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I don't trust Signal

drewdevault.com

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Re: I don't trust Signal

#231

Post by nickpsecurity »

zmanian wrote: post #41
lmm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Open Whisper Systems had received a national security letter requiring them to collect more information and keep it secret that they were doing so, how would you expect them to have responded to that subpoena?

NSL can't require to collect new business records. They can only compel you to disclose business records that you already have. This is beyond the legal authority of an NSL.

The Core Secrets leak said the FBI "compels" U.S. companies to "SIGINT-enable" their products if they don't take money. SIGINT-enable means installing backdoors. So, yeah they can. They also do this with classification order mandating secrecy from organizations and people that are immune to prosecution. In the Lavabit case, they wanted a device attached to the network to do whatever they wanted with the company ordered to lie to customers about their secrets still safe via the encryption keys. That's always worth remembering for these discussions. Plus, most companies or individuals won't shut down their operation to stop a hypothetical threat.

So, you have to assume they'll always get more power and surveillance over time via secret orders if there's no consequences for them demanding it but people on other side can be massively fined or do time for refusing. Organizations about privacy protection simply shouldn't operate in police states like the U.S..

Re: I don't trust Signal

#232

Post by lucb1e »

j16sdiz wrote: post #127
mathnmusic wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, in an indirect way, requires 1/6th of the world's population to part with their biometrics. It requires phone number, and in India, getting a phone # requires Aadhaar, which is a centralized, biometrics-based ID (photo, fingerprints AND iris at the moment).

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

I think there are better solutions for that such as CAPTCHAs, rate limiting, etc. We don't need to resort to giving out biometrics to solve spam bots.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#233

Post by zzzcpan »

pron wrote: post #183
zzzcpan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trustless security does not exist, and attempting to achieve it by adding more technological layers and more complexity reduces rather than enhanced security. How so? If you can minimize trust to the point where you have to trust someone to only properly design federated or peer-to-peer open protocol and trust that others will participate and oversee the process it's one thing, as there is no control or power to go…

I understand your argument, but it cannot be shown to be more valid than the complete opposite: the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly than you would need to trust to operate a centralized system. In fact, it could be argued that beyond some complexity level, an unbreakable design is virtually impossible, even in pr…

> the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly

I disagree with that. The more centralized system is, the less trust boundaries it has and more vulnerable and insecure it is, because penetrating one trust boundary gives access to everything. Security always requires additional complexity. And decentralization forces you to take that complexity seriously for once, something you neglect, not simplify, in centralized insecure designs. Forcing you to deal with just trust explicitly and systematically leads to much more secure designs.

Other than that decentralized systems are exactly the same as centralized, just with more players and choices and incentives not to break anyone's trust. The only problem is all that embrace, extend crap large corporations always attempt to pull off and recentralize everything.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#234

Post by mindB »

Arathorn wrote: post #121
r3bl wrote: post #40

> P.S. If you’re looking for good alternatives to Signal, I can recommend Matrix. Yes, if you're looking for alternatives to Signal, you should totally use a solution that hasn't rolled out end-to-end encryption by default[0]. /s ...and that only two clients have implemented so far, out of 50ish that they list on their website. [0] https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-the-status-o...

Fwiw, Matrix E2E actually exists in separate codebases in: Riot/Web, Riot/iOS, Riot/Android, nheko, matrix-python-sdk, libpurple (in PR), and shortly in Fractal (thanks to https://gitlab.gnome.org/jhaye/olm-rs etc). So yup, it sucks that it's not turned on by default in private rooms, but we're working away as fast as we can.

For the record, E2E is currently in libpurple master (only decryption not encryption) and in PR on matrix-python-sdk. Just a slight flip there.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#235

Post by krn »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #224
lez wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-Droid argument is the strongest and most evident among all. I don't trust Google, I don't trust Play. The main point is, Moxie could take the wind out of the sails of literally all arguments in this page by publishing Signal on F-Droid but he just won't. This alone is enough for me to lose trust in Signal.

Are you going to pay for him to do that?

And who is paying for Signal to be on Google Play?

Re: I don't trust Signal

#236

Post by ppjet6 »

jlund wrote: post #215
dleslie wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Contacts permission is completely optional, and contact information is never stored: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

This seems like smoke and mirrors to me:

  Traditionally, in Signal that process has looked like:
  
    The client calculates the truncated SHA256 hash of each phone number in the device’s address book.
    The client transmits those truncated hashes to the service.
    The service does a lookup from a set of hashed registered users.
    The service returns the intersection of registered users.
The phone number space is really not this big.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#237

Post by mindB »

Arathorn wrote: post #130
detaro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Matrix server can force E2E on all messages passing it?

Yes, it can - for instance the Matrix servers that the French government runs do this by default already. We haven't exposed this as a config option and pushed it into mainstream Synapse yet because of https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779 , but the tweak for doing it is: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/3426/files

Is this true? As far as I know, even in rooms with m.room.encryption, you can still send normal m.room.messages. Or does the config option you're describing automatically setup room PLs such that m.room.message can't be sent?

Re: I don't trust Signal

#238

Post by wpdev_63 »

If signal was somehow federated(without a central server) and open source(which it is) then there's not much to not to trust.

When they figure out a way to make signal serverless, then the only thing you would have to worry about is the OS of the phone and its underlying architecture...

I have no doubt we will reach that point but I wish we get there sooner rather than later.

Re: I don't trust Signal

#239

Post by detaro »

ppjet6 wrote: post #236
jlund wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Contacts permission is completely optional, and contact information is never stored: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/

This seems like smoke and mirrors to me: Traditionally, in Signal that process has looked like: The client calculates the truncated SHA256 hash of each phone number in the device’s address book. The client transmits those truncated hashes to the service. The service does a lookup from a set of hashed registered users. The service returns the intersection of registered users. The phone number space is really not this…

They acknowledge that in literally the next paragraph, and the entire post is about how they improved on that old state of things. How is that "smoke and mirrors"?

Re: I don't trust Signal

#240

Post by lucb1e »

trumped wrote: post #216

Signal is at least as good as all the other cloud messaging apps... (privacy wise)

Sure but I think that is a given. The fact that it's "at least as [secure]" as something that stores chats in plaintext on their servers (Telegram) is not exactly news...
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