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Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

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Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#121

Post by colesantiago »

godelski wrote: post #110
colesantiago wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where is the original issue for this, if that is the case?

Otherwise I see signal developers closing duplicates [0], towards the main issue [1] which leads me to believe it was open for months.

Even if the bug was fixed at 7/21 on the original thread and this main one, this issue was still open for months.

[0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11137

[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/10247

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#122

Post by hypertele-Xii »

mdoms wrote: post #47
rvz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've also recently had a probably unrelated issue where my mic was still audible to the other party after I hung up the call. That one there is a cataclysmic security land mine. Absolutely unacceptable. That was the last straw after [0]. I don't think I can recommend Signal at this time. To Downvoters: So these bugs are all fine then? They are not security issues then? Not only having images being sent to the wrong…

Why on Earth are people downvoting you? This is an absolute dealbreaker for any messaging app, much less one whose raison d'etre is privacy and secure messaging.

So which app would you recommend?

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#123

Post by lostlogin »

deanCommie wrote: post #103
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:…

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

That would drive me demented in 5 minutes.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#124

Post by tomudding »

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?

> Can you provide a link to the commit that fixes it?

If I understand the issue [0] correctly, these two commits should be the fix:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/e90fa05d6...

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/b9657208f...

The former updates how recipients (or really threads, I suppose) are merged (the issue occurred when trimming threads) and the latter changes the way how thread ids are generated (now automatically incremented). Together they should prevent unrelated recipients (threads) from being merged.

[0]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/10247#iss...

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#125

Post by [deleted] »

agilob wrote: post #107
TekMol wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[deleted]

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#126

Post by NullPrefix »

hnarn wrote: post #104
andrewguenther wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

>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

This is only rare if you have a small social circle. My circle has multiple first name-collisions of at least 5 participants, but my circle is not very big and the area code is also quite small.

Some countries do not use area codes for mobile phone numbers, which are used for Signal, meaning country code is the only area limiting factor.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#127

Post by Popegaf »

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?

From the explanation [0], this looks like the commit [1].

I do have to say though, the commit messages are very barren and barely any reference an issue directly. My guess is that they develop on private branches with an internal issue tracker and decide not to reference issues as that would be confusing. It would help a bunch if they referenced the public issues and made it clear which issues they're working on. They don't seem to use Github Projects [2].

All in all, the communication / transparency of the project is lacking - even though I'm glad they're providing something usable. Hopefully Matrix will be able to provide something as easily usable as well.

[0]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/10247#iss...

[1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/83086a5a2...

[2]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/projects

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#128

Post by dmix »

saurik wrote: post #79
dmix wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also sounded like a very difficult bug to track down, even as a top priority. Requiring a combination of certain settings plus a rare database ID intersection. Combine that with not logging user behaviour heavily for privacies sake makes this a very tough one to replicate. All of which was addressed in the bug report. The realities of software development on a large scale with a privacy focus are sometimes hard to…

So, did they disclose the issue? Were people using Signal warned somewhere that this was a known issue that they were hunting down? (I am guessing not as no one here has been like "oh yeah: everyone using Signal knew to be careful with this feature".) It being a difficult bug to fix doesn't mean that's your only recourse for something this serious.

Does any app push bug report notifications to users? Should Microsoft Windows or Google Chrome warn users every time there’s a bug that can compromise their whole system just by visiting a certain website or downloading random pieces of software only a tiny subset of users will ever be exposed to?

I get the motivation with a security/privacy critical app like Signal but this would also be a UX and customer support nightmare that IRL could grind a project to a halt.

Not to mention expecting users to know how to balance the risks of said bugs vs not using the app at all because they were scared off it. Back to using far less secure options.

I think having public forums to report and track the bugs for more advanced users is probably the right balance.

The better solution is internal fixes and triaging the serious bugs appropriately so they get the attention they need. Instead of just offloading highly technical information barrages to average users.

Temporarily blocking features until a patch is released is something that could make sense. But again only in certain circumstances. You can turn off photo sharing here but other cases it’s not so straight forward without crippling the entire app for a rare bug. It’s a difficult balancing act without a uniform solution.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#129

Post by aadjklskljads »

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…

No, Signal does not get to play the limited resources card when they so firmly discourage 3rd parties from working on their project.

Re: Signal on Android: Images sent to wrong contacts

#130

Post by [deleted] »

tomudding wrote: post #124
TekMol wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Can you provide a link to the commit that fixes it? If I understand the issue [0] correctly, these two commits should be the fix: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/e90fa05d6... https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/b9657208f... The former updates how recipients (or really threads, I suppose) are merged (the issue occurred when trimming threads) and the latter changes the way how thread…

[deleted]
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