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Signal Secure Backups

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#401

Post by roywiggins »

XorNot wrote: post #347
roywiggins wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really grokked Syncthing. I recently vibe-coded a crappy Windows Go GUI to grab files off my phone via rclone & sshd4a and then optionally delete them, but it's a very manual process since sshd4a has to be running on the phone before I initiate the pull.

Syncthing is just open source Dropbox, self hosted. It's entire purpose is "make two folders identical". It's very good at that: so good that I frequently wish it did other things - i.e. if it had some notion of minimum seeding levels so it would destage files off a device provided they were replicated elsewhere (e.g. automatically clearing old photos off your phone would be a good use of it).

Yeah, I think I was just trying to get it to do something it wasn't suited for!

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#402

Post by upofadown »

growse wrote: post #399
upofadown wrote: post #395

The key is 64 characters? Even if that key is made out of decimal digits that works out to 212 bits. That seems quite excessive for a symmetrical key you are hoping to have a user deal with directly. It appears that the usability of this scheme could be significantly improved by simply using a shorter key.

What's the specific use case that benefits from a shorter key? The only interaction I can ever see having with this key is putting it into and taking it out of my password manager....

The article specifically suggests writing the key down in a notebook. A single incorrect digit and the scheme fails much later in a way catastrophic to the user.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#403

Post by jwr »

3np wrote: post #52
jwr wrote: post #32

This is so incredibly important! I am very happy to see this, the fact that you could not do a backup on iOS and you would lose everything in case your device dies is the biggest drawback of Signal. I still do not quite understand why I can't have the option to just back things up to iCloud (I do understand the security implications and I'm fine with it), but ANY backup solution is better than "your data is gone, tou…

> This is so incredibly important! I am very happy to see this, the fact that you could not do a backup on iOS and you would lose everything in case your device dies is the biggest drawback of iOS. FTFY. It's originally Apple preventing its users from easily controlling their own data.

> Apple preventing its users from easily controlling their own data

Could you please elaborate?

iOS has secure encrypted backups, and secure encrypted cloud backups using end-to-end encryption. Signal specifically disables these mechanisms.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#404

Post by styanax »

daveoc64 wrote: post #392
styanax wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just ran a backup, and it was 850MB. So having my phone upload something of that size every day would be a bit annoying It may be inconvenient but this can be solved by using the features in the app to review your storage and save those thousands of images/audio/file sequestered inside the app out to the filesystem, then delete them from the app. You're not backing up "chats" you're backing up your image library…

Reducing the size of the backup would solve one problem, but it's really the lack of automation of the process that's the annoying part.

We're partially there, under Storage is an option allowing you to set how long to keep messages and I've set mine to one year. Possible: forever (default), 1y, 6mo, 30d - and it works, my old chat messages (not the whole chat, just individuals) are properly culled over time.

Edit: in context, Google Messages has none of these features and I have friends still married to Google Voice who send me tons of pics. Culling SMS requires using a third party tool to export and re-import etc. leagues behind Signal. None of it's backed up without the same third party tools as well and no built in image management.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#405

Post by Y-bar »

palata wrote: post #398
Y-bar wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot's of people have requested justification in related Github issues there, but Signal has not given a clear answer. If there was a security problem with the encryption process I believe a CVE or similar would have been in order because it would affect millions of users.

I was not talking about a security flaw. I was saying that maybe , Signal did not want to push their users to trust the Apple backup by default. Signal is a nonprofit foundation, it's not like they are trying to squeeze their users with their own secure backup.

We are unfortunately rehashing the same arguments from Github, nothing prevents Signal from distrusting Apple by default.

But there is also nothing (except for some secret reason they refuse to elaborate) that prevents them from allowing users to actively chose to trust Apple. Except for their own internal reasons, that is.

It's the user's data after all. The user should be able to control and access it. Sensible defaults makes sense, but the outright refusal to explain why they prevent it is very odd. I have a decent "IT hygiene", I keep my operating system updated with patches, I don't download pirated/cracked software, I have hardware-enabled encryption on my storage devices, I have a good password for my local account, I encrypt my local iPhone backups.

Why should I not be allowed to include my Signal chats in those local backups? Signal has never answered that question, which is very strange.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#407

Post by Y-bar »

MrDresden wrote: post #346

Personally I've never understood the need some have for keeping chat histories. So this isn't a feature I'll use, but am sure others will. And remember, Signal is a nonprofit. If you use it, and if you can, you should be donating.

It's my "old shoebox" with cherished memories of friends and relatives, some who have passed away.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#408

Post by tdrz »

dmitrygr wrote: post #261

This is overcomplicated to collect money IMHO. All modern OSs can happily backup app files. It is a well-solved problem. If you find this backup method not secure enough (as Signal authors do), fine, encrypt the backup with a special key, exactly as described in TFA, and leave the resulting archive in a location for my chosen phone OS to back it up as it would. All the goals are accomplished, and without charging me…

If you would gladly pay for it, maybe you could consider donating for Signal.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#409

Post by codethief »

greysonp wrote: post #400
codethief wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Greyson! > But this new thing is all cross-platform, and in the near future we'll even be making our local backups cross-platform. 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 (ob…

Hi! I don't know if we'll have anything super official, but the code is obviously all open source, and the backup file is just a stream of protobufs[1], so it shouldn't be too bad to make a tool. I know have some rough CLI tools sitting around -- I'll see if there's anything we want to clean up and release publicly when the local backup portion of this launches. Also, as someone else noted, the format is indeed incre…

> I'll see if there's anything we want to clean up and release publicly when the local backup portion of this launches.

That would be fantastic! Thanks so much!

> As someone with a 50 GB backup file, this was very much a goal for me :)

Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#410

Post by maqp »

ktosobcy wrote: post #389
maqp wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Future secrecy? Meaning --if-- when your keys get compromised the system recovers. PGP lacks even forward secrecy, meaning key compromise alone allows retrospective decryption of every message you've ever sent. OTR fixed that in... ...2004 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1029179.1029200 Using PGP for secure communication in 2025 when you have option to use stateful E2EE over stuff like Signal is just bonkers.

And if you lose your device your messages are compromised as well. Forcing your paranoidal perception "is just bonkers".

>paranoidal

So either you're too young or too ignorant to have read the Snowden docs.

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