or source for that? (I'm always interested in listening or watching stuff from Moxie)

[deleted]

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#99

Post by akditer »

geoffpado wrote: post #53
akditer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of information....which amendment is that :P ?

This is France we're talking about, so it's not amendments, but rather Article XV of the "Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_t... ("The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration."), which is used as the basis for actual legislation today: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/fo…

I am sorry, I am not french. I thought this is some stupid American law which every Americans expect the rest of the world to know.

Re: Matrix and Riot Confirmed as the Basis for France’s Secure Instant Messenger App

#100

Post by jrq »

Why is the world so desperate to pretend that irc doesn't exist? Why can't we just get a new irc spec with e2e in mind?

Matrix is an extremely immature project and the French gov is making an irresponsible move here to prop it up as a solution in any capacity.

It's beta software! Where are the audits? Where are the formal verifications? Not that irc has those, I don't mean to juxtapose one not-good-enough product with another, but this is reaching a point of insanity.

If you want security, use signal. If you don't trust signal, learn to trust scores of world renowned cryptographers, and use it anyways. And if you're still bored, renovate irc.

Gosh this is just crazy. It's like saying the tesla 3 will be the authorized taxi vehicle on Mars. There's so much work yet to be done, it's a million years too early to start regulating and organizing something that's not even half built.

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