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Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

signal.org

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Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#81

Post by dbrgn »

pthatcherg wrote: post #78
dbrgn wrote: post #40

Does someone know more about the architecture of Signal's group calls? From looking at the ringrtc source, it seems that the calls are not fully meshed, but use some kind of group key and a SFU for server-side media distribution. Is that correct?

I work at Signal and wrote much of that code, so I'm familiar with it :). Yes, it uses a server for media distribution and uses encryption keys that the server does not know.

Thanks! Since I've also written a lot of audio/video call code, it's always interesting to learn about design choices of other applications.

Do you rotate the group key regularly and/or on group events (e.g. a person leaving the group call)?

What SFU do you use, and did it require custom modifications? Or is it even a fully custom server-side solution?

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#82

Post by secfirstmd »

harry8 wrote: post #33
axegon_ wrote: post #3

While Signal is pretty awful on desktop(not to mention this[1] thing), it is my goto messenger on my phone. Brilliant security and props for being one of the very few to extensively use Rust in production. I was really sad to see they hire in the US only. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1630

Disagree. Signal on desktop works very well for me and is very useful for quickly sending files from desktop to phone and back, especially when the phone isn't handy.

Lots of people don't know about that feature...If anyone is wondering. You can send a message (for example on your Desktop) to "Note to Self" on and it will be available for you on your other Signal versions (e.g. on your Phone). Very useful.

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#83

Post by anewguy9000 »

solstice wrote: post #51
anewguy9000 wrote: post #4

i want to like signal but the UX is wanting. i installed it today and it only imported some of my sms messages; found almost 1000 open issues on github. then i sent the "get signal" message to a friend who installed it but our messages still kept saying they were insecure sms. turns out we had to "refresh" our contact lists (there is no menu option to do this, you're just supposed to know to pull down on the contacts…

The UI could be improved but it is fine IMO. I'm happy that I have a messenger over which I can talk private stuff and be reasonably sure that no one else can listen in. Everything else is secondary for me. Contact discovery can have a slight time delay, but so far it has worked very well after a while. (I don't use SMS)

so i convinced my friend to get signal for a secure conversation. we both got it installed, and started talking. but it still said "unsecure sms" in faint grey letters in the input box. i almost didn't notice. she sent me screenshots she was messaging me from signal. we both verified our numbers. what was going on? after "refreshing" the contact list the unsecure message went away. were those initial message sent securely? i have no idea. that is the kind of poor ux that mars the experience -- without trust there is no point using it

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#84

Post by 3np »

cmg wrote: post #74
blub wrote: post #56

Calls are unusable in Signal: they drain a fully charged battery in about half an hour.

My biggest issue with calls on Signal is that if the app crashes, the call disconnects. This has happened to my on my up-to-date iPhone (10S) if I'm on a long call and get another Signal message, which means I need to unlock the app again. On the desktop, I really wish that you could resize the contacts sidebar to just show the sender's icon, as you can in iMessage, but the maintainers don't seem to be particularly i…

> My biggest issue with calls on Signal is that if the app crashes, the call disconnects.

Of course the app crashing during a call is an issue, but I don't see how the call could stay open with the app closed without security expectations breaking?

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#85

Post by Ar-Curunir »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #63
simias wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The desktop app is very useful but it's mainly because there's no alternative. It's bloated, slow, under-featured. Telegram also has an electron desktop app but at least it lets me do ultra-advanced things like changing the spellchecker's language on the fly. As somebody who's used to 100KB snappy and fully featured IRC clients I'm always baffled when I use these modern clients that use 3 orders of magnitude more res…

> Telegram also has an electron desktop app Telegram Desktop is a Qt app. Not that it offers E2E so not really comparable to Signal imo.

So that’s why Slack consumes tons of RAM but Telegram desktop doesn’t ...

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#86

Post by ffpip »

hiq wrote: post #49
ffpip wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not by default, and still hasn't rolled out here.

And I don't want to diminish the skills of Zoom engineers, but when Google and Facebook (WA) can't offer more than 32 / 8, which tradeoff is Zoom doing to be able to offer E2EE calls with 1000 people? I don't think my phone would be able to receive 1000 different video streams simultaneously for instance.

If Google offered more with Duo, people would use it for events. Then people wouldn't use Google meet when they go to work. Meet is part of Gsuite.

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#87

Post by hiq »

zorbash wrote: post #68
blub wrote: post #56

Calls are unusable in Signal: they drain a fully charged battery in about half an hour.

Second that. I hear back my own voice, it drains the battery and the connection is almost always choppy. I wanted to be able to use Signal to replace whatsapp, telegram and FB messenger. I've convinced some of my friends to install it, but none of them are happy with it. On both mobile and desktop sometimes messages take hours to appear and on mobile it reserves ~2GB of storage for no apparent reason. I trust that pe…

2 GB on a fresh install? That would be definitely a bug. Did you check the storage usage (settings, storage)? Is it there as well?

Your debug logs would also be welcome for messages taking hours to appear. For mobile it's usually something with battery savings or FCM. For desktop that's the first time I read about that, are you sure that the messages had actually been sent?

I feel that for mobile it is still not as reliable as WhatsApp, but for desktop it's nice to be able to get your messages without mobile connection.

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#88

Post by gopkarthik »

input_sh wrote: post #55
gopkarthik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Though Signal has more utility than WhatsApp thanks to its disappearing messages features. Technological solutions only go so far when offline restrictions can be imposed. It's entirely likely that once Signal figures out username based registration & sees some traction in, Governments will just ban it.

I mean, I guess it depends on which governments you're talking about, but I don't see that happening in the US or the EU. > In March 2017, Signal was approved by the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate for use by senators and their staff. https://www.zdnet.com/article/in-encryption-push-senate-appr... > The European Commission has told its staff to start using Signal, an end-to-end-encrypted messaging app, in a push…

Agreed, I doubt the EU is going to do that too. I replied assuming that the parent was from Kashmir/India.

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#89

Post by pthatcherg »

dbrgn wrote: post #81
pthatcherg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Signal and wrote much of that code, so I'm familiar with it :). Yes, it uses a server for media distribution and uses encryption keys that the server does not know.

Thanks! Since I've also written a lot of audio/video call code, it's always interesting to learn about design choices of other applications. Do you rotate the group key regularly and/or on group events (e.g. a person leaving the group call)? What SFU do you use, and did it require custom modifications? Or is it even a fully custom server-side solution?

We rotate the keys whenever someone joins or leaves, although the mechanism is more efficient when someone joins than one someone leaves.

I don't think we've made the SFU repository public yet, so I don't think I can comment on that yet. Likely I'll be able to in the future.

Re: Adding Encrypted Group Calls to Signal

#90

Post by vorticalbox »

thewojo wrote: post #76
axegon_ wrote: post #3

While Signal is pretty awful on desktop(not to mention this[1] thing), it is my goto messenger on my phone. Brilliant security and props for being one of the very few to extensively use Rust in production. I was really sad to see they hire in the US only. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/1630

Yeah it's so odd to me that Signal has such top tier engineers and they can't manage to get a presentable desktop app. It looks and feels like a boilerplate Electron chat app with no styling and subpar performance (oh but they have stickers :eyeroll:).

It also annoying when you set up a new client that is has to sync all your messages then for security reasons not show any of them.
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