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Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

citizenlab.ca

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Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#301

Post by Judgmentality »

dang wrote: post #295
Judgmentality wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi dang, Thanks in advance for all your moderation efforts that make HN the site we all love to use on a regular basis. I'm curious if you've ever considered writing a blog post about some of the things you've learned from your years of moderation? You spend so much time on HN, you must have seen lots of patterns and have lots of insights on...well, everything that gets posted on HN to everybody that posts on HN. I'd…

I'm late to this thread because for some reason I only just noticed it. Thanks for the nice comment! It's fun to hear from someone who is just curious. I do think of writing about HN, but not a blog post, because I can't think of a good reason. I don't enjoy writing ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431262 ), at least not that kind of thing. Somehow I maneuvered myself into a job that is basically being a writ…

> Other than that, for learnings and patterns about moderating HN, your best bet is to lure me with the right kind of beer. Or just ask a question here.

If that's an actual offer, I'd be happy to buy you a drink when the quarantine is over.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#302

Post by deltron3030 »

akimball wrote: post #272
deltron3030 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First we'd need to establish a general frame of reference, a perspective, which could be a human one. From that perspective, the lowest common denominator is that bad is what harms humanity, e.g. by disregarding human rights. Human rights then becomes the new frame of reference, meaning that something can't be good if it's not within that frame.

Power struggle then becomes what are rights, and who owes them to whom? Who gets what rights and how are they enforced is pretty much the core of political struggle.

Power struggle based on immediate and future system relevancy takes place within that frame (innovation), in a democracy that frame (human rights) shouldn't be broken because it damages the belief in the system itself. An informed society acts in its best interest, if it doesn't the education system or entire system is corrupted and broken.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#303

Post by threatofrain »

dang wrote: post #294
threatofrain wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how that approach can continue to make sense unless they hire more Lisp moderators.

I don't understand your point but I relate to the idea of hiring more Lisp moderators.

It sounds like you guys were hired to be both Lisp programmers for the site infrastructure and moderators. Presumably as the site grows, you will need to scale more of you.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#304

Post by amachefe »

jasonv wrote: post #157
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The warning being that it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect their share price right? So far I haven't seen any tangible damage to them when it comes to $$.

Let's see where they are in 6 or 12 month's time and what they go through to get there. Other nascent companies will tip their "We want to grow like Zoom" hat and it'll serve as a warning sign as to what the growth mentality is. Anyway, my point was... I don't think they've taken too much grief yet, for what they've done. They deserve all the lumps they're getting, and that may (hopefully) be instructive. [And yeah,…

This sounds like Zoom hate, which I am seeing a lot nowadays. The irony is that it is coming from tech while the av Joe's doesn't really care.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#305

Post by pvg »

tptacek wrote: post #284
tialaramex wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see the phenomenon I described for yourself in: http://demo.nimius.net/video_test/videos/test.mp4 This file contains audio, which in the Zoom pseudo-RTP is separate so you should strip that out with your preferred tool without changing the H.264 video though it won't change the results very much (it only re-assures us that the recurring data is in the video stream as I assumed) so if you don't have such tools…

This is useful. Thanks! Out of ~22,000 AES blocks, this has ~1000 colliding blocks: 04608c1c211004608c1c00000007419b: 4 samples 1004608c1c211004608c1c0000000741: 4 samples 0963211004608c1c211004608c1c0000: 5 samples 33c00963211004608c1c211004608c1c: 5 samples 63211004608c1c211004608c1c000000: 5 samples f7df7df7df7df7df7df7df7df7df7df7: 5 samples 0001000003ff0000000e000004000000: 6 samples 211004608c1c211004608c1c0000…

Did you ever find some sort of reasonable 'live streaming' type profile for encoding? I noticed ffmpeg's default seems to be putting more work into this than you'd expect from a realtime encoder which, in theory at least, might lead to fewer collisions than in a 'realistic' situation. I think tialaramex made a similar point somewhere upthread.

I don't think it would make a huge difference but the numbers might be higher/more representative. Another way might be to just capture zoom traffic of someone's Quarterly Synergies presentation or whatnot.

