We can do better than Signal • Hacker News Board

Re: We can do better than Signal

#41

Post by StavrosK » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

MAGZine wrote: post #33

stavros wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You understand wrong. Nothing solves this problem except verifying fingerprints manually (in person!) or scanning the QR code (again in person!).

This is the same for any piece of crypto. If you've been provided someone else's encryption keys, and they're not either from the person themselves, or from a trustworthy intermediary, then your channel could be getting intercepted. It's a philosophical/conceptual problem with encryption, not one restricted to signal.

Indeed.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#42

Post by lukevp » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #38

tomphoolery wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that decentralization closes the door on top-down censorship, but at the same time, invites spam and abuse of the system for personal gain. It's very easy to do this in a decentralized model, and every single decentralized service suffers from this. IRC, Email, Mastodon, you name it. It's all bad.

The solution is simple. Make the decentralized systems social, with reputation.

How do you prevent bots giving each other reputation?

Re: We can do better than Signal

#43

Post by asutekku » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #38

tomphoolery wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that decentralization closes the door on top-down censorship, but at the same time, invites spam and abuse of the system for personal gain. It's very easy to do this in a decentralized model, and every single decentralized service suffers from this. IRC, Email, Mastodon, you name it. It's all bad.

The solution is simple. Make the decentralized systems social, with reputation.

And that then is extremely easy to abuse as soon as you have enough people with high rank enough deciding to start to misbehave.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#44

Post by xrisk » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #30

xrisk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I trust that my own server is not backdoored (thus reducing the need for off-channel fingerprint verification), I have no such guarantee about Signal's server.

Because you can never be sure that the other person's server or connection (or your connection) aren't being MitMed.

Yes, but I can get all the parties I want to talk to on my own server (if the need arises).

About your point the connection itself being MITMed, I don't exactly understand how an active attacker sitting on my connection would undermine the connection? Presumably I have a way to verify the identify of my server. Please do elaborate if I'm missing something. Regardless an interesting thought.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#45

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #10

I'm a bit annoyed at "we can do better than X" when, you know what? Maybe we can't. Yes, it's nice that you and I can install Element and deal with the finicky crypto handshake that for some reason always shows red for me because a friend opened the web UI and closed it before he completed the handshake and now we can never actually make that check go green, and it's nice that Mastodon is distributed but mastodon.hos…

> Hell, we /started/ decentralized and over email and newsgroups and personal websites and blogs and it's all Facebook Facebook Facebook now that the Eternal September came around.

We didn't do the decentralization then because of good politics and security: look how bad the other security properties were. Rather we did it because the field was new and the actors not consolidated.

Creating decentralization after in a mature, consoliditated space is a completely different enterprise. In particular, a lot more attention needs to paid to inefficiency and defense against the central hegemons.

It's a hard battle, but if won, will be a much more durable victory.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#46

Post by caust1c » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #13

As I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25795575 - WhatsApp: Oh wait, SMS etc. is completely insecure - Signal: Oh wait, WhatsApp is structurally unable to be a force for privacy - Matrix: Oh wait, even benevolent centralization is an unnecessary risk It's not that worse is better, but the general public's imagination can only grow so fast. We need to coax people along. As such, I do think all 3 serve a pu…

I'm not positive, but I think the signal protocol and signal messenger came before Moxie worked with Whatsapp to provide e2e encryption.

Not refuting your point at all, just providing additional context.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#47

Post by rasengan » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

tomphoolery wrote: post #31

stavros wrote: post #10

I'm a bit annoyed at "we can do better than X" when, you know what? Maybe we can't. Yes, it's nice that you and I can install Element and deal with the finicky crypto handshake that for some reason always shows red for me because a friend opened the web UI and closed it before he completed the handshake and now we can never actually make that check go green, and it's nice that Mastodon is distributed but mastodon.hos…

It turns out that decentralization closes the door on top-down censorship, but at the same time, invites spam and abuse of the system for personal gain. It's very easy to do this in a decentralized model, and every single decentralized service suffers from this. IRC, Email, Mastodon, you name it. It's all bad.

The footnote[1] project helps to provide spam and abuse by limiting each user to 10 MB.

[1] https://github.com/kyokan/footnote/

Re: We can do better than Signal

#48

Post by marcinzm » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

xrisk wrote: post #32

marcinzm wrote: post #8

I'm confused about this piece. If there's true E2E encryption (verified by open source client code and review of released binaries) then why does it matter if the server code is backdoored or not? The whole point of E2E is that you don't need to care about the server being able to ever see the text of your messages because it never can.

Copy pasting my comment: Consider this paragraph from the Signal protocol > ...For example, they may compare public key fingerprints manually, or by scanning a QR code. Methods for doing this are outside the scope of this document. > If authentication is not performed, the parties receive no cryptographic guarantee as to who they are communicating with . Nobody I know in practice does this authentication. If an activ…

>If an active attack is carried out, I'm reasonably sure people would not notice.

If the attack happened after you have started communicating wouldn't you get a notification that the key of those you're communicating with has changed? An attack would only be invisible if it happened from the first communication. But unless it's very targeted someone somewhere would compare the keys and notice.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#49

Post by michelb » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #38

tomphoolery wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out that decentralization closes the door on top-down censorship, but at the same time, invites spam and abuse of the system for personal gain. It's very easy to do this in a decentralized model, and every single decentralized service suffers from this. IRC, Email, Mastodon, you name it. It's all bad.

The solution is simple. Make the decentralized systems social, with reputation.

“If you like my post I will like yours.” We can’t have many nice things, it’s human nature.

Re: We can do better than Signal

#50

Post by eat_veggies » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

tailspin2019 wrote: post #19

marcinzm wrote: post #8

I'm confused about this piece. If there's true E2E encryption (verified by open source client code and review of released binaries) then why does it matter if the server code is backdoored or not? The whole point of E2E is that you don't need to care about the server being able to ever see the text of your messages because it never can.

Do we have a way to verify that the App Store apps are actually running the open source (as published) code?

Builds on Android have been (mostly) reproducible since 2016: https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/

Looks like the situation is more complicated and still unresolved for iOS: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641