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Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

whispersystems.org

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Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#91

Post by rogeryu »

nailer wrote: post #19
lorenzhs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser extension for Chrome/Chromium is being worked on! You can track it at https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser

That's excellent. Installing and using GPG (or GPGTools or GPG Keychain or whatever it's name is) on OS X is awful. Something that's still OSS and cares about UX (like Signal on iOS) would be fantastic.

> That's excellent. Installing and using GPG (or GPGTools or GPG Keychain or whatever it's name is) on OS X is awful.

I don't understand what's so difficult here. The biggest problem is understanding how PGP works, and having to type a password now and then. I use it all the time, to sign - not encrypt - my mail.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#92

Post by rogeryu »

ikurei wrote: post #74
iheartmemcache wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not associated with Signal or Moxie (though I've been a silent fanboy for ~15 years-- [[hey Moxie if you're reading this and still are hiring, ping me - contact info is in my profile]]), but I'd inherently trust the application more than an average application or company because: a) Moxie has a track history of having a lot of personal integrity with regards to security. Some might say this is blasphemous but I'd…

> I'd be willing to bet that Google is collecting way more information than Signal is. I don't understand this sentences. It's quite obvious that Google is collecting way more information than Signal and almost anyone else. I'm curious, what did you mean?

I suppose he refers to information collected with the Signal app alone. The thing is that all information that is sent via Google is encrypted, so it's not of much use. I only wonder how the connection between two clients is setup, and if Google gets to know which Google user talks to which other Google user.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#93

Post by archivator »

xenophonf wrote: post #72
iheartmemcache wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not associated with Signal or Moxie (though I've been a silent fanboy for ~15 years-- [[hey Moxie if you're reading this and still are hiring, ping me - contact info is in my profile]]), but I'd inherently trust the application more than an average application or company because: a) Moxie has a track history of having a lot of personal integrity with regards to security. Some might say this is blasphemous but I'd…

compile the APK and see if it matches Are deterministic builds possible with the Android toolchain?

Last I looked, no, but the immediate cause of nondeterminism I saw was the zip entry timestamps in the apk. I didn't bother looking further down the chain.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#94

Post by mtgx »

Tepix wrote: post #55

Signal is pretty awesome, it's by far the best that we have right now: • state of the art crypto • open source • free as in beer • Available for Android and iOS There are a few minor features that are missing but I can live with that. However, there are also a couple of important shortcomings: • no decentralization • use of the phone number I hope they can be fixed sooner or later.

I wonder if they opt-out of Google Now on Tap. Google has made its spying the default on Android 6.0, and developers have to know to opt-out of it, otherwise private Signal communications could be collected by Google.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#95

Post by verusfossa »

rogerbraun wrote: post #83
verusfossa wrote: post #58

TextSecure used to be on fDroid, then this happened https://f-droid.org/posts/security-notice-textsecure/ . Now it's a GPlay exclusive. I don't have GAPPS so now I can't get it. I'd assume many privacy conscious people don't have GAPPS. I understand the technical hurtles, but it's too big a pill to swallow.

Just use Conversations. It can now use the same protocol and is the best XMPP client there is. I'm completely baffled that the Textsecure people insist on using the gapps package, which is of course an extreme privacy risk.

Thanks for this! Seems to cover most of my bases. Secure, on F-Droid and gappsless. Here's hoping for a mainstream XMPP resurgence. Not holding my breath though. I had played with Jitsi before too, have to see how these compare.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#96

Post by haffenloher »

gothenburg wrote: post #85
moxie wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you don't want to install Google Play Services on your device. My sense is that this isn't because you find the communication over GCM to be inherently offensive (it's just a tickle, after all), but because you don't want to run proprietary software. There's a very small number of people who find this to be very important, and my experience has been that the strategy is to loudly complain whenever anyth…

There you go: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore An open-source replacement of Google services. You can use Signal with this.

I wrote a little guide on how to set it up: http://o9i.de/2015/10/23/howto-gmscore.html

Has been working reasonably well for ~10 days now. Note that I'm on Android 4.2, so I might have missed something with regard to newer Android versions.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#97

Post by nailer »

rogeryu wrote: post #91
nailer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's excellent. Installing and using GPG (or GPGTools or GPG Keychain or whatever it's name is) on OS X is awful. Something that's still OSS and cares about UX (like Signal on iOS) would be fantastic.

> That's excellent. Installing and using GPG (or GPGTools or GPG Keychain or whatever it's name is) on OS X is awful. I don't understand what's so difficult here. The biggest problem is understanding how PGP works, and having to type a password now and then. I use it all the time, to sign - not encrypt - my mail.

Finding the app (not the source code), finding out what three names mean (as already discussed), finding which app to launch, realising it only works with Apple Mail and the shell are all parts of the current experience.

Another study on a different client, but same thing: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/modern-pgp-is-unusable-according...

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#98

Post by feld »

IshKebab wrote: post #64
Tepix wrote: post #55

Signal is pretty awesome, it's by far the best that we have right now: • state of the art crypto • open source • free as in beer • Available for Android and iOS There are a few minor features that are missing but I can live with that. However, there are also a couple of important shortcomings: • no decentralization • use of the phone number I hope they can be fixed sooner or later.

But the centralisation and use of the phone number is necessary to make it not shit. Anyway you forgot the important features: * Nice modern UI * Integrates with SMS * Supports group chats * Uses MMS for group chat if not all members have Signal * Not really buggy or hard to use

Hmm? I'm relatively certain Signal removed all support for SMS/MMS and requires all parties to use the Signal app

https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#99

Post by finnn »

feld wrote: post #98
IshKebab wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the centralisation and use of the phone number is necessary to make it not shit. Anyway you forgot the important features: * Nice modern UI * Integrates with SMS * Supports group chats * Uses MMS for group chat if not all members have Signal * Not really buggy or hard to use

Hmm? I'm relatively certain Signal removed all support for SMS/MMS and requires all parties to use the Signal app https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/

Incorrect. They removed support for encrypted SMS/MMS. You can still text normies who don't have Signal using it.

Re: Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app

#100

Post by finnn »

blub wrote: post #87
moxie wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were going to rank our priorities, they would be in this order: 1) Make mass surveillance impossible. 2) Stop targeted attacks against crypto nerds. It's not that we don't find #2 laudable, but optimizing for #1 takes precedence when we're making decisions. It's totally possible for you to install Signal on an iPod touch with a VoIP number, for instance, but that takes more effort than the common case we're des…

Any chance of not requiring access to the whole contact list? I think there are pickers that allow selecting one contact - or better yet, one could allow adding contacts inside Signal.

Probably not because they check that against the list of people who have Signal installed so they can send encrypted messages to the people who support it. They talk more about how they try to do this privately in [0].

[0]: https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/

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