Signal is having technical difficulties • Hacker News Board

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#611

Post by eins1234 » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 3:52 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #534

UFOFlyer wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Signal doesn't have a web app for security reasons. With a iOS/Android/Desktop app, you can verify the checksum of the binary against what signal provides. But with a web app you redownload the application everytime which means you'd have to recheck that checksum every time you use the app. I guess that WhatsApp, Discord, et al have decided that this is a reasonable risk. But the privacy oriented Signal team dis…

No, you can't verify the checksum; it downloads and runs new code without asking. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/4578

Wow... I was totally convinced by the security argument until I read through this thread, which completely obsoletes that premise. It's no different from a PWA (like WhatsApp) in its update behavior then.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#612

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

aaron_m04 wrote: post #606

colechristensen wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like an unusual sort of ownership. If signal was sold, the buyer would be on the hook for all of the debt. Startup funding that looks more like debt than stockholding isn’t all that weird, and has various implications for exit scenarios. If you wanted to create something similar to a nonprofit, this is a way you could do it while protecting it from vultures.

Interesting! Where can I read more about this technique?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#613

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #564

I fully expect to be downvoted to oblivion for this opinion but it needs to be said. Signal has been down for nine hours. the vast majority of people who turned to this platform today as an alternative to Whatsapp or Facebook probably quit looking into it after the first two minutes of that outage. for a platform that bills itself after installation as a suitable drop in replacement for your SMS service (and encourag…

[deleted]

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#614

Post by TheOperator » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #596

TheOperator wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup they're already under 99.9% reliability for the year. Never mind WhatsApp this makes them a questionable replacement for SMS. Not only "was" it a disaster for signal the disaster isn't over. Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here.

> Reliability is more important than privacy for messaging most of the time. Some major balls are being dropped here. Obviously, The Signal team should have done a better job of coordinating the mass user migration with the WhatsApp team at Facebook. Such a failure. /s I don't get why some people see the need to bitch about Signal at every opportunity. The criticisms are usually unfair (like this one), missing the po…

I have made one complaint about signal in my entire life after the outage hit 9 hours. They did fail. It's just an inconvenient truth thus the character assassination and apologism.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#615

Post by nuker » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

bilal4hmed wrote: post #550

chanakya wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the problem is money, at least for now. They are either running in a datacenter and can't add capacity fast enough, or have a scale bottlenech in their design, and just weren't designed for this scale.

They are hosted on AWS....its definitely seeming like a design issue

Do they have their AWS infra code on github? I'd contribute some design ideas.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#616

Post by baby » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

Daniel_sk wrote: post #438

Daniel_sk wrote: post #365

"We have been adding new servers and extra capacity at a record pace every single day this week nonstop, but today exceeded even our most optimistic projections. Millions upon millions of new users are sending a message that privacy matters. We appreciate your patience." https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350165610936766464

"We are making progress towards getting the service back online. Privacy is our top priority, but adding capacity is a close second right now." https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1350185818527211521

can't wait for the post mortem : o really wondering why there's an outage. I assume the SGX stuff quickly became a bottleneck, or the message forwarding server wasn't made to scale out very efficiently. In any case, they should have been able to have a very large queue in front of these components and just have a very slow system, probably something blew up due to the sudden peak of users.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#617

Post by baby » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

killingtime74 wrote: post #610

topkeks wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone outside Signal Foundation know how's their architecture? There are a lot of references to AWS, GCP, and Azure in the source code hosted in GitHub so they probably use them all in one way or another. It would be super interesting know more details about the infrastructure.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25797686

interesting but doesn't really explain much. Is it really a single Signal server or can you spin many? What is stored on redis and postgresql? Maybe redis is used as cache, or as a queue, or as a store for sessions, and postgresql is used for accounts. Are these components distributed as well?

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#618

Post by kortex » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

okso wrote: post #17

kortex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought signal was highly decentralized? What traffic does the server handle once two clients have "found" each other? Which I believe uses hashes of phone numbers.

This article from 2018 illustrates the architecture of Signal: https://sorincocorada.ro/signal-messanger-architecture/

Cunningham's law is a beautiful thing, cheers :)

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#619

Post by JimDabell » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #380

bgentry wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when a whistleblower or dissident wants to use Signal? Should they be forced to cough up a payment with a traceable credit card or app store account in order to use it? For that reason alone I think it's important for the service to be free. Though I would perhaps support some reasonable free usage limits if needed to prevent abuse.

How sympathetic are the Signal developers to the concerns of dissidents, really? Signal has had a policy of many years to require a phone number – buying a SIM card now requires providing government ID in so many countries – and only now have they promised progress on this front someday. They also recommend that users install through the Play Store, and they only grudgingly provide a standalone APK. Anyone with the P…

> How sympathetic are the Signal developers to the concerns of dissidents, really?

There’s a known problem where the majority of Chinese Android users use a third-party IME to enter text. This is vulnerable to eavesdropping and easy for Signal to detect and warn the user about. Chinese people have been asking them to do this for over a year, telling them that they know of people who have been detained by the government after using Signal, thinking it was secure. Signal have constantly ignored and dodged this. Just lately, their attitude seems to be that somebody needs to prove it is being actively exploited before they will look into it.

Until I saw their behaviour on this, I was recommending Signal to people. Now I can’t help but feel it’s security cosplay. They pride themselves on strong encryption, but won’t lift a finger when people unwittingly use Signal in an insecure context and are being extraordinarily evasive about it.

More info: https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-should-warn-users...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#620

Post by scjody » Sat, Jan 16, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

eurg wrote: post #448

alan5 wrote: post #71

I just donated to Signal after seeing the error banner in the app. I realised I was more than happy to pay WhatsApp's yearly charge back in the pre-Facebook days (think it was 70p or so?). Figured I could give Signal a few quid every now and then, maybe keep a server up for a few seconds :) Donation link should anyone be interested: https://signal.org/donate/

Now this is unexpected, and amazing. This is one of the most frictionless donation buttons ever. I love it. Patreon, Paypal, SEPA transfer, all those are a hassle, comparatively. This donation thing used by Signal works exactly as it should be. Enter numbers, hit enter, done. No "please cookie us", no 20 times transfer to other domains, no account creation, and they also don't require stuff like MasterCard 3D secure…

Yes, wow! As a Canadian I really appreciate the ability to donate in my own currency.