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

Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 403 posts

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#101

Post by godelski »

maltalex wrote: post #97

I love Signal and have advocated for its use. But I have to say that this issue is trust-breaking. I lovingly forgive the occasional bug or unpolished feature and I understand that the team behind Signal are human and that programming is hard. But sending messages to the wrong people is very high on the list of things a messenger should never ever ever do! Having an issue like this remain open for 7.5 months hints at…

FWIW the problem did not remain open for 7.5 months (GitHub issue did, but not the problem). The dev is in the thread and explains.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#102

Post by okdjnfweonfe »

piaste wrote: post #99

The bugfix comments says: > The TL;DR is that if someone had conversation trimming on, it could create a rare situation where a database ID was re-used in a way that could result in this behavior. How is this bug even possible with E2E encryption? If picture.png exists on user A's phone and gets sent to user B, shouldn't it be client-side encrypted in such a way that user C, even if they receive it via some database…

its probably not using chat keys for the db, for the sake of being indexable

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#103

Post by deanCommie »

johnchristopher wrote: post #7

While I suppose the protocol is not at fault and it's a UI and client bug it's still a huge problem. Just today I was thinking ”it's been weeks since they moved the GIF button to a different place but there's still the old button at the old place and when you click on it there's a pop-up "wrong, the button is somewhere else now"”. Why even keep the old button in the old place ? And it led me to thinking "what else co…

> Just today I was thinking ”it's been weeks since they moved the GIF button to a different place but there's still the old button at the old place and when you click on it there's a pop-up "wrong, the button is somewhere else now"”.

That's actually a UX FEATURE. Google Maps did exactly the same thing when they reorganized and move the toggle between maps/satelite/traffic layers.

The answer is pretty straightforward: Users get used to a certain UX. If you do a reorganization (to introduce new features, to improve performance, whatever), and move a button, a meaningful percentage of your users won't read the blog post, the release notes, or hunt for a new "Intuitive" location for the feature. They'll just assume you removed the feature and either panic or get mad.

Leaving the old button in the old place is actually kind of a clever way to "Deprecate" a UX feature.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#104

Post by hnarn »

andrewguenther wrote: post #96
greysonp wrote: post #78

Hi there, Signal-Android developer here. I updated the issue to reflect this, but this bug has been fixed. I was tracking it on a separate issue, and had forgotten to close this one. We do, in fact, take issues like this very seriously. This bug was extraordinarily rare, and because we have no metrics/remote log collection, there was an initial period where we had to spend time adding logging and collecting user-subm…

> This bug was extraordinarily rare, and because we have no metrics/remote log collection, there was an initial period where we had to spend time adding logging and collecting user-submitted logs to try to track it down. Without telemetry, can you actually back up the claim that this issue was extremely rare?

Some details on how this assumption was made would be nice, but I think it's pretty obvious that any developer involved in a project can make a reasonable assumption of how rare a bug is depending on the technical details on what is required for the bug to happen. For example, if we say for the sake of argument that a hypothetical bug requires you to have more than ten contacts of the exact same name and these also need to share the same country and area code, one can make the assumption this use case is very rare without knowing the exact number of users that this applies to, just based on common sense regarding how the application is normally used.

edit: The linked github issue says:

> The TL;DR is that if someone had conversation trimming on, it could create a rare situation where a database ID was re-used in a way that could result in this behavior. It was very difficult to track down, with earlier phases involving getting additional logging into builds. Once we had some more information, it did in fact become our top priority, a fix was made, and we got it out as quickly and as safely as possible. The fix itself should make it so that database issues like the one that caused this bug can't happen again.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#105

Post by godelski »

woxko wrote: post #74
godelski wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Signal has many devs[0] and if you look at the contributors[1] you can see that Grayson is pretty much the only dev for the Android app. So seeing a second dev get involved is probably them freaking out. [0] Personally I believe this is a big bump in the road for Signal and is why a lot of people are frustrated. About promises about things like usernames (it is no longer early 2021), channels, and every…

Bug report is eight months old now. I don't think they're freaking out much.

But the issue is fixed. Forgetting to close a bug report is different than not fixing the bug

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#106

Post by detaro »

godelski wrote: post #101
maltalex wrote: post #97

I love Signal and have advocated for its use. But I have to say that this issue is trust-breaking. I lovingly forgive the occasional bug or unpolished feature and I understand that the team behind Signal are human and that programming is hard. But sending messages to the wrong people is very high on the list of things a messenger should never ever ever do! Having an issue like this remain open for 7.5 months hints at…

FWIW the problem did not remain open for 7.5 months (GitHub issue did, but not the problem). The dev is in the thread and explains.

Bug reported 2020-12-04, fixed release tagged 2021-07-15 (if I'm identifying the commit correctly, same day the fix is merged, which one would hope for a high-priority bug like that). That's technically 7.3 months, not 7.5, true, but ...

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#107

Post by agilob »

TekMol wrote: post #82
greysonp wrote: post #78

Hi there, Signal-Android developer here. I updated the issue to reflect this, but this bug has been fixed. I was tracking it on a separate issue, and had forgotten to close this one. We do, in fact, take issues like this very seriously. This bug was extraordinarily rare, and because we have no metrics/remote log collection, there was an initial period where we had to spend time adding logging and collecting user-subm…

Can you provide a link to the commit that fixes it? Shouldn't there have been an announcement to inform users what has been leaked and under which circumstances? How can user A send an image to user B that neither of them took? Isn't everything end-2-end encrypted? Then how can unencrypted data from user C end up on the device of user B?

No PR with name that would suggest the fix in the client https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/pulls?q=is%3Apr+...

and no PR from OP in the opensource part of the server https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/pulls?q=is%3Apr+i...

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#108

Post by markzzerella »

dindresto wrote: post #27
hellcow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is a solid replacement. Element isn't as easy to use but it's coming along. Quality-of-life features normal users expect like stickers, gifs, etc. are woefully lacking, but the important stuff (y'know, actual messaging) is solid. The most important thing to me is if Element screws up like Signal and starts pushing a shitcoin, I can swap clients without affecting my network.

Also, Matrix supports other client implementations than Element, like https://fluffychat.im/

Fluffychat is my go-to for getting normies on matrix.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#109

Post by dunefox »

godelski wrote: post #61
MrAwesome wrote: post #39

Several years ago, when I worked at FB, I ran into a similar bug on an early internal version of a Messenger rewrite. Sent pictures to one chat, showed up in another. My bug report on it kicked off an absolute maelstrom of dev activity and investigation. High level engineers showed up in the comments. Lots of immediate followup. The severity was clearly understood and resolving it was clearly prioritized. I exclusive…

I don't think Signal has many devs[0] and if you look at the contributors[1] you can see that Grayson is pretty much the only dev for the Android app. So seeing a second dev get involved is probably them freaking out. [0] Personally I believe this is a big bump in the road for Signal and is why a lot of people are frustrated. About promises about things like usernames (it is no longer early 2021), channels, and every…

I mean, they invested a year into covert development of a crypto wallet inside Signal. Maybe that time could have been spent better.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#110

Post by godelski »

colesantiago wrote: post #71
detaro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the main audits are clearly described as auditing internal components, so it's not surprising app-level errors aren't covered by them.

Which this bug was left open for months while users were experiencing this privacy issue. How can I recommend a chat app that does this and claim they are a privacy based app? and also does not respond to urgent bugs in this manner?

The bug wasn't open for months, the dev just forgot to close it and he's in the thread.
Post reply on HN