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

Signal PINs

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 199 posts

Re: Signal PINs

#41

Post by RL_Quine »

saurik wrote: post #35
ludocode wrote: post #15

I'm extremely disappointed about how this Signal PIN rollout has been handled. Signal refused to let me view my received messages until I created a PIN. I filed a bug report about it [1]. I don't know if I was just caught in an A/B test or what because it hasn't happened to all of my Signal-using friends but it happened to me. I don't understand why it isn't just optional. They claim they want to protect my Signal da…

> I don't care about their Intel SGX whatever because I don't want to have to trust their servers in the first place. Yeah: particularly given how Intel SGX gets broken every year :/... prime+probe, foreshadow, load value injection, plundervolt... Moxie's fetish for Intel SGX is extremely concerning.

SGX has simply just been shown to be incompatible with secure software and is impossible to justify. Signal can happily operate without the need for this sort of thing to begin with, but they keep insisting on weak solutions for no reason.

Re: Signal PINs

#42

Post by sneak »

themihai wrote: post #26
sneak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 90% want their message history synced across devices.

yeah, across devices not across the world. What stops your devices being synchronised over lan/wifi network?

The cryptographic problem of device authentication is the same whether across the room or the planet.

Re: Signal PINs

#43

Post by novok »

atestu wrote: post #9
s0ss wrote: post #6

This is all well and good. But the forced/unsilenceable pin reminders seems a bit obtuse to me. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059792-Si... "Can I turn off these reminders? It is important to memorize your PIN, and the reminders cannot be disabled. We cannot recover your PIN if you forget it. You will see the reminders less frequently if you consistently enter your PIN correctly. The reminders wil…

I agree. Shouldn't you put your PIN in a password manager anyway? Why call it a PIN and not a password to begin with? Is there a difference I'm missing?

You can use a long alphanumeric string as your 'PIN', and on iOS at least, you can insert that PIN via a password manager.

Re: Signal PINs

#44

Post by saurik »

novok wrote: post #40
ludocode wrote: post #15

I'm extremely disappointed about how this Signal PIN rollout has been handled. Signal refused to let me view my received messages until I created a PIN. I filed a bug report about it [1]. I don't know if I was just caught in an A/B test or what because it hasn't happened to all of my Signal-using friends but it happened to me. I don't understand why it isn't just optional. They claim they want to protect my Signal da…

Isn't the point of something like this PIN that the only thing stored on the cloud is an encrypted blob that they don't have the keys to? That way it doesn't matter if SGX or similar breaks or not, since the encryption is only happening on your devices. The PIN is the key.

The PIN is a very short key, so the only real protection is that Intel SGX (which notably gets broken every year, and so this doesn't actually work) is preventing people from getting access to the encrypted data to brute force the key; the enclave then enforces some limit on the number of attempts (and maybe some rate limit on the speed of attempts).

Re: Signal PINs

#45

Post by hiq »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

I'm looking forward to hearing how they plan to prevent brute-forcing of these. A physical hardware device can wipe keys after a certain number of failures. I definitely look forward to the ability to move Signal forward to a new device without losing all logs, and the ability to use Signal without tying it to a phone number.

AFAIK the encryption is done on the servers, not offline, so you can't just brute-force it: https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/

Re: Signal PINs

#47

Post by RL_Quine »

saurik wrote: post #44
novok wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the point of something like this PIN that the only thing stored on the cloud is an encrypted blob that they don't have the keys to? That way it doesn't matter if SGX or similar breaks or not, since the encryption is only happening on your devices. The PIN is the key.

The PIN is a very short key, so the only real protection is that Intel SGX (which notably gets broken every year, and so this doesn't actually work) is preventing people from getting access to the encrypted data to brute force the key; the enclave then enforces some limit on the number of attempts (and maybe some rate limit on the speed of attempts).

The client allows them to be alphanumeric, but the default is 4 numbers. The irritating behaviour of repeatedly asking for it to be entered at awkward times means people will just set it to 1337 and call it a day.

Re: Signal PINs

#48

Post by enitihas »

tguedes wrote: post #24
agentdrtran wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a feature critical for wide adoption. Most users will swear off any app that makes it easy for them to lose all their chats.

There are a million apps which store messages on a server, those users are already on those apps. The thing that differentiated signal is the data-less functionality.

No, the thing that Signal always aimed for was "Making mass surveillance impossible", and "privacy for the masses". If you remove the mass part, you remove the main goal of Signal.

The experts can maybe fork Signal, or use Matrix. Then there is always PGP/GPG.

Re: Signal PINs

#49

Post by [deleted] »

tguedes wrote: post #24
agentdrtran wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a feature critical for wide adoption. Most users will swear off any app that makes it easy for them to lose all their chats.

There are a million apps which store messages on a server, those users are already on those apps. The thing that differentiated signal is the data-less functionality.

[deleted]

Re: Signal PINs

#50

Post by ludocode »

themihai wrote: post #39
ludocode wrote: post #15

I'm extremely disappointed about how this Signal PIN rollout has been handled. Signal refused to let me view my received messages until I created a PIN. I filed a bug report about it [1]. I don't know if I was just caught in an A/B test or what because it hasn't happened to all of my Signal-using friends but it happened to me. I don't understand why it isn't just optional. They claim they want to protect my Signal da…

Does homefort sync over the lan or it requires a 3rd party/ proxy broker? It says "The mobile app connects to your home computer" which concerns me a bit as it sounds like a VNC headline.

The idea is to use try to use NAT traversal (i.e. STUN or UPnP) to get a direct connection, and otherwise relay (i.e. TURN) with end-to-end encryption. I'm hoping IPv6 will eventually allow direct connections everywhere so nothing needs to be relayed.

I haven't built that stuff yet though so the current version requires that your home computer has a public IP address and that you open a port in your router. Obviously it's only usable by technical people right now, but I do eventually want this to be something my mom can install and use on her own.

Post reply on HN