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A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

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Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#241

Post by kelnos »

Jkvngt wrote: post #207
smokey_circles wrote: post #101

Sorry, where's the vulnerability in _signal_ here? The TLS proxy is not sufficient. Marlinspike addressed this in their incredibly childish PR [0]: >As we said in the blog post, it is nothing more than a simple TLS proxy as an interim solution to help people while we're working on something more scalable and more robust I'm not so sure they made it clear they were working on another solution in that blog post [1], bu…

Why is Signal positioning itself as a solution when Rosenfeld admits it’s not ready?

They're not. They released something as a stopgap measure that will help some, but not all, people in Iran get back on the app, because their better, longer-term solution is not ready, and they believed that people there needed at least something in the short term.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#242

Post by kelnos »

j-james wrote: post #174
alexpetralia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If you don't like it, create a fork? It is open source.

Signal discourages third-party clients. https://community.signalusers.org/t/how-to-get-signal-apks-o...

Sure, and they can fork the server (which I know isn't completely up to date) as well. No one is entitled to the work and resources of the Signal team. If people don't like where they are going, they are free to fork and build and maintain an alternative on their own.

Yes, convincing the Signal team to address their particular issues would be a much easier path for them, but a) again, they are not entitled to anything, and b) attempting to convince by acting childishly and ignoring the Signal team's wishes is not a great way to convince anyone of anything.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#243

Post by kelnos »

olah_1 wrote: post #78
motohagiography wrote: post #70

Even if I agree with the principles of the anti-censorship people, to be an activist to apply pressure on Signal for features instead of forking and building solutions is suspicious to me. Signal does a great job of frustrating mass interception, which I think was its original point. Inventing new criteria and re-framing their product as inadequate for this scope change as an activism play seems insincere. We can exp…

> instead of forking and building solutions What would you fork? The signal server code that hasn’t been updated in almost a year[1]? If that is truly the same code that we use with signal today, would your fork work with this same network? Or would it be it’s own 1-server network all alone? [1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server

Has the year-old code somehow "gone bad"? At worst they can roll back to year-old versions of the mobile clients as well, and start with that as a base.

Would it be better/easier to have an up-to-date server? Sure, but they don't have it, and that's life.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#244

Post by kelnos »

upofadown wrote: post #183
maqp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP lacks forward secrecy. E.g. the Iranian government can collect every PGP-message you ever send, and if and when they compromise your private key, they can retrospectively a) decrypt your entire message history, even if you've deleted it from your endpoint b) prove that you're the author of every message, because only your private key can be used to craft the digital signatures. Signal solves both problems. For di…

>decrypt your entire message history, even if you've deleted it from your endpoint But how many people actually delete their old messages? If they don't then forward secrecy doesn't help. They get your messages when they get you key material. Encrypted instant messaging is inherently less secure than something that can be performed offline like encrypted email because the key information is exposed all the time. So i…

> But how many people actually delete their old messages?

I don't know, because I'm not in this position, but I would really really hope that someone who is having conversations that could get them killed or thrown in jail by an oppressive government would be using disappearing messages, or at least setting things up so messages are auto-deleted after some fairly short amount of time.

> A private key that in the case of, say, PGP does not have to be associated with any particular identity at all.

No, but presumably you will have possession of that private key. If you realize that the authorities are closing in on you, you can destroy your copy of the key, but if you're caught unexpectedly, they can tie your possession of the key to the messages.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#245

Post by catkitcourt »

tylermenezes wrote: post #50
nexthash wrote: post #8

It seems that a couple of security researchers from this community felt that Signal's implementation of a TLS-in-TLS proxy to allow its use in censored Iran didn't live up to their standards (it can be detected by censors and blocked). However, after Signal rejected this issue, they turned toxic and were prevented from posting anymore [1]. The above post is their reaction, which feels more like them lashing out rathe…

> rather than resolving the issue productively Unfortunately it's not possible to productively resolve issues with the Signal team, something you can find documented again and again. (My own experience: I had to justify the the user impact of 30+sec freezes on every sent message, confirmed by multiple people. Bug was closed wontfix.) This is a known thing with Moxie and the culture he's created at Signal and it's unf…

As they've claimed, this is a security vulnerability, instead of a software bug. If they really think this is a vulnerability, send to Signal's email: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320791-Ho...

