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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

221–230 of 751 posts

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#221
post #40

Given the security concerns around Zoom, and the apparent lack of QC that might have prevented those concerns, this news is appalling. I love Keybase, it's used by many people, but I suspect it will now die a quick death. More accurately I suspect it will slide into a coma - not quite dead, but not in wide use anymore either.

why not look at the problem the other way around? I don't have much respect for zoom's security practices, while I do have much respect for the keybase team. Perhaps this is Zoom's way of admitting that there is no way they can just solve the problem internally by keeping doing what they're doing and they need to get some fresh blood and build upon good practices designed outside their current culture.

In general, when it's between fresh blood and old management, old management will win every time.

If Zoom is acquiring Keybase because the C-suite is pivoting culture around security, then it'll probably work. Otherwise, not much will change. So until I see more evidence that Zoom's upper management had a change of heart (creating a CISO council is a good start), I'm going to be skeptical that this will actually move the needle.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#222

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…

> So, yup, keybase is dead.

Well, shit.

Keybase had an amazing potential. I use it every day to ad-hoc securely share/store stuff. It will be sad to see it wither even more than it has. :(

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#224
post #80
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t necessarily read it that way. Keybase is 100% functional and has worked well for a long time. Zoom needs people who know how to make modern client software and chat if they want to compete with the Slacks and Teams, etc. You can’t even screen share on wayland... it’s that bad. If keybase ultimately gets secure video, and zoom a security architecture overhaul, how is that a bad thing?

Zoom is actually one of the view applications that can screen share on Wayland I believe it's only enabled for a few distros though

What does "enabled for a few distros" mean?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#226

It's kinda ironic that Keybase disappears into Zoom the day after Matrix/Riot enabled end-to-end encryption by default, with cross-signed device verification similar to Keybase's concept of connected keys - see https://blog.riot.im/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-signing... . In other words, a fully open source (and open standardised) alternative continues to exist in the form of Matrix. [disclaimer: project lead for…

Holy crap, the Matrix/Riot teams have been busy! Congrats on the progress, it's very exciting to watch. Although I have a Matrix account I have had trouble getting friends/family to switch with me (mostly non-technical folks, and Signal was much stickier for them), it might be time to convince them to try again.

Thanks to you and the team for all the hard work!

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#227
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not look at the problem the other way around? I don't have much respect for zoom's security practices, while I do have much respect for the keybase team. Perhaps this is Zoom's way of admitting that there is no way they can just solve the problem internally by keeping doing what they're doing and they need to get some fresh blood and build upon good practices designed outside their current culture.

It seems that we live in an era where if you made bad decisions in the past, you can never be trusted to make good decisions ever again. Even if you own your bad decisions and show lots of improvement. Nope. Once a pariah, always a pariah.

I agree that there should be opportunity for individuals to learn from mistakes and improve. People can be stubborn and slow to change, but they should be given a chance. It seems reasonable that the same courtesy should be extended to organizations. However, organizations are an order of magnitude slower to change than individuals.

Ultimately, an organization's policies are a reflection of the policies of its leaders. The bigger the organization, the more leaders have to change before the organization itself can truly change. It's much more likely that those who change just move on to another organization instead.

Besides, the end-to-end encryption incident wasn't a "mistake". Zoom's response was to say that their definition of end-to-end was just different from everyone else's. They clearly knew exactly what they were doing.

Zoom can change, but given their size and past I want more than a corporate apology and pinky swear before I trust them. They are making plenty of money and aren't going anywhere. There's plenty of time for them to earn my trust. However, they haven't yet earned enough of my trust to make me comfortable with this acquisition.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#229
post #80
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t necessarily read it that way. Keybase is 100% functional and has worked well for a long time. Zoom needs people who know how to make modern client software and chat if they want to compete with the Slacks and Teams, etc. You can’t even screen share on wayland... it’s that bad. If keybase ultimately gets secure video, and zoom a security architecture overhaul, how is that a bad thing?

Zoom is actually one of the view applications that can screen share on Wayland I believe it's only enabled for a few distros though

Zoom uses a proprietary gnome API / hack to do it I believe. It works on Gnome only. Note that with pipewire, wayland screensharing already works on Chrome/Firefox (for all of the video chat apps), and it will come to electron eventually. I imagine in a year or two screensharing on wayland will become seamless for most things.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#230
Many are bemoaning what zoom will do with Keybase, but the code is bad licensed so nothing’s stopping anyone from forking the repos now and building a parallel distro.

Realistically this is probably the best outcome for the Keybase team as they presumably have jobs for the foreseeable future.

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