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Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

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221–230 of 311 posts

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#221
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t claim end to end encryption by default though. You make it sound as if there is a revelation you made here. Telegram has faults, I would even argue it has many, but it’s clear that only “secret” chats and voice/video calls are end to end encrypted. Whatsapp, however, does allow you to download all of your messages from your device using WhatsApp web, and they were recently shown to have an exploit/backdoor…

Whatsapp also doesn't encrypt backups to icloud, which it nags you to turn on.

Also google backups on android are not encrypted. that's so bad on so many levels... : (

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#222
post #73

We often hear the complaint here that nobody cares / cared about Snowden's revelations. But to me it seems he did provide a lot of the impetus for having HTTPS virtually everywhere and a lot of the instant messenging apps being end-to-end encrypted. Most of WhatsApp's users are as non-technical as it gets, and yet they use the kind of encryption that only computer enthusiasts were interested in just a couple years ag…

Ironically, Telegram markets itself as the most private and secure messenger, but in reality, it's much less private than WhatsApp or Viber: any regular (non-secret) Telegram chats are not end-to-end encrypted - if they were, you wouldn't be able to access them from a new device after authorization with a password.

I wouldn’t loop backups into that criteria. iMessage syncs your message history to all of your devices in an end to end encrypted way: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303

and WhatsApp allows user to backup/restore their messages with iCloud (unencrypted)

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#223
post #73

We often hear the complaint here that nobody cares / cared about Snowden's revelations. But to me it seems he did provide a lot of the impetus for having HTTPS virtually everywhere and a lot of the instant messenging apps being end-to-end encrypted. Most of WhatsApp's users are as non-technical as it gets, and yet they use the kind of encryption that only computer enthusiasts were interested in just a couple years ag…

I think this has a lot more to do with Google punishing web results without https than it does with Snowden, couple that with Cloudflare and Let's Encrypt and you have an easy path.

This is the more important factor at play here. Browsers (Google Chrome mainly) are forcing everyone to go SSL lest you end up with a 'insecure site' warning for all your visitors. Most websites don't care about NSA intercepting their data.

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#224
post #73

We often hear the complaint here that nobody cares / cared about Snowden's revelations. But to me it seems he did provide a lot of the impetus for having HTTPS virtually everywhere and a lot of the instant messenging apps being end-to-end encrypted. Most of WhatsApp's users are as non-technical as it gets, and yet they use the kind of encryption that only computer enthusiasts were interested in just a couple years ag…

BCP 188 "Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack" sets Best Common Practice for the IETF to say that mitigating pervasive monitoring is appropriate because it's an attack on the network. So that's a pretty long way from "nobody cares". It's very carefully written, it does not propose to make a moral judgement about whether the things Snowden revealed are evil only to show that in a technical sense they were an attack and s…

While a BCP is indication that “nobody cares” is false, it’s pretty far from even a majority of people caring. If BCPs mattered, IP spoofing wouldn’t be an issue on the Internet.

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#225
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was following you until Hangouts...

Google's security is still better than both Telegram's or Facebook's. It's not great , but that's why it's #4 on a list of 6. If you care significantly about privacy & security I would not use anything worse than iMessage, and even that's borderline. (Your opinion of whether Google or Telegram is better will likely also depend upon whether you think malice or incompetence is a bigger threat. Google's business model r…

How is iMessage worse versus Hangouts? Is Hangouts even end-to-end encrypted? IIRC it isn’t, neither is Google Chat (a product which is replacing Hangouts from what I can tell), just Allo and Duo.

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#227
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Compute Engine didn't even exist at the time that slide was made, or at least was not publicly available. That slide was about government intercepting Google's traffic, not cloud customer traffic.

It was certainly smaller, but GCE was first publicly available in April/May 2013, Snowden leaked things in June 2013. I'm not quite sure when this slide was released but sometime after that. Google moved to fix the problem after the start of the leaks. Pretty quickly (good for them), but after.

The slide was created long before Snowden leaked it, which is before GCE was publicly available. I said, "before the slide was made," not "before the slide was leaked."

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's security is still better than both Telegram's or Facebook's. It's not great , but that's why it's #4 on a list of 6. If you care significantly about privacy & security I would not use anything worse than iMessage, and even that's borderline. (Your opinion of whether Google or Telegram is better will likely also depend upon whether you think malice or incompetence is a bigger threat. Google's business model r…

How is iMessage worse versus Hangouts? Is Hangouts even end-to-end encrypted? IIRC it isn’t, neither is Google Chat (a product which is replacing Hangouts from what I can tell), just Allo and Duo.

That’s not what they said; they’ve said that iMessage has better security than Hangouts, and that this user wouldn’t use anything “worse” ie. further down on their list than iMessage

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#229
post #216
post #73

We often hear the complaint here that nobody cares / cared about Snowden's revelations. But to me it seems he did provide a lot of the impetus for having HTTPS virtually everywhere and a lot of the instant messenging apps being end-to-end encrypted. Most of WhatsApp's users are as non-technical as it gets, and yet they use the kind of encryption that only computer enthusiasts were interested in just a couple years ag…

I feel Firesheep deserves at least some of the credit too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep

Firesheep co-author here. Thanks and agreed :)

Re: Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%

#230
post #71

Awesome! Any idea how much of that is attributable to LetsEncrypt and HTTPSEverywhere?

I'd imagine that a lot of this is attributable to Firesheep calling attention to how anyone on a public Wi-Fi network could snoop on your Facebook traffic. Most of the major websites fast-tracked HTTPS shortly after that.

Thanks! That was the goal. For those who aren't familiar, the original slides and our response blog posts are still up: https://codebutler.com/projects/firesheep/
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