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Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

sandervenema.ch

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Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#221

Post by throwaway101416 »

zigzigzag wrote: post #77
antocv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a coherent argument which you just refuse to see. Signal was marketed as anti mass surveillance secure messaging system. It is but a mere user friendly email+gpg alternative. It actively avoid anti-mass surveillance methods and does the opposite - encourages centralization and collection of user statistics. Even Telegram is better, as people arent fooled by what it is. A better alternative is Ring.cx or Tox.…

How does it actively avoid anti-mass surveillance methods? There are no metadata obfuscation mechanisms that work at scale against all adversaries. Using GCM is without a doubt a big win for privacy because adversaries that have backbone taps (like your friendly local intelligence agency) just see SSL to google.com which tells them nothing of any use, not even that you use Signal. A big encrypted packet from google.c…

There are such mechanisms.

Wire for example, doesn't require you to sign up with a phone number. You don't even have to have a phone.

How is it not an obfuscation mechanism that works at scale?

Also, what if google has a rogue employee who works for one of the surveillance agencies?

Trusting all your private data to an advertising company that has root access on your device in an app that is explicitly built around security and privacy is insane.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#222

Post by x0x0 »

sandervenema wrote: post #178
tptacek wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand what I'm saying. I agree that crypto alone doesn't equal privacy --- it's table stakes. Clearly: it does not follow from that observation that crypto doesn't matter. If you cannot at least be cryptographically secure , the rest of what you do doesn't matter. We now have two examples --- CryptoCat and Telegram --- of "secure messaging" systems being used by governments as a way of hunting down act…

I see I haven't replied yet to your first point: here goes. Of course clearly an alternative has to be at least cryptographically secure . I fully agree with you on that. I'm not recommending something that isn't, and certainly am not recommending Telegram or Cryptocat. An alternative needs to be as a bare minimum cryptographically secure. And then on top of that it would be very nice if there was federation, not tie…

But you seem to be hand-waving away the problems Moxie had with federation [1]. Citing xmpp is not a counterexample. Some problems do not have solutions.

[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#223

Post by majewsky »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #110
SamWhited wrote: post #5

I highly recommend Conversations (disclaimer: I've worked on it in the past, although I'm not a project "member" per say): https://conversations.im/ It's open source, uses a federated, open protocol, and can do multiple types of encryption including OTR and OMEMO (an XMPP wire format that uses the Axolotl ratched devised for signal). It does not do VoIP, so it would just be for chat (although there is a large bounty…

Curious for next time I evaluate XMPP is there a list of servers recommended by the Conversations team that people could install themselves? My issue with XMPP is that on the same system I have at DigitalOcean where I could run: an IRC server, a Web Server, and a Mumble Server and extra goodies all together in one box, I couldn't effectively run a XMPP server that would stay up (it would crash). I would of kept at XM…

I have a virtual server (1 CPU + 1 GiB RAM) running nginx, murmur and Prosody. free(1) reports 80 MiB used memory, thereof 10 MiB for Prosody. (I just have one active account, though: myself.)

So unless you're planning on hosting hundreds or thousands of users, you should be fine IMO.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#224

Post by bitmapbrother »

>I’m pretty sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or version of Signal to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none the wiser that they installed malware on their phones.

I'm not sure he understands how app signing works and why it would be impossible for Google to forge a developer's signature. He also seems to have a problem with GCM and Google in general. Perhaps he should look into writing his own secure chat application.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#225

Post by SamWhited »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #156
SamWhited wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who bootstraps the bootstrap nodes?

The bootstrap nodes were probably the first ones on the DHT: hence, no bootstrap needed. If it's a new bootstrap node, it's connected to the old bootstrap nodes, or some other set of nodes in the DHT, just like any other node: distributed, not federated. But once a node is acutually inside the DHT, it should never need to talk to the bootstrap nodes ever again: that's a pretty major win, in some respects.

