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Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

titus-stahl.de

11–20 of 178 posts

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#11
> Riot is based on the so-called Matrix protocol which is a federated protocol

> In addition, people are writing alternative clients to access the Matrix/Riot network, implementing their favorite features and workflows. As users can vote with their feet for their own interests and choose providers and apps of their liking

Can I run my own network which is not part of other networks (i.e. not "federated")? Can I tell somebody "call with your Riot client 'acqq at server ip nnnnnn' and we can talk"?

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#12

> If OpenWhisperSystems adopts any policy that goes against users’ interests in the future, users cannot switch providers without losing all their contacts. Is this correct? I've never bothered looking it up, but Signal was connecting me with people in my phone's address-book.

It's semi-correct? You don't lose your contacts, as they're still stored in your phone's address book. But all of your contacts will have to jump ship at the same time as you, to the same silo. And your old contacts will only still be usable if the new silo also uses phone numbers as userids.

On Matrix/Riot, userids are federated in the same way as emails. So when you change providers, your userid changes, but your contacts' stay the same, and you can still connect with them from your new provider.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#13

The question I would ask is: given the list of capabilities presented in this post, is there even any difference between Riot and e-mail? Or are you reinventing the wheel?

End-to-end encryption. Even if you encrypt email with PGP, which no one has come up with a satisfactorily easy interface for, it leaks a lot of metadata. Riot gives essentially the same privacy guarantees as Signal, but with email-like federation.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#14
post #11

> Riot is based on the so-called Matrix protocol which is a federated protocol > In addition, people are writing alternative clients to access the Matrix/Riot network, implementing their favorite features and workflows. As users can vote with their feet for their own interests and choose providers and apps of their liking Can I run my own network which is not part of other networks (i.e. not "federated")? Can I tell…

I believe so, yes. If not with the standard homeserver (synapse), than with a custom homeserver.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#15

A question I've had about Signal is what is stopping Apple from modifying and rebuilding the source with a backdoor in it? Is this technically possible (seems like it would be since they control distribution of the binary to devices)? The article is correct in stating that web based chat is inherently insecure but it seems all iOS apps are also inherently insecure. I'm by no means an expert though so would love to he…

With such a system, you must end up trusting a certain entity; it's turtles all the way down otherwise. No system is independently secure.

Similar questions include: What if a CA is compromised? What if Apple/MS bundles unwanted certs with the OS? What if Intel/AMD biases the on-die hardware RNG or other hardware crypto primitives? What if Apple/MS bundles a backdoored compiler a la "Reflections on Trusting Trust"? What if MS/Apple backdoor the entire network stack, including the physical and data link layers? etc. etc.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#16
I support good alternatives to Signal that also have other goals in mind. Signal's goal is to become basically as mainstream as Whatsapp is, and to get there it needs to make a few compromises for usability's sake.

Whatsapp has already backtracked on some major privacy promises, and who's to say it won't backtrack on the end-to-end encryption support eventually, after everyone is baited and switched to it? Or worse, it could start to decrypt E2E communications in secret for governments.

So we need a "mainstream" alternative that's actually trustworthy and can at least protect the security of the communications, if not the relationships between users.

However, I support applications that aim to offer even better privacy and security compared to Signal, that are aimed at more opsec-sensitive targets, such as journalists. Signal may be the best tool journalists have right now, but it's probably not the best one they could have, as it doesn't do a great job at protecting sources. Perhaps Ricochet or the Tor Messenger may be better for that.

What I'm worried about though is that even if these apps offer better security/privacy features, the various federated applications that use an E2EE protocol may not have too much of a security mindset. For instance, sure, Riot may adopt a better protocol, but is Riot itself using all modern security best practices? Can we trust the Riot developers just as much as we do the OWS developers? etc

Finally, I'd much rather see Signal become a P2P application than a federated one, if that would even be possible.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#18

A question I've had about Signal is what is stopping Apple from modifying and rebuilding the source with a backdoor in it? Is this technically possible (seems like it would be since they control distribution of the binary to devices)? The article is correct in stating that web based chat is inherently insecure but it seems all iOS apps are also inherently insecure. I'm by no means an expert though so would love to he…

What's to stop them from modifying the OS itself to spy on you? On a closed platform, you don't have peace of mind from spying.

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#19
post #9

This topic has been beaten to death on HN over the last year (other people can provide links to discussions, with Moxie participating). I think something worth keeping in mind is that almost everyone who works in secure messaging agrees on one thing: that electronic mail is not the future of secure communication. There's no fundamental reason why that should be the case. The store-and-forward model used by SMTP could…

Especially dishonest of Riot promoters is to even introduce it at this very moment to the "normal" users, because

"Riot’s encryption is not yet fully stable and, more importantly, it is not yet enabled by default in chats (you have to enable it manually). This will be changed in the future, but makes it more likely for users to make mistakes until then."

Users "make mistakes"? By using the defaults? I consider it a mistake to promote it to the users with such defaults. A "secure" product which "doesn't encrypt by default"? And "it's not stable"? What does that mean? The encryption either works or not. "Almost working" is still "not working."

Then please don't write

"An alternative to Signal is Riot." It is not. As far as I understand it just "could once be an alternative."

But based on the responses I've received here to my questions about Riot, it's promising: according to them, I will be able to set up my own network of people (e.g. just my family) with which I'd like to communicate. Yay! (thanks to mxuribe and NoGravitas for the answers)

Re: Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

#20

The question I would ask is: given the list of capabilities presented in this post, is there even any difference between Riot and e-mail? Or are you reinventing the wheel?

Riot is most comparable to Slack or Discord. It has chat rooms. It supports voice, image posts, file transfer, etc. It stores conversation history. You can private message people.

Matrix is a generalized protocol for decentralized and federated communications; it's agnostic to the application layer provided by Riot. Something Matrix doesn't have, but is on the issue backlog, is support for email-esque thread contexts. [0]

[0] https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/492

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