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

EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 289 posts

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#201

Post by dependenttypes »

UncleMeat wrote: post #200
dependenttypes wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so you can go look for yourself I can look it out for myself but there won't be any point as they can simply run different code on their servers. > If you believe that despite precautions the source code won't match what actually runs on your phone On their servers Also what precautions? As far as I know their binaries are not reproducible. > this expires if you stop answering PIN questions correctly After a week i…

> I can look it out for myself but there won't be any point as they can simply run different code on their servers. OK. That's true for literally all services. Do you expect to be able to walk into the server rooms and dump the binaries to inspect them? > Also what precautions? As far as I know their binaries are not reproducible. The client builds are. Reproducible server builds don't tell you anything about what is…

> That's true for literally all services

The point is that your client should not send any information which you expect to keep private to their services. It is the exact reason that we use e2ee rather than just tls for chats.

> The client builds are

Not fully, see https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/

> Reproducible builds for Java are simple, but the Signal Android codebase includes some native shared libraries that we employ for voice calls (WebRTC, etc). At the time this native code was added, there was no Gradle NDK support yet, so the shared libraries aren’t compiled with the project build.

> Getting the Gradle NDK support set up and making its output reproducible will likely be more difficult.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#203

Post by snarf21 »

laktak wrote: post #202

One thing I found quite surprising about Signal is that you lose your messages if you move to a new phone - there is no backup on iOS. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

This is the tradeoff. Being backed up somewhere is more convenient but less secure. If it is only on that one device, it requires physical control of the hardware. If it is in iCloud or somewhere else, it is an attack vector and one that can be exploited remotely and at scale.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#204

Post by berkes »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #108
imtringued wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder how these projects can be so expensive. Heck, they are so expensive you could just order two companies to deliver a product and pit them against each other so that there is a strong incentive to deliver a working product.

Such projects are expensive since it's not only development but also rollout including training of users. The development is also more expensive than in other areas since there is need for documentation. And then there is a flaw in the process: Producing the software has to be done via some bidding process. For writing the requirements documents they already rely on companies, which can add clauses making it hard for…

That, and they are expensive, because people expect them to be expensive.

When, say, the national Police asks companies to come up with sofware to manage contact details for all employees, you could come up with "Install and Configure SomeOpenSourceCRM on a VPS" for €3000.

Whereas typically some Enterprise Consultancy quotes a factor hundred of that to "integrate" it in a crappy way.

I've worked in such projects, for governments. The overhead is ridiculous. the NIH-syndrome is rampant. The specs and "but this is how we do things"-requirements are cut in stone.

Very often a evening of tuning some Open Source tool could suffice; But either some rule disallowing the language/server/deploy-speed, or some manager disliking it because last year they decided that from now on everything must be Java+XML, or you need at least three weeks of meetings before you are allowed to even start.

This is not a joke. I've had a simple off-the-shelve Rails tool cut down, because "we don't allow dynamic languages". I've had projects delayed with 3+ weeks because "we require a deploy-window to be announced 21 days in advance" and I've worked as only developer on a project with four(!) managers managing me.

That is why government projects are expensive: a catch22: "Because they are".

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#205

Post by pletsch »

throwaway47748 wrote: post #198
blub wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of tools do you use for that? Would they catch BadUSB-like malware?

Lasers, electron microscopes and x-ray scanners used for testing and verification in the semiconductor manufacturing industry plus loads of custom and open source tools.

Can it really be economically viable to have these scanned rather than just toss them out? I would imagine that anyone high enough in the EU to be a target is only using drives provided to them

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#206

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

xmdx wrote: post #43
Zenst wrote: post #11

I'm supprised they have not developed their own or at least, bankrolled the development of one via grants. Though it would be good if there was an open source communications platform that would allow the public to engage with politicians in a formal and constructive way. Alas, so much disparity in solutions that it often irks me. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/projects Be great if the interface was bet…

Why reinvent the wheel? Signal does the job, doesn't store data, not even metadata, and can be used immediately.

Signal does store important metadata: the phone number itself. In many countries, you cannot purchase a SIM card now without showing ID, and the seller takes down your ID details and forwards them to the state. Then your phone number is inextricably linked to your identity. Yes, the contents of messages may be securely encrypted, but many states can easily determine which of their own citizens (and visitors to the country who bought a local SIM) are using Signal.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#207

Post by UncleMeat »

nottorp wrote: post #159
lorenzhs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security is not the same thing as anonymity. Maybe Signal's design goals just don't align with your requirements, and that's okay. But that doesn't mean that it can't be the right tool for people with a different set of requirements.

Well, besides anonymity, my requirements for a reliable communication method include not being tied to my phone.

Yes, and the huge majority of people don't have that requirement. Signal's devs have been very clear for years and years that the are optimizing for getting as many people as possible to use functioning e2e encrypted messaging rather than to focus on features that a subset of techies in the west care about.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#208

Post by thu2111 »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #166
thu2111 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMS and phone calls. The infrastructure is all there already. Interestingly, the EU's position on this looks really confused. SMS messages should (in theory) only transit their own local telcos. The USA doesn't get a look-in unless it hacks the telcos themselves. What the EU is doing here is routing all Commission traffic through US based server farms and roots of trust. The phones are controlled from the USA, the co…

> What actual threat are they trying to block here? A large powerful country ruled by a megalomaniac who has proved he isn't afraid to ruin his country's reputation by abusing his power.

Assuming you mean the USA, best way to solve that is for the data to never cross into US controlled facilities or equipment at all. Using apps made in California on operating systems also made in California to send messages to servers controlled from California and then trusting that the encryption works the way they say it works makes much less sense than just sending messages through EU carriers.

Consider, the Signal threat model assumes that you can't trust telcos. That's usually based on the assumption that you're some ordinary grassroots citizen who might be spied on by the government. But the EU Commission is the government. It seems a bit odd for them to implicitly assert the national European telecoms companies are untrustworthy.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#209

Post by saber6 »

pletsch wrote: post #205
throwaway47748 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lasers, electron microscopes and x-ray scanners used for testing and verification in the semiconductor manufacturing industry plus loads of custom and open source tools.

Can it really be economically viable to have these scanned rather than just toss them out? I would imagine that anyone high enough in the EU to be a target is only using drives provided to them

I think it’s a given they don’t plug them in. I assume forensics is to determine who is trying to get at you, via what methods.

Re: EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

#210

Post by UncleMeat »

dependenttypes wrote: post #201
UncleMeat wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can look it out for myself but there won't be any point as they can simply run different code on their servers. OK. That's true for literally all services. Do you expect to be able to walk into the server rooms and dump the binaries to inspect them? > Also what precautions? As far as I know their binaries are not reproducible. The client builds are. Reproducible server builds don't tell you anything about what is…

> That's true for literally all services The point is that your client should not send any information which you expect to keep private to their services. It is the exact reason that we use e2ee rather than just tls for chats. > The client builds are Not fully, see https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ > Reproducible builds for Java are simple, but the Signal Android codebase includes some native shared libra…

> The point is that your client should not send any information which you expect to keep private to their services. It is the exact reason that we use e2ee rather than just tls for chats.

Yes. And Signal achieves this better than all the other major options, given the number of footguns in the other tools.

If you are concerned about the client builds then run a decompiler. It's not hard. People have been auditing binaries for ages.

Post reply on HN