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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#111

Post by thecureforzits »

dcow wrote: post #78

Honest question, why does Zoom’s security reputation matter more than Keybase’s? There’s so much pessimism in here but I really don't get it. I disliked zoom long before any of the security issues because frankly it’s rough, unpolished, software that’s never really worked well for me. I, for one, would be excited to get a functional Zoom with better security integrated into Keybase as an option for UI so that you hav…

Rough and unpolished, perhaps... but zoom is super popular because it's dead simple and gets the job done, and all the big players could learn a lot from them about putting end users first and not trying to leverage them just to push other products. To me the only question is whether Zoom will screw it up by emulating the mistakes that the big players have made.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#112

Post by StavrosK »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #75
coldpie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's pretty clearly an aquihire. Zoom gets a team of highly skilled cryptographers and Internet protocol experts. Good for them. But that means the team that created Keybase as an innovate PKI store won't be working on that anymore. That's not Zoom's business, and probably won't be, as Keybase themselves never figured out how to turn it into a business.

It bothers me that they even tried, honestly. Keybase seems like something that should be small, isolated, FOSS, supported by a foundation, etc. They could have built a business _around_ Keybase I'd imagine, but all they managed to do with this is invalidate Keybase and make people like myself, who feared their business motivations, feel vindicated for being paranoid. I'll never blame anyone for wanting to make money…

keys.pub doesn't have the single most useful feature Keybase has: The ability to verifiably establish a secure channel with anyone given their Twitter/Github/whatever username.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#113

Post by sdlkfgj »

degenerate wrote: post #84
cbg0 wrote: post #25

> Zoom does not and will not proactively monitor meeting contents, but our trust and safety team will continue to use automated tools to look for evidence of abusive users based upon other available data. > Zoom has not and will not build a mechanism to decrypt live meetings for lawful intercept purposes. > We also do not have a means to insert our employees or others into meetings without being reflected in the part…

Consider these promises a warrant canary. They will be removed at some point.

only that it is not.

warrant canaries must be written in the past tense. This is future tense. So they can monitor millions of calls, and give your information away at every second. This text only tells you about the next second (a promise they will break too, but then the text will be about the next second)

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#115

Post by durkie »

davedx wrote: post #85
TomGullen wrote: post #38

Zoom trading at ~1,700 P/E which to me seems absurd. Wonder if the acquisition involved much stock! Seems like a good time for Zoom to make transactions like this.

Can you explain this in a little more detail please? Would love to understand more.

I think the thought GP was expressing was that it would be a good time for Zoom to make an acquisition of Keybase paid for in Zoom stock since Zoom stock is trading at a very high multiple of Zoom's earnings.

Some people would regard this stock price as unsustainable compared to historic/similar earnings multiples, and that the stock will likely decrease in value in the "near" future. So from Zoom's perspective they may as well buy as much as they can while their Zoombucks are worth a lot since they'd be parting with fewer shares now than if they made the transaction later on.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#116

Post by coldtea »

INTPenis wrote: post #52
roblabla wrote: post #34

Keybase' post about the acquisition: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty…

How can they be so obvlivious though? Their own blog post doesn't even mention the tarnished reputation Zoom has acquired lately. A lot of people will stop developing integrations for Keybase because of this. It's sad.

>How can they be so obvlivious though? Their own blog post doesn't even mention the tarnished reputation Zoom has acquired lately

I'd say, don't overestimate the tarnished reputation (= some news stories for a while, most didn't read or care about -- including corporate users).

And of course they wouldn't get into it in a press release/blog post for an unrelated to the issue acquisition! Doesn't make sense to sabotage themselves this way...

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#118

Post by gruez »

oever wrote: post #89
ddevault wrote: post #53

Keybase helped me to identify a trend in the software industry: using a pretty UI to cover up the disruption of an open ecosystem with a closed, centralized replacement. Keybase seemed cool on the face of it - making encryption easier is a laudible goal, and PGP certainly could use the improvement. But, thanks to Keybase, now I ask different questions upfront. Beware the Keybase formula: 1. Integrates with an existin…

Sounds like protonmail.

They’re vc funded?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#119

Post by floatboth »

bamboozled wrote: post #74
coldpie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was well-intentioned. For a time, Keybase provided users the option to upload their private keys so they didn't have to maintain them themselves. You could just log into Keybase and send signed messages, decrypt messages, etc without the hassle of managing your keys locally. It was definitely a bad idea and I think they dropped it a few months/years later, but it at least wasn't totally out of left field.

They don't have access to your unencrypted private key, it's just a backup of your private key which is encrypted by (hopefully) a very strong password. This feature saved my skin on one occasion.

Well, you still have to trust them not to ship a website update where the client side scripts would leak your decrypted private key :)

To be fair, you also have to trust native apps and browser extensions the same way. But with websites, the risk of a sudden and targeted (not noticed by the general public) update is much greater!

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#120

Post by swyx »

underyx wrote: post #44

Keybase's side of the announcement: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty o…

is this an acquihire then?
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