Sorry, that was supposed to be a silly joke, but it also made it horribly unclear. I meant: How do you find the nodes to bootstrap yourself into the DHT in the first place? They must be IPs shipped with the client?

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#226

Post by giancarlostoro »

majewsky wrote: post #223
giancarlostoro wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious for next time I evaluate XMPP is there a list of servers recommended by the Conversations team that people could install themselves? My issue with XMPP is that on the same system I have at DigitalOcean where I could run: an IRC server, a Web Server, and a Mumble Server and extra goodies all together in one box, I couldn't effectively run a XMPP server that would stay up (it would crash). I would of kept at XM…

I have a virtual server (1 CPU + 1 GiB RAM) running nginx, murmur and Prosody. free(1) reports 80 MiB used memory, thereof 10 MiB for Prosody. (I just have one active account, though: myself.) So unless you're planning on hosting hundreds or thousands of users, you should be fine IMO.

I had not even 3 users... I was running a Java one, looks like Prosody is worth it's salt. Does it support E2E and other features that Conversations supports? :)

Edit:

I was running it on a DigitalOcean box with only 512MB of ram at the time, which I found a bit silly that I would come back and the server was down, but it was a different XMPP server than Prosody.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#227

Post by bitmapbrother »

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…

>Unfortunately, Google has made it (almost) impossible to wake up the phone via some external event without using its proprietary GCM

No, fortunately Google has made it impossible for apps to abuse waking up the phone.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#228

Post by throwaway101416 »

tptacek wrote: post #219
throwaway101416 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the other alternatives like Wire and Wickr? Wickr went through crypto reviews. Wire is open source. They don't require using phone numbers so it's not really annoying to sign up without giving away anonymity.

Serious question: what does "went through crypto reviews" even mean? One of these messaging systems is designed and implemented by experts; the others, not, but they've gotten 1-2 person/weeks of attention by (one hopes) a crypto experts.

Regarding Wickr: isec partners spent 9 person-weeks https://www.wickr.com/about-us/blog/2014/08/08/isec-partner-...

this one spent 240 hrs: https://www.wickr.com/about-us/blog/2014/08/05/aspect-securi...

You haven't talked about Wire.

People have to trust someone. If you are not a crypto expert you have to rely on crypto experts to tell you if the protocol/app is sound.

I don't have to be a security expert to know that google can get the phone numbers of all the contacts I talk to on Signal. So the anonymity angle is lost completely.

Regarding privacy, I don't have to be a crypto expert to know that google services are running as root on my phone. They can easily replace the app itself. Avoiding using google proprietary services and still using Signal is a lot of pain.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#229

Post by majewsky »

codedokode wrote: post #212
trimbo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why there is a fingerprint ("Safety Numbers" in Signal), and a warning on every message when that fingerprint changes.

Warning still does not fully prevent the attack. The attacker can still access the account and obtain the data stored at a server (like contact list if it is stored there).

> like contact list if it is stored there

The only thing that we know they store is the creation timestamp and last-seen timestamp for each account: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-demands-signa...

Reading over the article again, though, it neither confirms nor denies where these timestamps are the only thing stored about an account. They explain these are the only data matching the concrete subpoena they received.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#230

Post by throwaway101416 »

kuschku wrote: post #28
SapphireSun wrote: post #25

Essentially this guy is saying, Signal is secure, it's mostly easy to use (with the exception of multiple phone numbers), and the only alternative he mentioned is a half broken clone. Is he seriously going to stop recommending it to people whose lives depend on secure communications because of some abstruse ideological point? In any case, Moxie's position is a reasonable one even though there are some arguments for f…

The biggest argument is that there is little of a difference between Signal and Telegram or Signal and WhatsApp for the user if they are forced to use the official servers, and those servers get to store their entire social graph.

That's a terrible argument. What about all the other end-to-end encryption services that have more users and don't require you to give up anonymity?
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