Keybase Exploding Messages
keybase.io
Keybase Exploding Messages
1–10 of 155 posts
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#2anyone care to expand on the practical applications/implications/threat model where this makes sense?
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#3Heard about this last week from a friend on the keybase team, happy to see it launch on time :) congrats!
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#4As I understand, Keybase chat is open-source?
(https://github.com/keybase/client)
I don't have time to read through the code right now, but I'd love to hear how they implemented exploding messages with untrustworthy clients.
I've thought about it a few times before, and it seems one of the few places that closed software has an advantage - You can't easily force third-party clients to delete messages.
If they've solved that, I'm really interested to learn how it works!!
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#5anyone care to expand on the practical applications/implications/threat model where this makes sense?
Apparently those dank memes and corporate espionage according to the article are some of the uses.
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#6anyone care to expand on the practical applications/implications/threat model where this makes sense?
It works as long as no one takes a screenshot.
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#7anyone care to expand on the practical applications/implications/threat model where this makes sense?
It's for when you trust someone but don't want to risk either your or their device being compromised in the future. For instance:
- if your or their phone gets taken at a border crossing
- if your or their phone gets taken by the FBI (which is how they recovered encrypted WhatsApp/Signal chats from Michael Cohen's phone)
- etc
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#8This very article shows you the problem with "features" like this.
You see that video demonstrating the feature? Notice how you can read the content of the message which was supposedly deleted?
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#9As I understand, Keybase chat is open-source? ( https://github.com/keybase/client ) I don't have time to read through the code right now, but I'd love to hear how they implemented exploding messages with untrustworthy clients. I've thought about it a few times before, and it seems one of the few places that closed software has an advantage - You can't easily force third-party clients to delete messages. If they've so…
It is impossible to implement this feature "safely" even with trusted clients -- worst case I take a screenshot or even a photograph of the device displaying the message before it explodes.
If you don't trust the person at the other end, this is never going to work. It's more useful for "we both agree that we don't want a paper trail" kind of thing.
Re: Keybase Exploding Messages
#10click on some text in the article, it "explodes" :)