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RFC 9420 a.k.a. Messaging Layer Security

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Re: RFC 9420 a.k.a. Messaging Layer Security

#31

Post by mananaysiempre »

wbl wrote: post #26
mananaysiempre wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Matrix spec defines everything about how communication should happen—port discovery, federation, transport, wire formats, encodings, schemas, addresses for people, group membership, reconciliation of parallel histories, ..., and, yes, end-to-end cryptography. MLS is just the end-to-end cryptography part, how to turn it into bits, and a general idea of where the underlying network should deliver those bits. Nothin…

You can have a global clock courtesy of the US space force.

The “clock” is in the distributed systems sense—a monotonically increasing integer on all participating machines, and the whole system is wrecked beyond repair if it ever decreases. Any resemblance to physical quantities is purely coincidental.

(Equivalently, a supply of totally ordered gremlins with the ability to obtain a gremlin greater than any you’ve seen, and things blow up if any of them are ever actually incomparable.)

It’s possible to build this atop a GNSS[1], but it’s quite expensive.

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi-06/chubby-lock-servic...

Re: RFC 9420 a.k.a. Messaging Layer Security

#33

Post by eps »

dopidopHN wrote: post #24
woah wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big difference is that the authors of this protocol have probably spent a lot of time at IETF meetings

You said that like it’s a bad thing?

Depends on the group. For example, IKE was a protocol that passed by making everyone equally unhappy.

Re: RFC 9420 a.k.a. Messaging Layer Security

#34

Post by ezst »

dmw_ng wrote: post #30

I was recently shocked to discover media attachments sent on Signal are uploaded to either Google Cloud Storage or some other service sitting behind CloudFlare. The recipient device(s) fetch the uploaded keys to access the images. The net effect is that there is almost certainly a log file somewhere that correlates the IP addresses/user agents of conversation participants for a very large subset of all Signal users T…

If Signal wanted to lead by example on the privacy front, they would have stuck with their initially federated design, wouldn't require phone numbers, and wouldn't (have to) hide behind obscure and unverifiable workarounds (SGX enclaves, sealed senders, ...)

Re: RFC 9420 a.k.a. Messaging Layer Security

#35

Post by palata »

ezst wrote: post #34
dmw_ng wrote: post #30

I was recently shocked to discover media attachments sent on Signal are uploaded to either Google Cloud Storage or some other service sitting behind CloudFlare. The recipient device(s) fetch the uploaded keys to access the images. The net effect is that there is almost certainly a log file somewhere that correlates the IP addresses/user agents of conversation participants for a very large subset of all Signal users T…

If Signal wanted to lead by example on the privacy front, they would have stuck with their initially federated design, wouldn't require phone numbers, and wouldn't (have to) hide behind obscure and unverifiable workarounds (SGX enclaves, sealed senders, ...)

How is the sealed sender feature obscure and unverifiable?
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