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

Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 137 posts

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#121

Post by guappa »

UnreachableCode wrote: post #92
cwillu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. The security of a message endpoint ends at the point that the opposite party's leverage runs out. If I care more about my snapchat account than I do about saving your disappearing message minus your ability to leverage snapchat into banning my account or apply outside social pressure, then your disappearing message may actually disappear. As the stakes go up, so does the leverage required for “endpoint sec…

Is there a term for any application which offers full control of your messages then, ie, I send you messages on Signal, but I can make them self destruct and you cannot screenshot them? (Pretty sure Signal allows this?). Nothing stopping a user from taking photos of the screen using another device, of course. Or running their own fork of Signal (which, when run from the open source for Android at least, runs on produ…

How can this exist?

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#122

Post by firesteelrain »

UnreachableCode wrote: post #113
chrisco255 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are just accusations from a 3rd party agency. They have no way of knowing if Ratcliffe archived the messages before deleting. Signal has been approved since the Biden admin. It was most likely already distributed with the Telemessage feature.

> Signal has been approved since the Biden admin. It was most likely already distributed with the Telemessage feature. How do you know this? Also I would not consider this a “feature”. We should assume they’re different apps, insofar as Telemessage can add whatever they please to the source

"One of the things I was briefed on very early … was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use," Ratcliffe said during a March 25 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing (see 45:05). "It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration."

https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/dni-director...

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#123

Post by IgorPartola »

UnreachableCode wrote: post #92
cwillu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. The security of a message endpoint ends at the point that the opposite party's leverage runs out. If I care more about my snapchat account than I do about saving your disappearing message minus your ability to leverage snapchat into banning my account or apply outside social pressure, then your disappearing message may actually disappear. As the stakes go up, so does the leverage required for “endpoint sec…

Is there a term for any application which offers full control of your messages then, ie, I send you messages on Signal, but I can make them self destruct and you cannot screenshot them? (Pretty sure Signal allows this?). Nothing stopping a user from taking photos of the screen using another device, of course. Or running their own fork of Signal (which, when run from the open source for Android at least, runs on produ…

Taking photos of your phone screen is the main loophole and is completely undetectable. Exactly what happened to Waltz and what caused TFA.

If you really need to, you can combine this with a rig that holds the phone and the camera just right, controls the lighting, and interacts with the phone via a hotdog mounted on a gantry. Come to think of it, any 3D printer can be adapted to archive Signal/Snapchat/etc. messages in a completely undetectable way. Could even reply if you rig up another phone to talk to your hot dog finger + camera robot.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#124

Post by ceejayoz »

chrisco255 wrote: post #49
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great motivated thinking, but wrong. It would appear they're using this app now , post-incident, because they got in trouble. (And having messages with Vance, Gabbard, etc. be visible to the press pool camera is... not a great look for the guy who accidentally added a reporter.) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/cia-director-... > All of the messages from a leaked group chat have been deleted from the ph…

Those are just accusations from a 3rd party agency. They have no way of knowing if Ratcliffe archived the messages before deleting. Signal has been approved since the Biden admin. It was most likely already distributed with the Telemessage feature.

“the agency said in a court filing”

The agency is the CIA, to a court, saying the messages are gone.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#125

Post by ceejayoz »

firesteelrain wrote: post #122
UnreachableCode wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signal has been approved since the Biden admin. It was most likely already distributed with the Telemessage feature. How do you know this? Also I would not consider this a “feature”. We should assume they’re different apps, insofar as Telemessage can add whatever they please to the source

"One of the things I was briefed on very early … was by the CIA records management folks about the use of Signal as a permissible work use," Ratcliffe said during a March 25 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing (see 45:05). "It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration." https://www.c-span.org/program/senate-committee/dni-director...

Exhaling air through flappy mouth and throat parts is also permissible in the CIA.

That doesn’t mean you won’t get in trouble if you flap them in a way that says “we bomb x at y o’clock” where uncleared people can hear.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#126

Post by oaiey »

huijzer wrote: post #68
bb88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Israel is our "Ally" -- we really shouldn't trust a foreign company with our sensitive messaging. If you're in the government, you should treat Hegseth and anyone who uses Signal and TMSIGNL as compromised.

