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John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

chadder.im

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Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#61

Post by andor »

ctz wrote: post #58

Some observations: - This uses an external service 'scrambls' ( https://scrambls.com/ ) which seems to do per-message symmetric key management. Therefore, the owners of this service can read all your messages. - The thing which seems to be sent along with the ciphertext is an 'XID' which is sent to scrambls and exchanged for the raw AES message encryption key. There doesn't seem to be any binding to the recipient in…

It's interesting how they know it's happening, but don't seem to understand the consequences.

In the video, they say that "the key and message can only be read by Sally."

Or look at this one, where they even visualize it: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/05/03/the-design-behind-ch...

The architecture of the product features a unique web-based exchange of key transfer capabilities to facilitate completely encrypted messaging.

Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#62

Post by ultramancool »

nodata wrote: post #11

Or use TextSecure and RedPhone: https://whispersystems.org/ ( https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/ )

And on TextSecure you get:

- a protocol based off the highly vetted and trusted Off-The-Record protocol

- perfect forward secrecy, a very important thing in cryptography as you can drastically reduce the number of possible attacks in certain scenarios

- real cryptographers doing implementation and review of the software

- a good open source implementation of this cryptography

Don't get me wrong, I have a few irks about TextSecure with regards to the way the open source project is managed (see: their conflicts with F-Droid and such), but I really have to question why anyone would use some piece of crap cranked out for publicity (such as this or Heml.is) when there are solid options available which clearly offer superior security.

Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#63

Post by delinka »

a1a wrote: post #56
delinka wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone even publicly discussed how to mitigate metadata collection? I don't recall any such discussion, but this also isn't really my area of interest. I'd imagine a system that's completely a p2p mesh network. "Oh, hello, peer. I have 17 blocks for delivery on the network." Those 17 blocks might be pieces of messages for said peer; they might be destined for other nodes anywhere in the network; maybe they're noi…

Not really my topic either but I guess messaging via TOR or alike is the best solution.

Perhaps, but then I believe each participant in the messaging system would need to run a hidden service to receive messages. I think you may be onto something here.

Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#64

Post by davexunit »

FBT wrote: post #21
davexunit wrote: post #4

Free software is a prerequisite for software to be "anti-surveillance" and I see no indication that Chadder is free software.

Libre is a prerequisite, gratis isn't. This is an important distinction to make. While it is true that this software seems to be neither, it is important to note when we try to convince them to release it free, we mean libre and not necessarily gratis . (Although the two often go hand in hand.) When people hear us complaining about it, they often think we want to avoid paying money for it. This is false, and a bad im…

I mean free as in speech, of course. I didn't think that I'd have to explain what "free software" means here on HN.

Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#65

Post by davexunit »

air wrote: post #33
FBT wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libre is a prerequisite, gratis isn't. This is an important distinction to make. While it is true that this software seems to be neither, it is important to note when we try to convince them to release it free, we mean libre and not necessarily gratis . (Although the two often go hand in hand.) When people hear us complaining about it, they often think we want to avoid paying money for it. This is false, and a bad im…

Libre isn't prerequisite either. Access to buildable source is.

Absolutely not. Anything less than the 4 freedoms is unacceptable. If the program is discovered to be spying on its users and users are not allowed to modify and redistribute the source code then there is no way to fix the problem.

Re: John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

#67

Post by akumen »

zokier wrote: post #44
gulbrandr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See here: https://telegram.org/apps#source-code

I meant for Chadder.

Sorry, I assumed it was clients were open sources based on the article. Now that I looked it appears that is not the case. So ... it is safe because John McAfee?
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