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Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

sandervenema.ch

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Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#71

Post by sandervenema »

zabuni wrote: post #42

"Also, there’s the issue of integrity. Google is still cooperating with the NSA and other intelligence agencies. PRISM is also still a thing. I’m pretty sure that Google could serve a specially modified update or version of Signal to specific targets for surveillance, and they would be none the wiser that they installed malware on their phones." Isn't part of the reason that Moxie went with the Google Store is that h…

Hi, author here. Yes, my point with that sentence was that the average (non-technical) user (to which Signal is marketed btw), is not going to check signatures. Google has root on the phone, the user is using their app store to install the Signal app that comes up in the store, and basically Google has full control over this, and the user would be none the wiser.

Of course, us more technical inclined people could then check the signature, or compare the apk with one built from the official sources, to see the difference and complain about it.

But between those things is a time frame where this is possible.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#72

Post by snvzz »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32
SamWhited wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix's protocol design is terrible for realtime messaging though (I'm sure there are other uses for which it's more adept); it's effectively a giant, inefficient, JSON datastore that syncs data everywhere. It's also pull based so it consumes battery like crazy. If that's what you need, fine, but for realtime messaging I'd argue that it's really unacceptable.

Okay. Tox, anybody?

I use and love Tox as it got some key fundamentals right.

First, they have full forward secrecy. This is notably unlike Ring, which does not.

Secondly, all communications are end to end encrypted and endpoint-verified, as there's no "legacy SIP support" (eg: SIP) or such nonsense and the DHT addresses your contacts gave you are actual ec25519 public keys.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#73

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

SamWhited wrote: post #45
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Tox, anybody?

I haven't looked into Tox, but I'd be curious to find out the highlights. Really I've just never understood why people complain about XMPP; yes, it's XML which is ugly, but it's also the right tool for the job (easy to stream, very fast SAX-style parsers, event based, etc.), it certainly has its warts, I won't pretend it's perfect, but for the most part it's been around for 20+ years getting the kinks worked out. If…

Tox is a fully distributed (not federated) p2p system. It supports 2-way messaging, multi-way chatrooms, voice and video calling (using Opus and VP8, respectively), file sharing, and desktop streaming, although not all features are supported by all clients. Although any client can implement any feature they like, so long as they can do it atop the actual network system, sticking to the Tox Client Standard is reccomended for maximum compatability. It implements perfect forward security, and uses libsodium for its crypto. There are a variety of clients, although most seem to use toxcore, the reference protocol implementation, under the hood. However, the spec is readily available, and there are independant implementations.

Tox's goal is essentially to create a user-friendly Skype-like chat application, with not centralized server, and strong security by default.

The downside is that your user ID on tox looks like this:

  56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5
And you have to give it to anybody who wants to connect to you on tox. There are services like ToxMe which can give you email-style shorthands, but as the Tox FAQ notes, this can leave you and your contacts vulnerable to an MITM attack, if the site you use is untrustworthy.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#74

Post by zigzigzag »

tptacek wrote: post #50
zigzigzag wrote: post #43

Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure, then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers instead of usernames. He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use GCM beca…

I agree overwhelmingly with what you wrote, except that I want to point out that this isn't "crypto-puritanism". It's just hipsterism. The author isn't a cryptographer, and if you asked a panel of 10 cryptographic engineers what messaging system they'd recommend, 9 of them would say "Signal". The 10th wants you to use something else because they're working on an attack for that "something else", and want their paper…

Good points. Perhaps crypto-hipsterism, then: crypterism.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#75

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

nickik wrote: post #38
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #9

There are several projects moving toward this. Matrix is probably the most well-known project, but its crypto isn't actually operational yet, AFAIK. Tox works now, but for all their talk of trying to be user-friendly, asking users to exchange long alphanumeric sequences inherently isn't. Psyc, maybe?

Matrix actually has e2e crypto working right now. Its in beta but you can active it in the room settings.

Really? Finally. Thank god.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#76

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

snvzz wrote: post #72
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Tox, anybody?