Edit: also thought of a silly upper-bound test for Team Penguin - you get plaintext of every colliding block in the stream. How much penguin can you get out of that?

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#306

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

philwelch wrote: post #288
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does lead to a general sense of degrading lawlessness throughout society. When powerful people start to have contempt for laws it can get really abusive.

Sure. But at this point everyone picks and chooses which laws they care about. I've observed a pretty heavy overlap between people who care a great deal about taxi regulations (most of which exist merely to artificially prop up rent-seeking owners of taxi medallions) and people who consider American immigration law so fundamentally unjust that it should simply not be enforced anymore. Faithfully Obeying All The Rules…

Immigration is a tough issue. The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death.

But there are also perhaps hundreds of millions of potential immigrants worldwide who would love to come to the US permanently and have the means to do so, if it were legal. But they cannot get a green card or h1b because those are nearly impossible to get from people in some counties. So they never come.

It does seem hard to decide a fair system here but any decision is just that... A system of laws... They have no meaning unless followed. What's the point of rule of law anyways? It's the answer to arbitrary rule: by monarchs and dictators.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#307

Post by philwelch »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #306
philwelch wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But at this point everyone picks and chooses which laws they care about. I've observed a pretty heavy overlap between people who care a great deal about taxi regulations (most of which exist merely to artificially prop up rent-seeking owners of taxi medallions) and people who consider American immigration law so fundamentally unjust that it should simply not be enforced anymore. Faithfully Obeying All The Rules…

Immigration is a tough issue. The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death. But there are also perhaps hundreds of millions of potential immigrants worldwide who would love to come to the US permanently and have the means to do so, if it were legal. But they cannot get a green card or h1b…

> The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death.

Which is exactly my point. According to the law, these people are illegal aliens and the government has every power to stop them from crossing the border, detain them if they're already here, and deport them to their countries of origin no matter how long they've been here. And they have no legal right to reside in the country. And a lot of conservatives argue that "sanctuary city" proclamations represent a fundamental disrespect for the rule of law.

A lot of people balk at this notion and start arguing that US immigration law is fundamentally unjust and that it's reasonable to make exceptions. And that's a perfectly reasonable perspective, but it's hard to keep that consistent with the idea that taxicab medallions, for example, are some unquestionable pillar of society.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#308

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

philwelch wrote: post #307
etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is a tough issue. The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death. But there are also perhaps hundreds of millions of potential immigrants worldwide who would love to come to the US permanently and have the means to do so, if it were legal. But they cannot get a green card or h1b…

> The debate is now mostly focused on what to do with undocumented immigrants who are already here, perhaps with families, etc. That's one issue which has been debated to death. Which is exactly my point. According to the law, these people are illegal aliens and the government has every power to stop them from crossing the border, detain them if they're already here, and deport them to their countries of origin no ma…

Forming a mass consensus on what reasonable exemptions to the laws should be is exactly how the lawmaking process in a democracy should work... What I hear you saying is that we don't live in a functional democracy. I don't think, however, that individuals or cities selectively following laws is going to get us any closer to a functioning democracy.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#309

Post by flafla2 »

dang wrote: post #293
flafla2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating, thanks for sharing. Makes me reflect on the (relatively few) comments I've made here, and if I'm making a positive impact on the community.

Oh come on. It's always the good users who worry about this. (I looked at your comments and the ones I saw are not only fine, they're exactly what HN is for.)

Hey, thanks! And kudos for helping to cultivate such a great community despite its massive growth.

Re: Zoom rolled their own encryption scheme, transmit keys through servers in China

#310

Post by yellowapple »

ivancho wrote: post #297
yellowapple wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Zoom claims to be GDPR compliant. That's the thing, though. Zoom also claimed to be end-to-end encrypting with AES-256. If they were willing to lie about that, what's not to say they're willing to lie about GDPR compliance?

Because one of those lies carries massive legal and financial penalties, and the other one doesn't?

> one of those lies carries massive legal and financial penalties

"It's only illegal if you get caught."

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