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Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

micahflee.com

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Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#331

Post by yorwba »

Muromec wrote: post #243
colanderman wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating levels of trust. The trust level required with Signal is, "do I trust the people in this chat not to share the specific communications I am sending to them with some other party whom I do not want to have a copy ". There are many many situations where this level of trust applies that "trust" in the general sense does not apply. It is a useful property. And if you don't have that level of trust, don…

>TM SGNL changes the trust required to, "do I also trust this 3rd party not to share the contents of any of my communications, possibly inadvertently due to poor security practices". That's the same level of trust really. Signal provides a guarantee that message bearer (i.e. Signal) can't see the contents, but end users may do whatever. You can't really assume that counterparty's device isn't rooted by their company…

If your counterparty is compromised, that still only leaks your communication with that counterparty, but not other, unrelated conversations.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#332

Post by codethief »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #323
namdnay wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What am I missing here? OK, say you're a bank. The SEC states you need to keep archives of every discussion your traders have with anyone at any time (I'm simplifying things but you get the point). You keep getting massive fines because traders were whatsapping about deals So now you've got several options - you can use MS Teams, which of course offers archival, compliance monitoring etc. But that means trusting MS…

Oh wow! There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks. Meta lawyers do not take kindly to modified WhatsApp apks.

> There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks.

What other ways are there that don't involve WhatsApp's Google Drive backup feature or scraping the web interface?

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#333

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

codethief wrote: post #332
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow! There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks. Meta lawyers do not take kindly to modified WhatsApp apks.

> There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks. What other ways are there that don't involve WhatsApp's Google Drive backup feature or scraping the web interface?

I had scraping the web interface in mind.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#334

Post by norome »

osrec wrote: post #330
dang wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890179 for discussion of whether that article should count as a follow-up or SNI. Normally I wouldn't link to meta discussion but this was such a weird borderline case that I spent over an hour trying to figure it out. Maybe that makes it interesting. Edit: in case anyone's confused about the sequence here, micahflee posted the current thread 2 days ago. The timestamp a…

SNI means?

significant new information

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#335

Post by lupusreal »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #312
77pt77 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Palantir

And the name is not very edgy and a pretty exact mission description - it describes exactly what it grows from. Seeing stones aka cellphone data of everyone, collected, analyzed and turned into predictions for kings.

Not even pretending to not be evil is what makes it edgy.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#336

Post by ThinkBeat »

I presume that there is an official application that has been created by the US military / NSA / some other entity to facilitate secure encrypted messaging for a presidential administration?

If such a beast exists what is it called? How does it work?

I would more expect it to be a specific combination of hardware physically approved phones and software.

Did the prior administration use it exclusively?

I remember Obama allegedly refusing to part with his Blackberry.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#338

Post by Spooky23 »

abhisek wrote: post #72

Still trying to grasp the idea of archiving messages from E2E encrypted communication system into a storage that entirely breaks the purpose of using something like Signal. It’s like encashing on the trust of Signal protocol, app while breaking its security model so that someone else can search through all messages. What am I missing here?

The purpose of using something like Signal is not compatible with the needs of the government or the law.

I’ve worked for non-Federal government. Your work product is not your own, and the public interest, as expressed by the law requires that your communications and decisions can be reviewed by the government you serve.

The US government created the dark web to enable espionage — its pretty obvious why they need to read their employees mail.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#339

Post by namdnay »

codethief wrote: post #332
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow! There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks. Meta lawyers do not take kindly to modified WhatsApp apks.

> There are other ways to archive whatsapp messages that don't involve modified WhatsApp apks. What other ways are there that don't involve WhatsApp's Google Drive backup feature or scraping the web interface?

The clean way to do it (which is how Telemessage’s competitors do it) is to use WhatsApp business APIs with dedicated phone numbers.

Re: Technical analysis of the Signal clone used by Trump officials

#340

Post by alpha_squared »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #336

I presume that there is an official application that has been created by the US military / NSA / some other entity to facilitate secure encrypted messaging for a presidential administration? If such a beast exists what is it called? How does it work? I would more expect it to be a specific combination of hardware physically approved phones and software. Did the prior administration use it exclusively? I remember Obam…

SCIF - Sensitive compartmented information facility. Officials are often not too far away from one (including in their own home), and can usually get to one in less than 5 minutes.

From my understanding, the BlackBerry thing was largely for personal use.

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