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

Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

sandervenema.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 350 posts

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#181

Post by Mz »

darklajid wrote: post #179
Mz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is a great project and most criticism I've seen here so far is not 'Signal sucks', it is usually more a long the line of 'Signal is not for me' and I have a hard time understanding why that is debatable or why this shouldn't be a valid position. To me, remarks like this one read as "Eh, if Signal is not to your tastes, no big, but no reason to trash it either." But the article and I and others here are saying,…

Okay, I kinda get where you're coming from now. But .. for a good number of 'life is on the line' scenarios leaking a random anonymous phone number (prepaid, whatever) and the arguably best encryption for instant messaging today might be a Good Idea™. Yes, you (and I, let's not forget that we kinda agree that this is bad design) might not want to share your private phone number just to contact someone via Signal. But…

No, I don't have a beef with Signal. I have no familiarity with the product. I am a woman and violence is often directed at women merely because they are women, regardless of what part of the world a woman lives in. I am also someone whose father spent 26.5 years in the Army and he fought in two wars and my ex husband was career military and ...etc. My parents also helped relatives of my mother's escape East Germany during the Cold War.

While you may hope that they know how to evaluate the trade-offs or have someone around that can explain it, many people live life under very risky circumstances and an uninformed choice can be the last choice they make.

No, I am not painting this a bit too black and white. Alive or dead is a pretty black or white thing and many people live lives where death dogs their steps. This is not an appeal to emotion or hyperbole. This is a fact.

If it isn't that big of a deal for you, cool. Glad to hear your life is fairly comfortable. But I do think it matters that informed, knowledgeable people discussing it on a forum with a strong reputation for being a good source of technical information (as well as other kinds of information) is a place where someone needs to make it very clear what the potential consequences are for people who live in dangerous circumstances and don't have the technical background or connections needed to figure this out.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#182

Post by ucy »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, Google has made it (almost) impossible to wake up the phone via some external event without using its proprietary GCM. Even though GCM is not part of AOSP, it has unique status on the platform that can't easily be replicated (without recompiling the kernel, etc like the article mentions). Before the days of doze mode & other battery optimizations, you could just listen & block on a socket, then let the…

That's very easy to manage. Every random 15-60 minutes a gcm/firebase message containing an encrypted payload with "you got this mail/no mail for you sir". So google cant get your frequency of use.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#183

Post by Arathorn »

tptacek wrote: post #175
Arathorn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I hope on Matrix we've not been blindly namedropping axolotl/double-ratchet: instead we've tried to be as transparent as possible (more-so perhaps than OWS) in terms of speccing what we've been doing ( https://matrix.org/docs/spec/olm.html , https://matrix.org/docs/spec/megolm.html , http://matrix.org/docs/olm_signing.html , https://matrix.org/speculator/spec/drafts%2Fe2e/client_serve... etc). Thanks to the Ope…

I started NCC Group Cryptography Services. They're great, but I'm telling you, no: the bios are important. A single point in time audit doesn't make something secure.

Well, thanks for starting NCC Group Crypto then :) One can at least extrapolate from an audit - it surely tells you how competent the code is at a point in time, and how rapidly and competently any issues were resolved, and one can assume the same team will progress similarly.

In terms of bios: the folks working on libolm have 10-15 years each of professionally writing decent security-conscious native code, the vast majority of which (pre-Matrix) has been proprietary, with the exception of occasional contributions to things like Wireshark. I don't think they'd have described themselves as specialising in cryptography before embarking on libolm, but the team's learnt a lot along the way and the label might be more appropriate now. Ooi, what would you consider an appropriate bio? (short of being DJB or Moxie? :)

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#184

Post by darklajid »

Mz wrote: post #181
darklajid wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I kinda get where you're coming from now. But .. for a good number of 'life is on the line' scenarios leaking a random anonymous phone number (prepaid, whatever) and the arguably best encryption for instant messaging today might be a Good Idea™. Yes, you (and I, let's not forget that we kinda agree that this is bad design) might not want to share your private phone number just to contact someone via Signal. But…

No, I don't have a beef with Signal. I have no familiarity with the product. I am a woman and violence is often directed at women merely because they are women, regardless of what part of the world a woman lives in. I am also someone whose father spent 26.5 years in the Army and he fought in two wars and my ex husband was career military and ...etc. My parents also helped relatives of my mother's escape East Germany…

.. we still don't disagree, I think?

Yes, I'm living a comfortable life (if we define that as "Not worried about dying"). I seriously cannot imagine what people in those situations might go through.

But regardless of one's technical skills, I believe that someone cautious about giving up their phone number would stop and reconsider when Signal wants you to provide your phone number? I also really hope (for the sake of the people you stand up for) that getting a random / anonymous SIM card, a 'just for close friends and family' phone number is something that is well-known and good practice?