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#246

Post by detaro »

kelnos wrote: post #239
detaro wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A brief explanation of the threat model (i.e. what it aims to protect against and what it doesn't) would probably be more useful. "Do not trust people that tell you Signal is perfectly secure" is true but probably doesn't lead to the right user behavior. I'm not claiming communicating these things well is easy. (and obviously a bunch of the blame lies with people that do uncritically push Signal, if you are journalis…

Why is it the responsibility of the Signal developers to do people's threat modeling for them? If your situation is that you need to communicate things that could get you killed or imprisoned, you should be using a burner phone that has pretty much nothing installed on it but Signal (or whatever app you choose to use for secure comms). You should also be using a third-party OS/ROM that you can be pretty sure hasn't b…

It shouldn't do their threat modeling, but it is being widely promoted as "secure" (with little to no further restrictions) by and to people without detailed tech knowledge and is in an excellent position to inform their "threat modeling". As a principle, "People should know better" somewhat works for experts tools, tools for non-experts should where possible let users know what they are not aware of. (What exactly that means and where the limits are is, as said, a non-trivial question)

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#247

Post by Jkvngt »

detaro wrote: post #233
Jkvngt wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal people have no issues creating user handles on Reddit and Discord and Twitter. Again, the only reason to require a phone number is because Rosenfeld wants it.

No, because using phone numbers gives you contact discovery through the phone book "for free" (with further privacy implications Signal has discussed at length). And an entire argument around it providing a social graph independent of service infrastructure that is important for some aspects of user freedom - again something that has been discussed publicly at length, both from Moxie and from other players in the wid…

Wait so Signal scans your phone book? LOL

Any dissident trusting this kind of deserves to be tortured to death.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#248

Post by Jkvngt »

irscott wrote: post #228
Jkvngt wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like using a phone number as an account identifier is a huge risk to privacy. Has Rosenfeld admitted this? It’s just weird to require a phone number unless you’re talking about some big tech botnet like Facebook or Google.

The Rosenfeld stuff is weird, man.

Yeah I had to actually look up his name. Kinda shady.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#249

Post by catkitcourt »

Jkvngt wrote: post #206
hiq wrote: post #73

The answer from Moxie to these people: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy/pull/15#issuec... I think that says it all. I'm also a bit concerned that "security researchers" don't seem to understand the threat model. Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. The TLS proxy is only meant to help circumvent censorship, not obfuscate its protocol. And indeed, as a temporary solution, it'…

Why does it need your phone number? Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program. And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters? Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? Maybe the goal isn’t really security or privacy after all...

Quick answer: Find the right one to blame, please.

If you think that, just by making authorities know your phone number is registered on Signal is dangerous enough for you to be arrested, you should not use Signal.

Signal, like any other software, can not solve political, or dictatorship. Signal is a chat app, not a magical tool, even if it is helpful for those objectives. That's what we mean when we says "security is layered".

So, if your government have unlimited resources (that is to say, they can simply arrest and sentence you if they *think* you *may* using Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Tox chat, ..., without judicial review), then maybe Signal is not your biggest problem.

Re: A Statement on Recent Events Between Signal and the Anti-Censorship Community

#250

Post by catkitcourt »

nexthash wrote: post #8

It seems that a couple of security researchers from this community felt that Signal's implementation of a TLS-in-TLS proxy to allow its use in censored Iran didn't live up to their standards (it can be detected by censors and blocked). However, after Signal rejected this issue, they turned toxic and were prevented from posting anymore [1]. The above post is their reaction, which feels more like them lashing out rathe…

I recommend quote their "anti-censorship community". I'm anti-censorship, but I'm not a member of them. Their behavior insults me. I'm not represented by them.
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