Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#211

Post by zepto » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #208

zepto wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the parent is making is that ‘not a single researcher has found fault’ is not actually a valid baseline for considering cryptographic protocol to be secure. We have to assume that all protocols are insecure by default. That is standard practice. Only protocols which have withstood serious scrutiny and incentivized adversaries can be considered to have a level of security. So if you want to claim MTProto 2 t…

Great. Go ahead and demonstrate that Signal Protocol has received sufficient attention from motivated hackers to your satisfaction. Telegram has an open invitation to crack their protocol for 100k USD. Nobody's collecting. I guess those high-value targets using Telegram must be worth more than 100k. I don't need to demonstrate anything other than what I have already: when would we know a protocol has received signifi…

You claimed that the reason to trust MTProto 2 because it is based on standard primitives and because no security research had yet found a bug.

I was responding to that, and only that, because it an invalid security argument, and irrelevant to the ‘admonishment’ of the other commenter.

The 100k bounty is a somewhat better argument. It would have been far more helpful to lead with that.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#212

Post by sdenton4 » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #208

zepto wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the parent is making is that ‘not a single researcher has found fault’ is not actually a valid baseline for considering cryptographic protocol to be secure. We have to assume that all protocols are insecure by default. That is standard practice. Only protocols which have withstood serious scrutiny and incentivized adversaries can be considered to have a level of security. So if you want to claim MTProto 2 t…

Great. Go ahead and demonstrate that Signal Protocol has received sufficient attention from motivated hackers to your satisfaction. Telegram has an open invitation to crack their protocol for 100k USD. Nobody's collecting. I guess those high-value targets using Telegram must be worth more than 100k. I don't need to demonstrate anything other than what I have already: when would we know a protocol has received signifi…

Eh, thanks for the info on MTProto2. They made poor decisions initially, and doubled down on them, and thus I didn't (and still don't) think it worth my time to follow their changelog.

The contests are not remotely sufficient. Here's a good article:

https://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypt...

"I’ll repeat it again: If you want to show that a system is secure, give the adversary as much power as possible, and if they still can’t break it, the security is good."

Secure protocols take a lot of expert analysis to build consensus that they're worthwhile. That requires engaging with the community of researchers on their own terms and using established best practices.

Finally, Telegram's server code is still closed source and thus can't be reasonably audited. Could an attacker (or state actor) with server access decrypt stored messages? Maybe! That's why default e2e encryption with well-audited, open-source code is the gold standard...

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#213

Post by literallycancer » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

ancientworldnow wrote: post #133

darcys22 wrote: post #102

Another project that is doing interesting stuff in this space is Loki. https://loki.network/ They have built a tor/onion network and use it as the backend for their messenger (forked from signal). Its end to end encrypted and doesnt have centralised servers. https://getsession.org/

Session is exciting but it's currently broken. Group chats don't work properly with messages frequently getting lost and not delivered to all users. We've tried to switch several times for groups that need encrypted group chat with disappearing messages, group admin, and usernames instead of phone numbers (basically making them the only game in town) but it just doesn't work right 100% of the time which is a deal bre…

Keybase doesn't work for that?

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#214

Post by literallycancer » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #208

zepto wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the parent is making is that ‘not a single researcher has found fault’ is not actually a valid baseline for considering cryptographic protocol to be secure. We have to assume that all protocols are insecure by default. That is standard practice. Only protocols which have withstood serious scrutiny and incentivized adversaries can be considered to have a level of security. So if you want to claim MTProto 2 t…

Great. Go ahead and demonstrate that Signal Protocol has received sufficient attention from motivated hackers to your satisfaction. Telegram has an open invitation to crack their protocol for 100k USD. Nobody's collecting. I guess those high-value targets using Telegram must be worth more than 100k. I don't need to demonstrate anything other than what I have already: when would we know a protocol has received signifi…

Bug bounties alone don't prove anything. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/bug_bounties_...

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#215

Post by cwkoss » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

jfim wrote: post #69

cwkoss wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also heard that Signal on android leaks message text because of google's keyboard auto-prediction feature. They should implement their own keyboard or find a way to disable text prediction - and educate their users.

On Android, Signal sets the flag on the text entry box that disables IME personalization, the same way that the text entry box works in Chrome's incognito mode. Whether or not Google respects it is not clear, but it does show a little incognito mode icon on the keyboard.

