331–340 of 473 posts
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I guess that's acceptable if you trust the NSA not to replace /dev/null with an email forwarder. My new secure chat app, on the other hand, encrypts your message in memory, then zeros out the bytes.
In "memory". Sheeple!
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The F-Droid argument is the strongest and most evident among all. I don't trust Google, I don't trust Play. The main point is, Moxie could take the wind out of the sails of literally all arguments in this page by publishing Signal on F-Droid but he just won't. This alone is enough for me to lose trust in Signal.
It seems pretty odd to me to distrust someone because they aren't using the platform that you'd like them to use. Aren't there other issues with f-droid? You have to root your device to run it, allow third party code. Those are all security concerns too. It was posted elsewhere but here's Moxie's take: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/127#issue...
... are using a platform "you" don't trust.
Really? That's not really odd.
At least, it's not odd, if that usage and what it entails is the denominating part of the persona in this question.
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I understand your argument, but it cannot be shown to be more valid than the complete opposite: the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly than you would need to trust to operate a centralized system. In fact, it could be argued that beyond some complexity level, an unbreakable design is virtually impossible, even in pr…
> the less centralized a system is, the more complex it is in terms of protocols, and you need to trust many more people to design it correctly I disagree with that. The more centralized system is, the less trust boundaries it has and more vulnerable and insecure it is, because penetrating one trust boundary gives access to everything. Security always requires additional complexity. And decentralization forces you to…
The same could be true for a decentralized system if the flaw is in the centralized backbone or the shared protocols/algorithms.
Drew DeVault doesn't trust Signal because its Android incarnation uses the Google Play Store --- the app market virtually all of its real users use --- and not F-Droid. DeVault would also like it if Signal would interoperate with other chat programs. Instead, DeVault would prefer that you use Matrix, a system for which end-to-end encryption is (according to its own website) "in late beta", offered on a select subset…
Additionally, I'm pretty sure it's trivial to verify the APKs that Google Play serves are identical to the ones the devs published.
The F-Droid devs put a lot of work on reproducible builds. Not all software complies, but with an interest in information security there's no exucse not to.
That's the use case of F-Droid, and comparing it to self publishing APKs without even as much as a GPG signature is so beside the point it borders on deceptive.
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Isn't the whole point of Signal that it's e2e encrypted and therefore can't really read and share your messages? Whereas Facebook's system is centralized? So yeah you're safe from outside attacks but not internal ones? I mean if you're asking me if I know for certain that Signal is better than Facebook, there's no way for me to know for sure. But at some point there is a level of trust required and I trust a company…
> Isn't the whole point of Signal that it's e2e encrypted and therefore can't really read and share your messages? Maybe. They have an awkward, compromised design, because fundamentally you can only the key exchange stuff that's necessary for forward secrecy if you're both online at the same time, but of course they want to support offline messaging, so they have a protocol that's mostly-e2e but the server also parti…
The initial key exchange is done through the server using "pre-keys" (which, unless verified, is trust on first use). Any new key data is sent with the messages (and as such, there is not much extra done by the server)
I don't see how signal could get any more auditability. Since they switched to webrtc-based VoIP the whole server is open source. They have made a lot more progress in letting the client verify what the server is running compared to any other messenger out there, unless you are able to run your own.
I would say that the goal of signal was more about making an encrypted secure messenger for my mom than making crypto nerds safe from targeted attacks by nation states.
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Can you elaborate? I just set it up on a new phone yesterday and all it asked for on mine was; contacts (makes sense) files (to send pictures, files, etc) receive and send texts (if you want it as your default texting app/validating phone number via sms) Access to camera and microphone (for calls and in app photography) These all seem like reasonable permissions for the features available.
Is sharing your contacts mandatory in Signal? I don't use WhatsApp because I can't without sharing them.
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Can you elaborate? I just set it up on a new phone yesterday and all it asked for on mine was; contacts (makes sense) files (to send pictures, files, etc) receive and send texts (if you want it as your default texting app/validating phone number via sms) Access to camera and microphone (for calls and in app photography) These all seem like reasonable permissions for the features available.
Is sharing your contacts mandatory in Signal? I don't use WhatsApp because I can't without sharing them.
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What's the point of gaining traction if it doesn't deliver on its fundamental promise?
Because the theoretical possibility of being monitored on Signal is preferable to the near-certainty of being monitored on Facebook Messenger.
Drew DeVault doesn't trust Signal because its Android incarnation uses the Google Play Store --- the app market virtually all of its real users use --- and not F-Droid. DeVault would also like it if Signal would interoperate with other chat programs. Instead, DeVault would prefer that you use Matrix, a system for which end-to-end encryption is (according to its own website) "in late beta", offered on a select subset…
>Drew DeVault doesn't trust Signal because its Android incarnation uses the Google Play Store --- the app market virtually all of its real users use --- and not F-Droid
It should use both.
>the point of end-to-end encryption is that you don't have to trust Signal's server. All it does is arrange for the delivery of messages, which are secured client-to-client. Compare Signal's server to Wire's, which --- last I checked --- retains a record of every pair of users who have communicated in the past.
My point is that Signal could just as easily keep a record of every pair of users who has communicated. We can't be sure because we can't run our own servers. I spoke about this in detail in the article.
>† When this was pointed out downthread, DeVault responded: "[o]ther alternatives (which I have not reviewed in depth) include Tox, Telegram, Wire, and Ring". Telegram is a particularly funny reference to make, because not only is E2E not the default there, but --- last I checked --- it can't even do E2E group chat. Telegram's owners are adamant that TLS is adequate for group secure chat.
Thanks for omitting all of the context which clarified that I hadn't researched them in depth and wasn't explicitly endorsing any of them, and the comment where I clarified that E2E encryption is enabled by default on Matrix.
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Additionally, I'm pretty sure it's trivial to verify the APKs that Google Play serves are identical to the ones the devs published.
That's not the interesting question. How easy is it to verify that the APKs are built from the published source code, without any added funny business? The F-Droid devs put a lot of work on reproducible builds. Not all software complies, but with an interest in information security there's no exucse not to. That's the use case of F-Droid, and comparing it to self publishing APKs without even as much as a GPG signatur…