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Wire open-sourced

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Re: Wire open-sourced

#31

Post by abcd_f »

deltaprotocol wrote: post #27

I must say that my first impression is beyond positive. One to one and group chats, group video and audio calls, GIF search built-in, doodles, the best implementation of photos in the message stream that I've seen, poking and playable Spotify and Soundcloud music by just sharing links? All with end-to-end encryption? I have that "too good to be true" feeling but, still impressed. Just waiting for possible audits and…

Looking them up on zefix.ch shows that they appear to be only registered in Switzerland, with Luxembourg ownership and non-Swiss management.

Alan, their CTO and (co-?)founder is Swedish.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#32

Post by tilpner »

ianopolous wrote: post #17
mahyarm wrote: post #5

Now all this needs is a few good third party audits, verifiable builds and it's the holy grail of encrypted communications!

I would say the Holy Grail would be fully decentralized without needing central servers, but this does look cool nonetheless.

ring.cx and matrix.org seem promising in that regard.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#34

Post by saghul »

pedalpete wrote: post #9

I don't get how they can make statements like this "Only Wire offers fully encrypted calls, video and group chats available on all your devices". Webrtc is encrypted by default.

WebRTC is only the audio / video part. Chat, groupchat, etc are not using it IIRC. Chat could use the data channel, though.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#35

Post by niftich »

grizzles wrote: post #25

A bold move by Wire. Open source is still a very disruptive play, and the world needs something like this. If they manage this well and triple down on developer engagement, it could work out quite nicely for them. EDIT: Thread title is slightly misleading. It looks like they did a Telegram. There is no server here.

Correct, there's no server. I will avoid blockquoting large amounts of text but on their open source summary page [1], they give you two options:

1. you point your implementation to their server and you have to abide by their additional terms (which is exactly what I'd expect)

- or -

2. you point your implementation to somewhere else, unspecified, and you're only bound by GPLv3

Right now, #2 is moot because there is no compatible server you can host. Once someone implements a compatible server, this will get a lot more exciting.

[1] https://github.com/wireapp/wire#open-source

Re: Wire open-sourced

#36

Post by saghul »

Lots of good stuff in there, thanks Wire! I just wish they had gone with something other than GPLv3 for libraries, like LGPL. Looks like they changed them on December, from MPL 2.0 to GPLv3.

At any rate, there are lots of us who can use the code with that license :-)

Re: Wire open-sourced

#37

Post by pedalpete »

pepesza wrote: post #16
pedalpete wrote: post #9

I don't get how they can make statements like this "Only Wire offers fully encrypted calls, video and group chats available on all your devices". Webrtc is encrypted by default.

Because encryption without authentication is prone to MITM attacks. WebTRC does not have auth layer.

But they don't say anything about authentication, and authentication and encryption are two different things...

Re: Wire open-sourced

#38

Post by drdaeman »

mintplant wrote: post #23
eps wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since the Signal protocol is kind of the gold standard right now Oy vey. The perils of reading HN too much.

What, in your opinion, is the gold standard?

For now, isn't is still plain old boring OTR? No less secure (and because of its mature age, it had received more auditors attention), far more ubiquitous, and while not perfect, still doesn't seem to have too severe limitations that make its use too hard or impossible.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#39

Post by unicornporn »

deltaprotocol wrote: post #27

I must say that my first impression is beyond positive. One to one and group chats, group video and audio calls, GIF search built-in, doodles, the best implementation of photos in the message stream that I've seen, poking and playable Spotify and Soundcloud music by just sharing links? All with end-to-end encryption? I have that "too good to be true" feeling but, still impressed. Just waiting for possible audits and…

I've been using it with friends and family for awhile on Android and macOS and it's fantastic, in theory. It has however been plagued with lots of bugs. The calling functionality, which I've used a lot, often stalls at "joining" and then nothing happens. It's not as polished or flawless as Telegram. It does not have a feature to compress video before sending for instance. But I can only expect that to change. Especially now, when anyone can write their own client.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#40

Post by mrbiber »

ianopolous wrote: post #28
mrbiber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very hopeful that Briar ( https://briarproject.org/ ) will achieve this. They don't use any centralized infrastructure, the app works even when the net is down, and they have e completely distributed and thus uncensorable forums and blogs.

Interesting. Do you know how they handle identity/usernames/contact discovery without central servers?

As far as I know, the identity is just a public key. You can add contacts only by either scanning a qr-code disayed on your contact's phone in person or by being introduced to each other by a mutual contact, so there is no real need for discovery. As there are no servers at all (not even federated), this also means that no one can even enumerate users.

Torsten Grote, one of the projects main developers, explains the technology behind it in this very nice presentation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr42vZIoGqM

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