Where do you see this icon? I don't think I have an incognito icon on my signal keyboard

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#216

Post by cwkoss » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #71

cwkoss wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also heard that Signal on android leaks message text because of google's keyboard auto-prediction feature. They should implement their own keyboard or find a way to disable text prediction - and educate their users.

> They should implement their own keyboard or find a way to disable text prediction - and educate their users. They do disable personalized text prediction. You are just misleading readers.

I don't think that is accurate. On my Pixel 3, when I type "fact" it suggests "factorio" which seems quite personalized.

Is there a setting somewhere that needs to be flipped to opt into this behavior?

EDIT: Yep, there is a setting in Signal for "Incognito Keyboard", I've never toggled it, and it was off when I went to settings.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#217

Post by spurgu » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #108

crossroadsguy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d also contest the idea that Matrix can never have a client as usable as Signal, but I’ll agree that there isn’t one yet. After being around for multiple years and having not managed to do it even once (or come close) I think I am inclined to bet they won't. Or they'd just focus on being enterprise software (which I think they are doing and they must if they want to earn money). Of all the IM apps Matrix is my mo…

I mean, keep in mind that while Element is effectively the reference client, it's also still just one client. It's not trying to be a Signal-style messenger, it's trying to be something like Slack - and at that I'd say it succeeds. There are other clients in development that are closer UI-wise to your typical mobile messenger, e.g. https://dittochat.org/

> It's not trying to be a Signal-style messenger, it's trying to be something like Slack - and at that I'd say it succeeds.

I'm of the completely opposite opinion I find Element absolutely atrocious compared to Slack in terms of usability The mobile app is decent though. And I don't know at what pace Element is being improved, only been using it for a couple of weeks.

That said Slack has been going downhill UI/UX-wise for years now.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#218

Post by spurgu » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

thdrdt wrote: post #165

cwyers wrote: post #9

Why is it, whenever Signal is brought up on Hacker News, we get inundated with the people who object to the core decisions of the Signal Project? Would Signal really be better if, instead of having a secure messenger available to the masses, it spent massive amounts of time implementing the things these people want? No. I would be comfortable recommending Signal (or WhatsApp) to a nontechnical friend and communicatin…

In Dutch we have a saying: The best helmsmen stand on the shore. (Those who watch always know better than those who do.) I also think there is some envy in it. Some people wish they had the same success and only can criticize in envy. Fact is right now Signal is the only safe option for a messenger that hides your messages and other meta data.

> The best helmsmen stand on the shore.

The version I've heard is that taxi drivers are the ones who best know how to run a country. :)

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#219

Post by Cpoll » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

amoorthy wrote: post #154

This old post from Moxie Marlinspike in 2012 about having the worst material possessions made a huge impact on me for some unclear reason. Fun read. https://moxie.org/2012/11/27/the-worst.html

I do like the sentiment, and there's a lot to agree with in the post, but I think he strawmanned Dustin a bit: I don't think Curtis was saying that possessions should be "things we live in service to." I think most people can appreciate what Dustin is saying about owning a high-quality object that won't break on you when you need it (even if the cutlery might be a bit extreme).

It's great that you're learning a bunch by buying the worst motorcycle or boat, but you probably don't want to buy the worst lifejacket or helmet.

> The best means waiting, planning, researching, and saving until one can acquire the perfect equipment for a given task. Partisans of the best will probably never end up accidentally riding a freight train 1000 miles in the wrong direction...

Also, and I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here: with people trusting Moxie with their privacy, I hope he's past his phase of (metaphorically) riding freight trains without checking maps, and is spending some time waiting, planning, researching and saving.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#220

Post by Reelin » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #177

Reelin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... the very fact that people can move from one host to another ... I think it's worth explicitly spelling out that federation reduces the cost to switch hosts to near zero in many cases. There's no technical reason you can't use a different host on your end per contact in Matrix (for one to one messaging at least). It would be absurd, but you could do it provided that your client supported it. If it's really neede…

> federation combined with open source software means that tooling can be adapted to facilitate your particular security and workflow requirements In theory, yes. In practice, however, it gets very complicated. (See e.g. Jabber.) You end up with a situation where only experts are able to set up a secure system for themselves, whereas the average user can't even accurately assess how well her/his privacy is currently…

I agree, I never meant to imply that maintaining your own fork is simple. I was merely highlighting that the freedom to do so while still interoperating with everyone else is there. Centralization generally deprives you of that ability.

It's analogous to open source vs proprietary software. End users shouldn't generally need to modify the software they use. Doing so isn't typically easy or straightforward for the vast majority of people. But if you ever need to do so, the option is there.