Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
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Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
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Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#2I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM.
Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a screenshot of your image. Snapchat is meant to be used to share throwaway photos without the social expectation that comes from putting it on somewhere like Facebook. Anyone who uses the application learns quickly that someone can potentially store the photo they sent -- in a vast variety of ways.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#3I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM. Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a s…
I agree, I just hope the average snapchat user realizes that there's no guarantee the pictures they're sending can be archived forever (especially the younger users).
I never used the app though, and I just tried to go to their website to see how they communicate on this issue just to discover that snapchat.com doesn't contain a single description of the service. There's just a silly video on the frontpage (turtle fights? I'm not sure about the ethics of that) and links to download the app. It's crazy that something so new is already popular enough that they don't even need to explain what it is anymore.
That being said on both apple's and google's app stores the description of the app mentions that the user can make a screenshot and save the picture, so at least they don't try to hide this limitation.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#4I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM. Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a s…
Actually it does attempt to do that - it requires you keep your finger on the screen while viewing so you can't perform whatever the screenshot command is. Which is lame but that's not the point - their selling point is that they do claim the images are transient. I'll wager 90% of their traffic is images people would not want made public, and some of it will be technically illegal.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#5I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM. Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a s…
It's supposed to be hard enough for 99.9999% of users.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#6As the answers suggest, there's a difference between encrypting everything with the same key, and encrypting between two parties.
Arguably, encrypting all snapchat traffic with the exact same key is almost worthless, and they could just send everything unencrypted. If a snooper knows they're looking at snapchat traffic, decrypting it is trivial.
At least with a key exchange, you have a good chance that only the targeted recipient can view the photo.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#7I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM. Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a s…
Actually an Android app can disable screenshots, but your point still stands: there is nothing to stop someone taking a photo of the screen.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#8This is a bit of a tangent, but I think it get's at the more interesting part of this question.
I ended up following a link to another sec.se thread where the idea of secure program obfuscation was discussed.[0] I feel embarrassed for having missed this but it appears that there exists on a theoretical level a manner of solving snapchat's woes.
The wired article ([0][0]) seems to suggest that it would be impractical at the moment due to resource constraints, however I also haven't had a minute to read the paper ([0][1]) yet as it is quite near morning and I need to get to sleep.
On a related tangent, the thing that sprung to mind about this new technique in obfuscation was the potential for using keyed APIs easily from the browser without having to bother the primary site's servers at all. Clearly very far away from there however.
Also, wouldn't secure obfuscation enable a lot of malware to evade detection by most current av programs?
[0][0]http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/cryptography-break... [0][1]http://eprint.iacr.org/2013/631.pdf
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#9I don't totally see the point to these arguments. The inherent nature of the technology we have means that if they can view it once, they can view it as long and as many times as they want. Anything trying to restrict that is just futile -- look at DRM. Snapchat has never given that particular illusion of privacy. As the most common and basic example, it has absolutely no way of stopping people from simply taking a s…
Actually it does attempt to do that - it requires you keep your finger on the screen while viewing so you can't perform whatever the screenshot command is. Which is lame but that's not the point - their selling point is that they do claim the images are transient. I'll wager 90% of their traffic is images people would not want made public, and some of it will be technically illegal.
What's the point of that? I just tried it, and I can take a screenshot fine with one finger on the screen.
Re: Why can we still crack snapchat photos in 12 lines of Ruby?
#10How would one solve this? One solution seems to be to generate key for each user and store the public keys on the server. If there is need to access the images on the server, encrypt them with a server key and then re-encrypt with the recipients' public key. Are there some problems with this approach (like some functionality of snapchat wouldn't work with this)?