Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AWS acquires Wickr

aws.amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 142 posts

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#61

Post by dang »

strictnein wrote: post #53
rapsey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an american company, customers should absolutely be distrustful of any claims of security. There is very little in the way of the feds giving you a gag order and ordering you to provide a backdoor. Amazon has zero recourse in this situation, neither would they risk their gov contracts fighting it.

Yeah, they definitely just invested $xxx millions in a product that they know they won't be able to keep alive. Amazon has plenty of recourse, and they've been fighting gag orders for years now. Ex: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/microsoft-amazon... The company leading that charge: Microsoft. The company that got the huge JEDI DoD cloud contract: Microsoft. Weird, huh?

"Don't be snarky."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#62

Post by dang »

rapsey wrote: post #56
strictnein wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they definitely just invested $xxx millions in a product that they know they won't be able to keep alive. Amazon has plenty of recourse, and they've been fighting gag orders for years now. Ex: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/microsoft-amazon... The company leading that charge: Microsoft. The company that got the huge JEDI DoD cloud contract: Microsoft. Weird, huh?

Nonesense. When they get a gag order they have zero choice and recourse. Their options are shutting down the company or comply. They can join a legal fight to stop this practice, they however must comply with every order they get.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#65

Post by jodrellblank »

drenvuk wrote: post #46
habibur wrote: post #40

Feeling like I need to build my own end-to-end secure channel communication web app on my server. As every other is getting sold. With current level of browser support, assuming that might not take too much time.

why build your own? just use element and matrix.

So they can sell it for easy money, is how I read their comment.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#66

Post by arpinum »

colmmacc wrote: post #38
crmd wrote: post #19

You can be sure there is already a team working on the architectural changes needed to implement lawful intercept and passive surveillance on Wickr. This is what happens when a secure platform gets too big. The same thing happened to Skype.

I work on cryptography at AWS, and long before that I worked on Skype a bit, so I can't resist commenting! Wickr features end to end cryptography, https://wickr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/WhitePaper_Wick... , and I can't see why we'd change that (and even that framing is a bit weird, I'm sure Wickr will continue to be autonomous but maybe with access to more resources from the rest of Amazon). Increasingly, end-t…

AWS hired the architect behind the NSA's attempt at breaking commercial crypto, according the Matthew Green [0].

I can't trust AWS will be truthful about their crypto systems and lack of backdoors.

[0] - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/13571435600055091...

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#67

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

counternotions wrote: post #4

Certainly one unexpected way for the government to scare off and shut down nefarious communications happening on Wickr. Note this platform has been popular amongst the darkest underbelly of the web (e.g. carders, drug dealers).

Though true, this is just about entirely irrelevant given where Wickr has gone since 2016. It may surprise you to learn that Wickr was awarded a large US Airforce contract last year. [0]

[0] https://wickr.com/wickr-awarded-us-air-force-contract/

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#68

Post by askafriend »

bydo wrote: post #60
Bigpet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure Wickr will continue to be autonomous but maybe with access to more resources from the rest of Amazon To be fair, this is the fairy-tale that's told on every acquisition. I'm pretty certain this same narrative was spun even when facebook acquired occulus. Not saying this will be similar, but just hearing those words is not assuring by itself.

Amazon's proven a much better steward than Facebook, though. Twitch seems pretty independent other than some Prime perks, Eero doesn't seem to have changed much, I'm pretty sure they forgot that they even bought IMDB and DPReview, etc.

I didn't even realize they had bought DPReview...
Post reply on HN