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Signal Secure Backups

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#301

Post by codethief »

elvisloops wrote: post #296
codethief wrote: post #285

Hi @greysonp > Once you’ve enabled secure backups, your device will automatically create a fresh secure backup archive every day, replacing the previous day’s archive. So IIUC backups will not be incremental and I will have to re-upload my 15 GB backup archive every day? Why is that? What's the security risk here? (Obviously I'm not suggesting encrypting & uploading each message & media file individually but splittin…

Giving people a 64-character key also feels uncharacteristically crude for Signal. It's not realistic to hand people 64 characters and tell them to “store this securely.” Most people will screenshot it, and those screenshots will end up in unencrypted cloud backups. That's less of a problem when the backups are local, because access to the local backups implies access to the device, but if the backups are in the clou…

I get your point but is a large set of dictionary words or 5-digit numbers (see the current backup passphrase) so much better? At the end of the day, recording entropy will always be cumbersome and there is no way around it.

> Most people will screenshot it, and those screenshots will end up in unencrypted cloud backups.

At least on Android apps can disable screenshots, though, which might be a simple way to deter people from doing that?

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#302

Post by crtasm »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #151
jimkleiber wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they will? > Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing

A backup option has been missing for years. Future plans on this particular topic seem to take forever.

It's been backing up to my SD card for years, I've not set up a script to transfer it off-device though.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#303

Post by halyconWays »

codethief wrote: post #279
halyconWays wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they'll phase it out and try to force their worse service, wherein your data is stored on their servers, like they tried to do with PINs. It took enormous pushback to get them to stop mandatory PINs, and even then they made it nagware for a year or two. I didn't trust their rationale about PINs and remote attestation somehow meaning your data is secured by a small passphrase, just like I won't trust them to not…

While I understand (and share) your criticism, it does sound like they'll continue to support local backups: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45171576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45172188

From your link, I wish they would answer this, and they've been asked numerous times, and to my knowledge have avoided the question (which is very concerning to me):

>This is excellent news! Will there also be official documentation on the backup format, potentially even official tooling like signalbackup-tools[0] to access/parse backups offline? I'm asking because, having used Signal/TextSecure for 10 years now, my backups are worth a lot to me (obviously) and there have been times when I would have liked to mine & process my backed-up data. (Extract media from conversations in an automated manner, build a more elaborate search, …)

I'm like that poster and backup all my chats obsessively, since way back in the day, and experienced a period with Signal where it was impossible for me to access my own data because of their position.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#304

Post by b8 »

Since phones have a lot of storage, then why not constantly backup locally and overwrite it for newer versions (opt in of course)? Signal already has large operating cost, so a cloud backup with the very low subscription cost is concerning. It would help Signal to get rid of sms registration and move to something less costy.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#305

Post by greysonp »

codethief wrote: post #285

Hi @greysonp > Once you’ve enabled secure backups, your device will automatically create a fresh secure backup archive every day, replacing the previous day’s archive. So IIUC backups will not be incremental and I will have to re-upload my 15 GB backup archive every day? Why is that? What's the security risk here? (Obviously I'm not suggesting encrypting & uploading each message & media file individually but splittin…

Hi there!

> So IIUC backups will not be incremental

Nope! It's very much incremental :) At least the media is. There's one blob of containing all of your messages+metadata which does have to be re-uploaded every night, but for most people that's gonna be somewhere in the low-tens of MB. Your attachments are uploaded incrementally one at a time, typically as they're sent/received, so you usually don't even have to wait to upload them at backup-time.

> Both recovery key and Signal PIN seem to serve the exact same purpose, though, namely restoring data (conversations, contacts, account, …)? Why not unify them?

This was a hard decision and something we went back and forth on. But at the end of the day, we felt the safest thing we could do for now is to use a completely separate strong, random key. We're very aware of all the trade-offs involved, but this is where we landed.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#306

Post by eviks »

> If securely back up all* of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free. > If you want to back up your media history beyond 45 days, as well as your message history, we also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month.

So after so many years of having a serious design flaw this poor substitute of a backup where you can't even save all your text for free is all they've managed to come up with?

> The reason we’re doing this is simple: media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive.

Easy fix: let the user choose his own local/cloud storage location? (at least it's planned, maybe in just another decade)

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#307

Post by dlgeek »

codethief wrote: post #301
elvisloops wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving people a 64-character key also feels uncharacteristically crude for Signal. It's not realistic to hand people 64 characters and tell them to “store this securely.” Most people will screenshot it, and those screenshots will end up in unencrypted cloud backups. That's less of a problem when the backups are local, because access to the local backups implies access to the device, but if the backups are in the clou…

I get your point but is a large set of dictionary words or 5-digit numbers (see the current backup passphrase) so much better? At the end of the day, recording entropy will always be cumbersome and there is no way around it. > Most people will screenshot it, and those screenshots will end up in unencrypted cloud backups. At least on Android apps can disable screenshots, though, which might be a simple way to deter pe…

I think a large set of dictionary words are likely more user friendly. I think most people will have a lot more confidence on their ability to transcribe words to/from paper more accurately than a bunch of numbers - better built in error correction, etc.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#308

Post by dash2 »

eviks wrote: post #306

> If securely back up all* of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free. > If you want to back up your media history beyond 45 days, as well as your message history, we also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month. So after so many years of having a serious design flaw this poor substitute of a backup where you can't even save all your text for free is all they've managed to come u…

I guess the reason WhatsApp lets you save all your text for free is they are making money off sucking up your data. I think ultimately this model will win, but I sympathise with Signal's approach.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#309

Post by kzshantonu »

UltraSane wrote: post #300
codethief wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Ever since Android devices ceased to be regular USB storage devices and switched to MTP, this has never worked well for me. MTP is incredibly slow.

What method do you find to be faster?

Copyparty running in termux serving over USB tethering

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#310

Post by fastest963 »

arccy wrote: post #254
IshKebab wrote: post #93

> Losing it means losing access to your backup permanently, and Signal cannot help you recover it. Oof... That's going to be tough to explain to normal users. "Sorry you've been paying for backups all this time, but you should have written down this code that you will only ever use once somewhere safe and remembered where it is. All your data is gone." Not the right security trade-off for most people.

when you're shown the code, it has 2 buttons: copy to clipboard and save to password manager. if you choose password manager you should be relatively safe...

I have 1Password installed and it prompted to save in 1Password. Worked perfectly. It even let me paste from 1Password on the verification screen. It was the most seamless password manager experience I've ever had.
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