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Encrypted messengers: Riot, not Signal, is the future

titus-stahl.de

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

#111

Post by sliken »

dublinben wrote: post #35
rahrahrah wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP can be used to encrypt at the ends, in which case it is end-to-end encryption. So that's not a different feature. Care to share what you mean by PGP leaks a lot of metadata? You might be right, I'm just not aware of such details.

None of the email headers are protected in any way for a PGP-encrypted email. All the same metadata is that collected from plaintext email is still available on "encrypted" email. You literally can only protect the body of the email. In surveillance, that is often the least interesting or valuable piece of information.

As mentioned signal doesn't hide contact discovery. But it does a pretty good job of hiding who you are chatting to from everyone but OWS.

OWS received a Grand jury subpoena and was only able to produce "the only information we can produce in response to a request like this is the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user's connectivity to the Signal service.".

Certainly a NSL might compel OWS to add additional logging (and not talk about it). With that they could tell who messaged who, when the message was sent, and how big the message was.

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

#112

Post by haffenloher »

cguess wrote: post #27
exstudent2 wrote: post #10

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…

Technically? There's nothing stopping them. For that matter, there's no stopping Google from doing the same. There's also no stopping Apple from patching LLVM so that only patched versions of OpenSSL are ever compiled against. The question is how paranoid are you and what is your threat model? We have to trust someone, eventually. This is especially true for the 99% of the population who doesn't have the skill to com…

> For that matter, there's no stopping Google from doing the same.

That's the exact reason why package signing is decentralized in the Android ecosystem. All apps in the Play Store are signed by their developers.

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

#113

Post by xkxx »

majewsky wrote: post #6
rahrahrah wrote: post #3

I have the impression that Signal by now has such a great brand name that mere technical objections won't affect its growth for a very long time.

I wonder if the name of Riot will be a hindrance for widespread adoption. Most people don't like riots.

How about Discord? It's very popular among gamers despite its name.

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

#114

Post by xkxx »

majewsky wrote: post #6
rahrahrah wrote: post #3

I have the impression that Signal by now has such a great brand name that mere technical objections won't affect its growth for a very long time.

I wonder if the name of Riot will be a hindrance for widespread adoption. Most people don't like riots.

How about Discord? It's very popular among gamers despite its name.

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

#115

Post by vertex-four »

acqq wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: 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 m…

Right now, in practice, Matrix is "a better IRC". It provides bouncer-like functionality by default, federation across the whole network so you only have one identity vs having to register with each server on which there's a community you want to talk to, file sharing, voice/video chat, proper message formatting, and more.

Encryption currently works on Riot Web, iOS and Android, certain bugs excluded - but it's missing a lot of UX work. (Among other things, you have to manually verify each and every device the people you talk to use, there's no way for them to say "these are all my devices, if you trust me, you trust them" yet. You also lose chat history at present if you switch devices or log out.) If you're able to work around the UX, the underlying protocol is fine and has been audited, with certain tradeoffs discussed in the report.

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

#116

Post by tacoman »

heavenlyhash wrote: post #89
upofadown wrote: post #86

After a recent discussion of the issues with XMPP on mobile, some obvious questions: 1. How well does Riot deal with changing network connections? Does it have problems when a mobile device switches between, say, WiFi and 4G? How well does it deal with a complete loss of connectivity? 2. How well does Riot deal with power management on mobile devices? Can it spend time in the background while getting message alerts w…

It's really good. I'll vouch for it as someone who has been using the mobile apps on both platforms, and the web application(s) on the desktop for over a year now. They're great. Battery isn't a problem; messages NEVER get lost. I actually came to matrix after trying to write an XMPP client, believe it or not. The matrix protocol is WAY better equipped for the future than XMPP is: it simply has the core designs neces…

I've been using Vector/Riot using the Android version in F-Droid on Blackberry 10 for 6-9 months, connecting to my own server on my DSL. I haven't noticed a single issue with battery or lost messages.

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

#117

Post by jcrites »

sliken wrote: post #95
jcrites wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make good points, but I think email works well as a secure group communication system for private organizations, and may improve over time as a federated one. One important benefit of email is that you're not reliant on any single provider for your communication. Slack and Signal and systems like them are provided by single companies, and the continued function of those systems depends on the companies. Y…

It's all well and good to run your own mail server. The biggest problem is 99% of who you send to/receive from will be in one of the big 3 mail servers.

Could you elaborate on why that's a problem?

If the threat model for the communication within your group is concerned with attack or coercion from hostile governments, then you have the ability to set up your own email server and convince your participants to switch to it. It's not really much to ask -- it's fairly routine for companies and organizations to issue email accounts to employees/members and require their use for official business.

Consider that it may be easier to ask your communication partners to start using a new email account you've provided them than to adopt a new communication platform.

On the other hand, the people you're communicating with have chosen to trust the organizations that they're using to provide them with those services. Whatever service they're using is not radically different to trust than it is to trust the Signal developers, or the Google Play Store or Apple App Store to distribute the Signal application to your mobile device, and so on. Even if your participants are using Signal to communicate, they may have online backups enabled with their device to Apple, Google, etc., such that without your awareness your communication partners are trusting them just as much as if they were email providers.

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

#118

Post by haffenloher »

wybiral wrote: post #59
stephengillie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the justifications of developers who are unfamiliar with the Intent system. Were I unaware of Intent, I would make the same design decisions.

I agree. Mostly because they're asking for all of those permissions prematurely. What if I never want to share my location, take pictures, or send files? And then some things, like calendar access, aren't even used right now.

> What if I never want to share my location, take pictures, or send files?

Don't use these features and / or disable the corresponding permissions.

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

#119

Post by temprature »

kuschku wrote: post #93
Forbo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are intents the same as the run-time permissions? I might still be misunderstanding, but I think they have an issue open for this already: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/3983

Intents are the idea that your app doesn't directly request camera permission, for example, but instead asks the system to open a camera screen, and another app (or even your own app) can then respond to that. This provides more choice, and reduces the amount of needed permissions.

Signal used to use the camera intent, it was changed to use direct capture so the camera opens faster and so captured photos aren't stored in the camera roll.

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

#120

Post by Cursuviam »

sliken wrote: post #98
Cursuviam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you care that much, just run your own OS. Many android phones have quite a few options available.

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