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Signal Secure Backups

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#211

Post by nine_k »

XorNot wrote: post #187
hiq wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, Signal + Syncthing also works fine, that's what I have.

It absolutely does not work fine. Keeping 2x the size of my database in free space on my phone to let backups work it's no solution at all, which is why I stopped doing it. (The backup creates two files - current and previous, and Syncthing can't remove complete files to another location, so you need an actually rather difficult to write script to do it).

I see. I was talking about Syncthing in general, not about the specific way of backing up Signal.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#212

Post by nikeee »

> alongside features that let you transfer your encrypted message history between Android, iOS, and Desktop devices.

That's actually the feature I've been looking forward to. As I moved vom Android to iOS, I lost _all_ message histories from all messenger apps that use E2EE (Signal, WhatsApp, Threema, etc). The only one that "just worked" was Telegram due to not being encrypted. WhatsApp had a migration app that has to be done when setting up the iPhone, but it failed due to some bug. Signal had backups, but they didn't seem to be compatible between different OS versions.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#213

Post by varenc »

Silhouette wrote: post #202
derefr wrote: post #128

@Signal devs: any reason that the only two options for backup are now "locally" (flexible, but only solves for some use-cases) or "to Signal's special servers" ( not flexible; might be legally impossible for many users to enable)? Because it seems to me that, for much of Signal's (often paranoid) audience, they'd much rather use one of the backup/sync providers they've already verified trust of, than have to addition…

Note that in all cases, Signal could/should still fully encrypt this data before pushing it to the provider; the backup wouldn't be expected to be "legible" to the user. That seems like an unhelpful limitation for a lot of people. For me - and as far as I know literally everyone I communicate with using Signal - the reason to use it is the E2EE for the messages. Once we have the messages or media on our own devices w…

Agree with the sentiment, but I can understand why they don't offer this. Rational or not, people will feel less safe if all their messages can just be easily exported to plaintext. A few scenarios where this might matter like the 'evil maid attack' where someone briefly has access to your unlocked phone.

But I just use this project to export my signal messages to plaintext: https://github.com/tbvdm/sigtop

I have it auto run periodically and it's great. Makes for easy full text searching of my message history.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#214

Post by SwamyM »

While we are on the topic of Signal, does anyone know if it's possible to have a lock/PIN to open the Signal app itself that's different than your device lock/PIN?

Threema has this feature and it's reassuring to know that people can't open my chats when I hand my phone to someone. Or if I give the device lock/PIN to someone I trust for backup purposes but don't want them to have access to chats themselves.

Last I checked this was not possible with Signal (at least on Android).

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#215

Post by Sanzig »

cyphar wrote: post #207
Zambyte wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Presumably they're referring to Google's plans to roll out developer signing requirements for all apps[1], which will affect F-Droid-installed apps. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028

Assuming that the developer of Syncthing-Fork doesn't mind providing ID to Google, they shouldn't have an issue getting a signing key (we will see how this works in practice). They aren't doing anything objectionable to Google.

The bigger issue for third party apps will be things like Newpipe, where applying for a key will put the developers in danger of a lawsuit because it affects Google's business.

(The APK signing requirement is a fiasco, I'm not defending Google. Just pointing out that this app will probably not be as seriously impacted as others).

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#216

Post by CobrastanJorji »

> This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents--

--or, of course, Joint Chiefs military coordination. I bet that was a fun surprise for the team.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#217

Post by teiferer »

kelnos wrote: post #182
teiferer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the article? They are working on it.

Their first cut at "working on it" is to require that we pay Signal to store our backups for us (45 days of media and 100MiB total is not a useful free tier; I have more than 1 GiB of messages/media spanning years), when that's an entirely unnecessary restriction.

I don't know what you do for a living but it's very common when writing and releasing software to do it in phases. Earlier phases have a restricted feature set and feedback from the field/customers/users experiencing earlier phases informs choices in later phases.

Unless you have direct insights into their dev process, your claim that the restriction be "entitely unnecessary" seems overly strong.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#218

Post by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t »

Sesse__ wrote: post #48
poisonborz wrote: post #39

Backing up Signal on Android for free and offline was ~always possible. The app creates a multi GB backup file on the phone memory under the Signal folder that you can just copy out and back on a new phone. The file is encrypted with the passcode and the database can be extracted. https://github.com/bepaald/signalbackup-tools

There are a couple of problems with the existing backup: 1. It is non-incremental. This means you'll need about as much free space on your phone as your Signal database takes, and it may take many hours to make if your database is large (mine is 18GB). I used to wake up to find my phone had not even fully charged because it had been so busy writing Signal backups. 2. Once you have it on disk, how do you get it away f…

How can an encrypted backup be incremental if it's supposed to be never decrypted on-remote-machines?

Ever thought about that?

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#220

Post by palebluedot »

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #218
Sesse__ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of problems with the existing backup: 1. It is non-incremental. This means you'll need about as much free space on your phone as your Signal database takes, and it may take many hours to make if your database is large (mine is 18GB). I used to wake up to find my phone had not even fully charged because it had been so busy writing Signal backups. 2. Once you have it on disk, how do you get it away f…

How can an encrypted backup be incremental if it's supposed to be never decrypted on-remote-machines? Ever thought about that?

That seems pretty trivial to implement
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