Why I won't recommend Signal anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#31

Post by kuschku » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #24

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…

Kind of tangential, but GCM is deprecated and you're supposed to use Firebase Cloud Messaging now: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/ It's still just a JAR (no native components), so AFAICT there's no technical reason someone else couldn't do a similar thing with their own servers.

> It's just a JAR (no native components)

I’ve reversed it, and rebuilt an alternative

The jar you include actually opens just an IPC channel to the Google Play Services framework, which runs with system permissions, and handles the actual stuff.

You can’t implement your own FCM without having root access on EVERY Android phone out there.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#32

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:53 PM UTC

SamWhited wrote: post #21

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #9

There are several projects moving toward this. Matrix is probably the most well-known project, but its crypto isn't actually operational yet, AFAIK. Tox works now, but for all their talk of trying to be user-friendly, asking users to exchange long alphanumeric sequences inherently isn't. Psyc, maybe?

Matrix's protocol design is terrible for realtime messaging though (I'm sure there are other uses for which it's more adept); it's effectively a giant, inefficient, JSON datastore that syncs data everywhere. It's also pull based so it consumes battery like crazy. If that's what you need, fine, but for realtime messaging I'd argue that it's really unacceptable.

Okay. Tox, anybody?

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#33

Post by heavenlyhash » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #12

wtbob wrote: post #4

I am also very unhappy with the direction Signal has gone, but there's currently no alternative. I'd be interested in contributing to work attempting to replicate it, though.

I have some friends in an encrypted riot room right now. The olm could use a real good audit, but otherwise it is working right now. Federation is working, bridges are working, voice and video are working, it has Android and iOS clients. The only problem is the encryption doesn't apply to the voice / video or shared files yet, but they have made huge progress this last year from basically nothing so far.

+1. I'm super happy with the Matrix / Riot ("riot" is the client) crypto work over the last year.

It's such a relief to have a modern chat system that's FOSS, federates, and offers a liiiiitle more advanced UX than irc...

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#34

Post by tdkl » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

Joeboy wrote: post #16

reacharavindh wrote: post #6

This. I didn't know much of the insides of Signal. But, When WhatsApp decide to go in bed with FB to share my contacts and usage, one of the alternatives I explored was Signal. Threw it out the moment it asked for ownership of my contacts (no way to opt out). I for one am not going to trust a guy's pinky promise to be good with my contacts and meta-data. If I'm going to give up the convenience of reaching anybody by…

I doubt you'd want to use it if it didn't use your contacts, though. Not many people are prepared to deal with a whole separate set of contact ids for the sake of a small amount of arguable extra privacy.

What's wrong with having options ?

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#35

Post by tdkl » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #17

Wire ( http://wire.com ) has worked well on iOS for encrypted text/files/audio/video. Open-source client, no contact sharing neeeded. No phone number needed, you can register with email by using a desktop browser at http://app.wire.com , then logging into the mobile app. Group chat for text only. Timed/ephemeral messages for 1:1 text/files. Feature matrix, https://wire.com/privacy/ . Could use more documentation (e.g…

> Don't know whether it needs GCM on Android.

The .apk on the site uses websocket, no GCM required.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#36

Post by nickik » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

I have started to read about matrix a lot.

- It now supports e2e encryption.

- It has a nice web and mobile client, called riot.im

- I has many other client options

- You don't need to show any phone numbers.

- Federated, you can host your own server

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#37

Post by trimbo » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

EugeneOZ wrote: post #29

Any messenger, tied to phone number, is not safe. possible attacks are: 1) create copy of sim-card; 2) force mobile operator to intercept password-code, sent to your number, and "restore" password this way. It may sound ridiculous for you, but in Russia it's reality (both vectors), it's real cases from life. And when user really need safe messenger, all of them are too careless to implement really safe way of messagi…

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

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#38

Post by nickik » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #9

There are several projects moving toward this. Matrix is probably the most well-known project, but its crypto isn't actually operational yet, AFAIK. Tox works now, but for all their talk of trying to be user-friendly, asking users to exchange long alphanumeric sequences inherently isn't. Psyc, maybe?

Matrix actually has e2e crypto working right now. Its in beta but you can active it in the room settings.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#39

Post by SapphireSun » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

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.

Here's what Moxie said about this issue: https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#40

Post by secfirstmd » Sat, Nov 05, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

I've trained hundreds of human rights defenders and journalists over the last 10 years and I will continue to recommend Signal. For too long the community has placed perfect security over usability - there are slightly more secure ways to communicate than Signal but they are far too disruptive to peoples work flows to actually be implemented.