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Signal Secure Backups

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Re: Signal Secure Backups

#421

Post by Y-bar »

palata wrote: post #415
Y-bar wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 def…

> Why should I not be allowed to Same as I said above: you are asking for a new feature. Their default is those 20 lines that "protect" the files. If they want to offer you a way to still enable it, someone has to do it. Someone has to work on the UX of it, maybe there is a need to explain to the users why it is less secure when this feature is enabled, and then there is work to do with the criticisms that will come…

> you are asking for a new feature

I think we have vastly different definitions of what is a "new" feature. This is not about adding a new feature, but removing an old bug.

> If they want to offer you a way to still enable it, someone has to do it.

They can just use the iOS system settings to allow users to enable/disable backups. This would be zero code needed. Zero maintainability problems. Zero UX. Zero unexpected data loss for customers. The settings for this is for all sane apps at Manage Storage > Backups > [Device Name] > [App Name].

> I know, you will say "it's not much". But everybody asks for their "small feature"

It's less than anything, it's removing a "feature", which should make things easier to maintain.

Signal _added_ the "feature" to disable the default iOS behaviour that user data can be backed up securely. This caused, in many users life, a bug of unexpected data loss. Signal caused that bug and that data loss by introducing this "feature".

Again, fixing this bug would not require a new feature to be added, but rather an unwanted bug to be removed by removing code needed to maintain it.

> I find it totally valid if they choose that they won't offer features to lower their security, and instead they will work on features having sufficiently good security. Which in this case is the secure backup.

Not a single argument has been given why this would be more secure than the locally encrypted backup you can do yourself in iOS. In fact, it would be sane to suggest that any newly introduced claimed secure system is insecure until tested.

--

Edit: It's also worth noting that their disable-backups feature is a bit hack:y (see https://blog.eidinger.info/prevent-your-apps-files-from-bein...)

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#422

Post by giancarlostoro »

nikeee wrote: post #212

> alongside features that let you transfer your encrypted message history between Android, iOS, and Desktop devices. That's actually the feature I've been looking forward to. As I moved vom Android to iOS, I lost _all_ message histories from all messenger apps that use E2EE (Signal, WhatsApp, Threema, etc). The only one that "just worked" was Telegram due to not being encrypted. WhatsApp had a migration app that has…

I've always been able to transfer history, from Android phone to Android phone, when I switched to iOS, I didn't bother since my wife was just going to start using Messages due to its encrypted nature. I really only used Signal with my wife, she only used it because I was using it and it allowed us to send images back and forth without losing quality.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#423

Post by giancarlostoro »

internet_points wrote: post #380
arccy wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't signal also have a transfer to other device flow now?

iOS to iOS works Android to Android works iOS to/from Android does not work stolen phone to new phone does not work :)

> stolen phone to new phone does not work :)

I'm curious about that, has this been tested by someone who "steals" the phone, and tries to migrate before the actual phone owner even realizes?

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#424

Post by dmitrygr »

tdrz wrote: post #408
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.

Do

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#425

Post by upofadown »

whyever wrote: post #414
upofadown wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Signal asks you to repeat the key immediately before even enabling backups. It cannot fail much later unless you modify the digit after the check.

A longer key makes typing a bunch of characters back into the phone much less usable.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#426

Post by Someone »

neobrain wrote: post #362
Someone wrote: post #353

FTA: “This is the first time we’ve offered a paid feature. The reason we’re doing this is simple: media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive” Those costs are for doing backups to their servers. If this supported making encrypted backups to Google drive/OneDrive/iCloud/etc, they wouldn’t have those costs, and, AFAICT, that would not be less secure, given (also FTA)…

> ⇒ I think it’s more of “we were looking for a new revenue stream, and picked this as a way to get that” This seems highly implausible given the 2 USD/mo pricing, the existence of a free storage plan, and the non-negligible operating costs that obviously do exist. I'd be interested if you have data that supports the idea of the economics working out though.

I do not have data, but I do have arguments.

If the economics do not work out, why did they chose to create infrastructure and take on the burden of supporting it instead of implementing backups to the popular cloud providers, and not having that extra operational burden?

Also, iCloud gives individuals 2 terabytes of storage for $11 a month. OneDrive and Google Drive are similar. S3 is less than 3 cents/gigabyte (with extra costs for reads and writes)

I guesstimate backups will take less than 100GB per user. At Apple’s consumer pricing that is slightly over half a dollar.

So, if they buy storage at bulk and get a sufficiently high number of customers, I do not see why they couldn’t make money on $2/month.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#427

Post by zorgmonkey »

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote: post #218
Sesse__ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a couple of problems with the existing backup: 1. It is non-incremental. This means you'll need about as much free space on your phone as your Signal database takes, and it may take many hours to make if your database is large (mine is 18GB). I used to wake up to find my phone had not even fully charged because it had been so busy writing Signal backups. 2. Once you have it on disk, how do you get it away f…

How can an encrypted backup be incremental if it's supposed to be never decrypted on-remote-machines? Ever thought about that?

Why wouldn't it be possible? All it really means is that you need to do the work to make incremental entirely on the local side and not on the remote side.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#428

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

greysonp wrote: post #305
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 wai…

Thank you for choosing the "strong random key" rather than "sketchy PIN+SGX" option. This decision recovered my trust in Signal after the previous Signal PIN fiasco.

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#429

Post by gardnr »

palata wrote: post #372
gardnr wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two phone numbers.

On the same iOS device? I didn't know that iPhones supported multiple SIMs!

Yeah! You can have many eSIMs, but the iPhone only has two radios, so only two SIMs can be "active" (connected to towers) at any time.

Signal doesn't support multiple phone numbers on the same device. I have two phones:

1. Old iPhone: +55-555-5555

2. New iPhone: +1-867-5309

I would prefer to have the numbers swapped on the devices. There isn't a way to do this without "transferring"[1] the messages to a 3rd iOS device.

This is an awkward edge-case that would be ameliorated by allowing local file backup / restore.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

Re: Signal Secure Backups

#430

Post by gardnr »

palata wrote: post #416
Y-bar wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's eSIM: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/119606

Still, didn't know it was possible to have multiple numbers on the same iPhone :D

It's been a very pro-user development. You can buy an eSIM using an app these days. So when you travel, you can just download an eSIM for the country you are visiting if your home provider doesn't offer competitive international packages.
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