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

Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

signal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 350 posts

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#291

Post by monocasa »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #270
thepangolino wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That seems like pretty unreasonable tinfoil Doesn't seem so to me. >I assume they don't pay You're dead wrong, my friend. They do pay. A lot. Think of all those juicy government contracts.

If they pay for more access than is required, why wasn't that in the documents Snowden dumped? Instead, we saw the normal court rulings requiring companies to comply with data access requests.

I mean, paying Microsoft (among the rest of the tech giants) for more access than is required was in the leaks, in the form of the PRISM program.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#292

Post by lern_too_spel »

monocasa wrote: post #291
lern_too_spel wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they pay for more access than is required, why wasn't that in the documents Snowden dumped? Instead, we saw the normal court rulings requiring companies to comply with data access requests.

I mean, paying Microsoft (among the rest of the tech giants) for more access than is required was in the leaks, in the form of the PRISM program.

You don't understand PRISM. PRISM was a system for processing the data that the companies were legally required to send.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#293

Post by vidyesh »

nacs wrote: post #273
marknadal wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why but Signal has always scared me - I think it was when I noticed it sharing my contacts with their server to "find my friends" when I never consented. Matrix is looking good, but again not P2P only federated. This is why we are trying to do fully P2P end-to-end encryption like with https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... .

> my contacts with their server to "find my friends" when I never consented. I installed Signal a few days ago for the first time and there was definitely a prompt, with an easy way to skip it, before it did the find my friends thing. The wording also seemed to indicate that only the hashes of the numbers would be uploaded but not sure if thats actually true.

How does Signal know my contact is using Signal?

Signal periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers for contact discovery. Names are never transmitted, and the information is not stored on the servers. The server responds with the contacts that are Signal users and then immediately discards this information. Your phone now knows which of your contacts is a Signal user and notifies you if your contact just started using Signal.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/115005045728-Do...

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#294

Post by usaphp »

lvillani wrote: post #62
usaphp wrote: post #14

While on topic of Skype: My God the latest Skype design update is abysmal, whoever come up with that horrible mess should be fired and never touch any design or management role at all. And it’s not only design but the ux is horrible too, when you switch between conversation - it does not focus on the chat box field so you can start typing right away, instead you have to click it first. This is a basic stuff for a cha…

> on iPhone X when you accidentally click top left corner of the phone where the clock is - for some inexplicable reason the whole conversation scrolls all the way to the top, which is incredibly annoying! That's by design and standard iOS behaviour (it has been there for years). Tapping anywhere on the system toolbar (i.e. where the clock, wifi, signal strength indicators are) brings the main scrollable view to its…

The difference is that in browser you have to tap it twice , first tap expands browser bar and second tap scrolls to the top. However In conversations it just scrolls to the very top with a first click, which is incredibly annoying.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#295

Post by usaphp »

josefresco wrote: post #98
kettlecorn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried it on this webpage, and you’re correct! I really dislike behavior like this that is useful to a few people but is far more likely to be encountered accidentally and feel buggy.

You're kidding right? It's been a feature of iOS for what feels like forever, and it's literally the one thing I miss most when switching to Android. I have witnessed first hand, very un-tech savvy iOS users using the feature, as well as people confused (my daughters) why the same action on Android doesn't product the same result. I thought this was one of Apple's "protected" features that everyone used/loved - guess…

Just noticed something - in safari it requires you to tap it twice, thus precenting accidential clicks, while in skype it sends you straight to the top with a first click.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#296

Post by sergers »

huhtenberg wrote: post #210
Systemic33 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft used centralised servers because the Skype prior to that was a curse to mobile devices running on battery power. Particularly cellphones. Skype worked as a p2p network, where some peers where marked as super peers and would help with peers behind firewalls (UDP-holepunching), and routing through the super peer. If your phone became a super peer, you could expect to essentially work like a server, with the "…

This doesn't explain why after the change Skype started routing calls between machines on the same LAN through Microsoft servers.

Like the parent said, architecture change.

How Skype works, is how msn messenger worked, office messenger, then office communicator worked, then Lync, now skype.

They moved Skype to their existing infrastructure

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#297

Post by dguest »

sattoshi wrote: post #288
danjoc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of track records, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants... Facebook Google Microsoft

They cut off 1 letter off the url by replacing "june" with "jun"

I think you'd either want the full month name or all the months to be abbreviated to the same number of characters. You can't do 2 characters because of June and July, but three works. 4 would be sort of weird.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#298

Post by aaron_m04 »

Systemic33 wrote: post #177
paule89 wrote: post #160

The thing is. How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now. As far as I understood the reason Microsoft broke Skype so badly was because they used centralised servers with backdoors for countries who wanted them. Not always the good countries. But this. This baffles me. Deeply.

Microsoft used centralised servers because the Skype prior to that was a curse to mobile devices running on battery power. Particularly cellphones. Skype worked as a p2p network, where some peers where marked as super peers and would help with peers behind firewalls (UDP-holepunching), and routing through the super peer. If your phone became a super peer, you could expect to essentially work like a server, with the "…

That doesn't sound like the correct explanation. It's not as if 90% of Skype users stopped using it on desktop computers.

Other explanations that seem plausible:

* IBM patent, as other poster pointed out.

* ability to monitor/censor users more directly (to stay in government's good graces)

* problems with peers invading privacy or taking other malicious actions

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#299

Post by wrycoder »

caf wrote: post #272
jrhurst wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does look like IBM does own a p2p instant messaging patent[1]. So I think this checks out. - https://www.google.ms/patents/US7675874

The claims in that patent seem to be fairly easy to work around.

And then you get to risk defending that in court against Intel’s lawyers, who are on retainer.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#300

Post by abdias »

monocasa wrote: post #291
lern_too_spel wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they pay for more access than is required, why wasn't that in the documents Snowden dumped? Instead, we saw the normal court rulings requiring companies to comply with data access requests.

I mean, paying Microsoft (among the rest of the tech giants) for more access than is required was in the leaks, in the form of the PRISM program.

PRISM is/was a small program. "Upstream" programs is the what most should be worried about and goes sort of around companies (and anyone/anything else).

Though, some companies are handed a court order to "share" their data (quarterly, about 80 companies so far). And NSA has standard rates for this.

Post reply on HN