I .. don't want to dismiss your opinion. Honestly, I'm _still_ convinced that we feel the same about Signal. Let's turn this around: What would you _hope_ for here? What do you expect or wish for? What do you criticize exactly?

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#185

Post by Mz »

darklajid wrote: post #184
Mz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't have a beef with Signal. I have no familiarity with the product. I am a woman and violence is often directed at women merely because they are women, regardless of what part of the world a woman lives in. I am also someone whose father spent 26.5 years in the Army and he fought in two wars and my ex husband was career military and ...etc. My parents also helped relatives of my mother's escape East Germany…

.. we still don't disagree, I think? Yes, I'm living a comfortable life (if we define that as "Not worried about dying"). I seriously cannot imagine what people in those situations might go through. But regardless of one's technical skills, I believe that someone cautious about giving up their phone number would stop and reconsider when Signal wants you to provide your phone number? I also really hope (for the sake o…

I don't think we specifically disagree about Signal per se, if that is what you are asking. I just think it is worth making some distinctions here, because not everyone in danger would realize that it is a problem when the app asks for your phone number. Does that make more sense?

I am not trying to argue with you. But I think this is a distinction worth making. We don't know who all is reading. People in real trouble often cannot ask questions. They may only be able to read. In which case, it matters if someone points out such a detail.

Thank you for engaging me.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#186

Post by codewiz » 

  "Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still
  cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies.
  PRISM is also still a thing."
What's this based on? Google immediately denied any association with the NSA and PRISM:

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html

Google’s chief legal officer claimed that collection was being done without Google's consent:

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/google-outraged-at...

Evidence leaked by Edward Snowden also points in the direction of illegal infiltration of Google's private network without Google's consent:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-i...

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#187

Post by Veratyr »

SamWhited wrote: post #113
Veratyr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Conversations but I couldn't for the life of me get message history to work. There's just so much stuff you have to do when it comes to XMPP to get things working. Perhaps if I used someone else's server it wouldn't be a problem but I'd prefer not to do that.

I agree that it's a bit hard to get setup if you're dead set on running your own server, but that will be the case with anything (although Prosody and Ejabberd et al could have better defaults for the majority of people who probably just want to throw up a server and be done). The nice thing about XMPP is that if you don't want to run your own server, you're spoiled for choice. The network is significantly bigger tha…

> but that will be the case with anything

I mentioned this a bit below but this wasn't the case with Matrix. Setting up a homeserver took me about half an hour and gave me everything out of the box. Setting up Prosody took me days and gave me nothing but trouble.

There are a lot of XMPP servers around but I really want my own so that I can store plaintext chat logs on the server.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#188

Post by caf »

ucy wrote: post #182
clumsysmurf wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, Google has made it (almost) impossible to wake up the phone via some external event without using its proprietary GCM. Even though GCM is not part of AOSP, it has unique status on the platform that can't easily be replicated (without recompiling the kernel, etc like the article mentions). Before the days of doze mode & other battery optimizations, you could just listen & block on a socket, then let the…

That's very easy to manage. Every random 15-60 minutes a gcm/firebase message containing an encrypted payload with "you got this mail/no mail for you sir". So google cant get your frequency of use.

It's my impression that most people use Signal as an SMS app replacement, and in that environment people would not find a random 15-60 minute delay until their phone tells them about an incoming message to be tenable. I certainly wouldn't.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#189

Post by sandervenema »

codewiz wrote: post #186

"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies. PRISM is also still a thing." What's this based on? Google immediately denied any association with the NSA and PRISM: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html Google’s chief legal officer claimed that collection was being done without Google's consent: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/goo…

On this: https://wikileaks.org/Op-ed-Google-and-the-NSA-Who-s.html

there are links on that page that point out multiple e-mails from the STRATFOR leaks and other files that point to Google being deeply embedded with the U.S. security apparatus.

Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#190

Post by sandervenema »

sandervenema wrote: post #189
codewiz wrote: post #186

"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies. PRISM is also still a thing." What's this based on? Google immediately denied any association with the NSA and PRISM: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html Google’s chief legal officer claimed that collection was being done without Google's consent: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/technology/goo…

On this: https://wikileaks.org/Op-ed-Google-and-the-NSA-Who-s.html there are links on that page that point out multiple e-mails from the STRATFOR leaks and other files that point to Google being deeply embedded with the U.S. security apparatus. Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-cost...

And Google became a PRISM partner in 2009, as the slides here from the Snowden collection prove: https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/PRISMUS-984XNOverview2...
Post reply on HN