I use and love Tox as it got some key fundamentals right. First, they have full forward secrecy. This is notably unlike Ring, which does not. Secondly, all communications are end to end encrypted and endpoint-verified, as there's no "legacy SIP support" (eg: SIP) or such nonsense and the DHT addresses your contacts gave you are actual ec25519 public keys.

>the DHT addresses your contacts gave you are actual ec25519 public keys.

For nontechnical users, that's a massive downside. The first tox client to integrate ToxMe into itself will get very popular, very fast, provided it's got the right marketing.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#77

Post by zigzigzag »

antocv wrote: post #58
zigzigzag wrote: post #43

Like a lot of crypto-puritanism it is rather mixed up. He says he recommended Signal because it was easy to use (more consumer friendly I guess) and secure, then says he wouldn't have gone in the direction of making it easier to use and criticises the things that make it user friendly, like using phone numbers instead of usernames. He says he thinks the protocol is secure, then says he doesn't want it to use GCM beca…

There is a coherent argument which you just refuse to see. Signal was marketed as anti mass surveillance secure messaging system. It is but a mere user friendly email+gpg alternative. It actively avoid anti-mass surveillance methods and does the opposite - encourages centralization and collection of user statistics. Even Telegram is better, as people arent fooled by what it is. A better alternative is Ring.cx or Tox.…

How does it actively avoid anti-mass surveillance methods? There are no metadata obfuscation mechanisms that work at scale against all adversaries. Using GCM is without a doubt a big win for privacy because adversaries that have backbone taps (like your friendly local intelligence agency) just see SSL to google.com which tells them nothing of any use, not even that you use Signal. A big encrypted packet from google.com might be a Signal message or it might be an email or a Play Store update or whatever.

People always overlook the fact that the world is full of adversaries and 99% of them can't get access to Google's datacenters. Those adversaries matter too. Look at Turkey!

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#78

Post by venomsnake »

tptacek wrote: post #41

The author of this post believes that by making a stand over Signal policies he doesn't like (the superficial GCM dep, the OWS-only server policy, the contact list discovery system), something more like LibreSignal will grow to take Signal's place. The author is wrong. LibreSignal won't replace Signal. Something like Telegram will: an "open source" messaging system with inferior cryptography, "opt-in" end-to-end mess…

Just a question - is Telegram secret chat after you verify keys still with inferior cryptography? And why?

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#79

Post by JupiterMoon »

Canada wrote: post #70

Nothing is stopping anyone from running their own servers, changing the username scheme, and implementing the voice signaling. Moxie doesn't complain about such usage. But that's more work than simply complaining and telling OWS what they should do. As far as usernames go, that would require the signaling key to be remembered by the user. That doesn't work well in practice. As far as contact sync goes, has anyone sub…

> Regarding federation, let's see some code. It's ridiculous to demand the small team that is OWS solve every single problem.

Moxie has explicitly rejected federation. Anyone writing such code is wasting their time it won't get accepted.

Re: Why I won't recommend Signal anymore

#80

Post by sandervenema »

tptacek wrote: post #41

The author of this post believes that by making a stand over Signal policies he doesn't like (the superficial GCM dep, the OWS-only server policy, the contact list discovery system), something more like LibreSignal will grow to take Signal's place. The author is wrong. LibreSignal won't replace Signal. Something like Telegram will: an "open source" messaging system with inferior cryptography, "opt-in" end-to-end mess…

Hi, author here. I don't think LibreSignal or indeed Signal will ever be the dominant mobile messenger out there. There's simply a lot of inertia to fight against. It's the same reason why it's hard to convince e.g. Facebook friends to move to a different social network, why Google+ failed, etc. Whenever the social aspect gets involved, companies can very easily create lock-in by being early, and then the social aspect will prevent the majority of people from considering changing, because 'it works'.

I never said that LibreSignal will replace Signal, and frankly, LibreSignal itself is not the solution either. But maybe LibreSignal will be the catalyst to a better solution.

We all want to prevent people hanging from cranes, but crypto alone does not equal privacy, does not keep you safe, especially not in those countries, where rubber hose cryptanalysis (https://xkcd.com/538/) is much more common. In those dangerous situations/countries, good operational security practices are better to avoid detection/suspicion than using any 'magic' crypto messaging app.

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