Please tell that to European governments too. The Netherlands military police was using Whatsapp (e.g., https://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2022/06/15/maatregele... ). Only Germany has the BwMessenger (Matrix) as far as I know. It makes me wonder what the other militaries are using.

The matrix development is carried by France a lot for their secure communication. The German affair hopped onto that.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#127

Post by cge »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #23
cge wrote: post #14

As some details: TeleMessage is/was an Israeli company [1], but was acquired last year by Smarsh [2], itself a subsidiary of K1 Investment Management, both US companies. It me whether the company moved. While not necessarily related at all, their terms of service also seem to explain specific arrangements for messaging in China that appear to involve disclosures to the Chinese government. It's unclear to me how the a…

> Or are they an illegal proprietary fork? As long as their clients can redistribute it, its not illegal, especially if their clients have 0 interest in leaking the source code, the real trick is, has anyone who is NOT using that client hit any of the AGPL relay servers? For context, I worked for an employer that sold a custom software solution, which used GPL'd software, client was in the military space, so I guess…

Yes, that's what I meant by the possibility of them only offering source under AGPL to paying customers. Oddly enough, I'm familiar with that in the completely different context of davisr's reMarkable Connection Utility, and the model can work reasonably.

But from their website, which has terms of service for each app, it really seems that they are presenting them as standard proprietary closed-source offerings.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#128

Post by cge »

IgorPartola wrote: post #75
cge wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very much depends on who is running the archive system, and how it is implemented. But more generally, your point is why I mentioned "unless the archive is considered an end and the connection to it is secure."

The point of E2E is only to make sure that Alice is talking to Bob and nobody else can pretend to be either of them or eavesdrop. There is no reason whatsoever to include where else the message may be sent, encrypted or not. Consider E2E protected email service. You send me the final designs over this encrypted channel. Then I put the designs onto a USB drive and give them to my printer to print. Then I hang them as…

>You are confusing Snapchat mechanics for encryption.

I think we're talking about this from two different perspectives. You're considering a user in someone's conversation with a modified, archiving client. Yes, you obviously can't prevent that from a technical side, and it doesn't break Signal's E2E. It would be even simpler to do this with the unmodified Android Signal client, which essentially allows message exports.

I was assuming (possibly incorrectly) that TM's client was being used as an overall messaging system by the government groups involved here, which is how TM seems to advertise it: not a single user running their client, but every (or every internal) user communicating with each other using their client. In that case each user's client would be sending each message to some recipients by Signal Protocol and other recipients by, if other comments and some parts of TM's advertising are correct, SMTP. Yes, some sender-recipient pairs are E2E in that case, but that seems a bit besides the point, as there are others that aren't, and those could be vulnerable to eavesdropping and modification.

I do realize that what I wrote in the initial comment could easily be read as something other than what I meant (it isn't E2E for the messages through Signal that is broken, but separate likely non-E2E messages); I suppose I should have expected here that doing so would result in replies focusing on that interpretation.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#129

Post by bb88 »

decimalenough wrote: post #67
bb88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Israel is our "Ally" -- we really shouldn't trust a foreign company with our sensitive messaging. If you're in the government, you should treat Hegseth and anyone who uses Signal and TMSIGNL as compromised.

It's not like Israel would ever spy on the US right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

I'm pretty sure that the US is a high priority intelligence target for Israel. But then any of the big nations should be. Russia, US, China, etc.

Re: Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals App Govt Uses to Archive Signal Messages

#130

Post by bigfatkitten »

mmooss wrote: post #90
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #33

>>> overnment agencies have paid for versions of encrypted messaging apps that also have archive abilities before. In 2021, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) paid encrypted app company Wickr $700,000. This seems like a perfect use case to support Signal. Have large, corporate or govt entities, pay for a custom fork of the app, built by the app developers themselves. Why is telemessage getting the money ? Does the S…

Maybe Signal needs to devote all their resources to develping the main app, which is their mission - secure communications for the general public.

They have ‘interesting’ priorities.

MobileCoin is prioritised ahead of allowing an iPad-like secondary device experience on Android tablets, for example.

Post reply on HN