121–130 of 417 posts
Signal could learn a lot from Telegram in this regard. Russian govt had tried to block Telegram but telegram servers just keep jumping over various cidrs and users got the ip addresses for connecting over push updates and the only thing the govt succeeded in was blocking a wide range of subnets including AWS ranges and GCP ranges thus disrupting a whole lot of businesses and even some government services. They gave u…
this is fine and dandy but when you have a state actor operating with such offensive tactics like india is currently engaged in kashmir, there isnt much these "proxies" can do. sorry. the idea of these proxies is all fun and nice but when a government can just whitelist the entire fucking internet and none of these nonsense works https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/internet-parti... https://thewire.in/right…
people underestimate the security intelligence service of countries in this region. They have far more capacity than people in the West estimate.
It's irresponsible of HN to put people in potential harms way, Iran is at a breaking point, they have nothing to lose and will stop at nothing to stop exfiltration and access to internet.
Signal should be federated. This censorship problem would not exist, or would be organically routed around, were the service federated. Without federation, Signal is just another stepping stone in the long path of eventually abandoned instant messengers, all the way back from ICQ. We will get to an SMTP-like protocol, and email-like service, at some point. If not Signal, some other one.
I’m not so sure. Moxies reasons about how federation leads to protocol development slowing and then freezing are solid. It’s why we re not using smtp for chat. SMTP can’t be extended enough so replacements are built instead. Similarly if signal federated, eventually it would freeze and a few years later users would move to wherever they could get new features. Federation is a good thing but only when the protocol is…
Im not sure "chat" needs this much constant "innovation" at the protocol level. Most of the issues with email are client UX more so than actual protocol limitations.
hey. i just thought of something. is it not possible for india or iran in this case to check your phone number and see if it is active on signal? if you are online means you are somehow bypassing their blocks. isnt then just a matter of tracking your cellphone and relevant xkcd applies ? https://xkcd.com/538/ this is looking like a zero sum game unless signal account is delinked from phone numbers because the govt ca…
then its a matter of time before they link real identity to the phone. With the wide availability of femtocells, all they need to do is get lucky once.
This puts operators of Signal proxies at potential harms way! Absolutely irresponsible for people on HN to downvote and downplay genuine security concerns.
If Iran is blocking Signal but not other apps, namely Whatsapp, does this mean Iran has access to Whatsapp data? I fully expect the US govt to have access to fb/whatsapp data (at least the metadata), but it's a bit surprising to me that Iran would too.
Iran blocks every major foreign messaging app, except WhatsApp. Signal escaped it until now only because they had so few users. Also keep in mind that while WhatsApp claims to use the Signal protocol, they installed a backdoor that allows them to MITM conversations. So yes, I’d say it’s virtually guaranteed that WhatsApp is sending unencrypted message data to Iran, and of course to the US too.
Almost everyone in these comments is asking questions of various degrees of pedantry or outright dissing signal/moxie/no federation/whatever... Just spin up a server if you can spare the expense and help some people out. Action > inaction. edit: you can get the connection details via @appliedlambdas on twitter!
> You can share your proxy with friends and family using this URL format: " rel="nofollow">https://signal.tube/# […] The latest beta release of the Android app is registered to handle links from signal.tube. This scheme is convenient for those with correctly configured devices, but comes at the cost to everyone else of increased risk of inadvertent leaks of the fact that they're attempting to circumvent the block. I'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if they block can block tor what makes you think they can't block these proxies? furthermore if you use tor you can use the existing network of bridges/relays as well as their pluggable transports protocol to avoid DPI/traffic analysis.
Iran is already blocking Tor. In general, if Signal provides some central way to use Tor together with Signal, the Iranian government can just run it on their machine, and block every IP address that it tries to connect to. Iran can block these proxies, too, but this way there isn't any centralized listing of proxies. This proxy setup is simple enough that a single person could run a proxy for a few dozen of their fr…
I fear that some naive Western expat will participate and find themselves in a hostage. Many countries in this don't have any treaties with Western nations, they dont have high regard for human rights either.
If Iran is blocking Signal but not other apps, namely Whatsapp, does this mean Iran has access to Whatsapp data? I fully expect the US govt to have access to fb/whatsapp data (at least the metadata), but it's a bit surprising to me that Iran would too.
Iran blocks every major foreign messaging app, except WhatsApp. Signal escaped it until now only because they had so few users. Also keep in mind that while WhatsApp claims to use the Signal protocol, they installed a backdoor that allows them to MITM conversations. So yes, I’d say it’s virtually guaranteed that WhatsApp is sending unencrypted message data to Iran, and of course to the US too.