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I don't trust Signal

drewdevault.com

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Re: I don't trust Signal

#161

Post by dleslie »

lowry wrote: post #88
g_sch wrote: post #39

Some version of this post seems to circulate every few months or so. This one is more direct in its accusations of Moxie acting in bad faith. I think this is disingenuous. Moxie has been very clear[0] about the tradeoffs that Signal has made and the reasons for them. It's fine to be dissatisfied with those choices. It's another thing entirely to accuse Moxie of dissimulating. Personally, I'd like to see Signal replac…

I would agree with you if only Signal would not ask for so many permissions on my phone.

Last time I had it installed it scanned my contacts a half dozen times while I slept. I removed it in the AM.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#162

Post by detaro »

samstave wrote: post #157
leetbulb wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love wire. Never have any issues with the desktop client nor mobile app. Even though it's Electron, it seems to be extremely focused on security. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same metadata issues as Signal. If you really need higher security messaging, p2p is your best bet, but then you may face correlation attacks by ISPs and whatnot... Maybe we all just need to get our HAM radio licenses :)

How is HAM secure? (I don't know anything about HAM)

It's not secure by definition, since encryption is forbidden in ham radio.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#163

Post by alexnewman »

Want to lose all faith in signal, try filing a bug fix as pull request

- It probably will be ignored forever or shouted down - wanna notify the mailing list. Guess what you have to join rise up! Aka if you wanna file a patch to signal I hope you are ok with Joining an “anarchist” mailing list - Then when you are approved to make noises on the mailing list, it still gets ignored, no explainatiob

1 year later I removed the obvious bugs in the base64 implementation of signal

Re: I don't trust Signal

#164

Post by FrozenTraffic »

alexnewman wrote: post #152
j16sdiz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as a good thing because it effectively rate limit the spam bot creations

Ya really think phone numbers are hard to get?

Since there is someone above claiming that getting a phone number in some countries "requires" biometric identification, I'd say yes.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#165

Post by Gaelan »

thsealienbstrds wrote: post #142
hprotagonist wrote: post #16

But we have to trust that Moxie is running the server software he says he is. We have to trust that he isn’t writing down a list of people we’ve talked to, when, and how often. We have to trust not only that Moxie is trustworthy, but given that Open Whisper Systems is based in San Francisco we have to trust that he hasn’t received a national security letter, too (by the way, Signal doesn’t have a warrant canary). Mox…

If I read that document correctly, it's more accurate to say that Signal stores at least two integers, rather than exactly. Signal did not provide information that does not fall under certain information categories, and they say that a court order would be needed to force them to disclose any of that information (if they possess any, which they deny).

But they did deny possessing any of that information in the subpoena reply, so if you trust that they are replying truthfully it is exactly 2.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#166

Post by shin_lao »

pron wrote: post #53

> Truly secure systems don’t require trust. This is a chat app so, by definition, security requires trusting at least one other person. Also, I think experience shows that secrets can often be least trusted to those who have some interest in/use for them, with the secret owner often being the least trustworthy of all. So I'd say that if you trust yourself you're already probably trusting one of the weakest links in w…

I also reacted to this line, because there is no security without trust, would it be only trust in the security system.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#167

Post by balladeer »

g_sch wrote: post #39

Some version of this post seems to circulate every few months or so. This one is more direct in its accusations of Moxie acting in bad faith. I think this is disingenuous. Moxie has been very clear[0] about the tradeoffs that Signal has made and the reasons for them. It's fine to be dissatisfied with those choices. It's another thing entirely to accuse Moxie of dissimulating. Personally, I'd like to see Signal replac…

> I'd like to see Signal replace WhatsApp

And one day we realise it was indeed something nefarious, let's assume something of this sort happened in the future, and then we rue that we didn't act when people used to say something was amiss.

There is one line in the article that says it well:

> Truly secure systems don’t require trust.

edit:

I have supported Matrix and Firefox among others (both in code as an Android dev and with modest donations - stopped using Firefox after Pocket). But no, not Signal. I'd wait for federation (if at all).

Re: I don't trust Signal

#168

Post by okatsu »

lmm wrote: post #120
okatsu wrote: post #38

I don't know anything about Moxie derailing threads or anything like that but if we just listened to critics all the time then we just wouldn't have anything. Signal is better than a lot of what is out there and being used as scale and that counts for something. More secure is always better than not secure at all.

For most products it's better to have something than nothing, but not for cryptography. Bad encryption can be worse than no encryption, since it leads to a false sense of security. So it's really important to get it right, and worth criticizing even if you don't have anything better.

The article isn't about bad encryption though. It's not about a flaw in the signal protocol or something like that. It's stuff like Moxie doesn't like F-Droid. Which is not an invalid criticism but I'm not gonna stop recommending Signal over Facebook Messenger because of that.

Regarding false sense of security...eh. I can't speak for endangered activists but everyday people write stupid things whether it's on SMS or Signal. But might as well be on Signal.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#169

Post by JustSomeNobody »

jhasse wrote: post #131
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #105

What's wrong with using Google Play Services? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume it has to do with message notifications. So, by using GCM, Signal would be leaking some metadata about when and who, etc. I assume. But wouldn't someone be able to get that same information from your ISP (with a little more work)? You're losing the benefits of longer battery life for basically nothing. Security isn't absolute. I don't…

It allows Google to easily circumvent any end-to-end encryption since it's a rootkit.

How? What mechanism?

Does it access the plain text from the keyboard before the app encrypts it?

Re: I don't trust Signal

#170

Post by lmm »

okatsu wrote: post #168
lmm wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most products it's better to have something than nothing, but not for cryptography. Bad encryption can be worse than no encryption, since it leads to a false sense of security. So it's really important to get it right, and worth criticizing even if you don't have anything better.

The article isn't about bad encryption though. It's not about a flaw in the signal protocol or something like that. It's stuff like Moxie doesn't like F-Droid. Which is not an invalid criticism but I'm not gonna stop recommending Signal over Facebook Messenger because of that. Regarding false sense of security...eh. I can't speak for endangered activists but everyday people write stupid things whether it's on SMS or…

> The article isn't about bad encryption though. It's not about a flaw in the signal protocol or something like that. It's stuff like Moxie doesn't like F-Droid. Which is not an invalid criticism but I'm not gonna stop recommending Signal over Facebook Messenger because of that.

You have to look at the whole system, not just one algorithm that it uses - if any part of the system is secure then the whole is insecure. Do you believe Signal-the-system is meaningfully more secure than Facebook Messenger (which uses industry-standard HTTPS, so at the low-level protocol/algorithm level it's certainly secure enough)? If so, why/how? If not, why recommend it?

(I agree that Signal is more secure than SMS, but so is Facebook Messenger or any number of other messaging apps).

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