12 ms·
Signal for Android: RedPhone and TextSecure in one app
- corney91 11y agoI really want to start using TextSecure (or Signal now I guess), but the only thing holding me back is it depends on Google Play Services. I love what they're doing and can understand the decision, but still thinks it sucks a bit that the best option for secure communications is so tied into Google.
- Arnt 11y agoWhat does it send via googleplay other than "please connect to the server now"?
- sasvari 11y agoit does require to have the google play services installed in the first place. so for those who i.e. run cyanogenmod without the google play services installed, it's unfortunately not possible to use Signal/TextSecure.
- ohthehugemanate 11y agoIt sends messages through Google's messaging framework. Of course the messages are end to end encrypted, so there's no security risk. It's just really hard to set up a global push messaging framework unless you have the clout of, say, Google.
- andrewpi 11y agoI believe it doesn't actually send the message content through GCM anymore, but just notifies the client that a new message is available and tells it to connect to Open Whisper Systems' server for the content.
- lorenzhs 11y agoIt's mostly because there aren't any real alternatives. Building a world wide push messaging network is really hard (you have to deal with carriers a lot and convince them not to close your long running connections after 5 minutes). That said, the servers support websocket connections as well. I don't know the current state of client support. Also, a Chrome/Chromium extension is in the works.
- bad_user 11y agoMaking push notifications work well is hard, so it's better to just use what's available. There are alternatives, but the alternatives aren't free at all. See: https://pushy.me/ https://pushy.me/
- devit 11y agoJust send heartbeats and reconnect if needed? Only real problems I see are hosting costs and preventing misuse, plus some minor coding work.
- faded_rights 11y agoSee here for a version that uses websockets instead of Google services. It's usable on Blackberry OS 10 so should be usable on other non-google devices. http://forums.crackberry.com/android-apps-amazon-store-apk-files-f413/textsecure-working-apk-websockets-jolla-edition-1031793/ http://forums.crackberry.com/android-apps-amazon-store-apk-f...
- moxie 11y agoIt 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 anything depends on play services. Just tactically speaking, I don't think this is going to work in the end, in the same sense that simply refusing to have a mobile phone won't work anymore -- slowly, the circumstances around this technology will make it impossible to refuse. What I don't understand is why nobody just writes an API-compatible open source implementation of play services. Even if it only supported GCM and nothing else, that'd unlock an enormous swath of apps, and would only require writing a basic implementation of the GCM network protocol. I'd love to know more if I'm misunderstanding the challenges around doing that. Right now it's part of the reason that I don't pay much attention to that crowd -- everyone seems very willing to complain, but nobody seems willing to do what seems like pretty straightforward work to solve their own problem.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gothenburg 11y agoThere you go: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore An open-source replacement of Google services. You can use Signal with this.
- haffenloher 11y agoI wrote a little guide on how to set it up: http://o9i.de/2015/10/23/howto-gmscore.html 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.
- gcb0 11y agojust debunking the bogus "you are a nerd that has a pet peeve against google services". this affect lots of users overseas or in poorer markets than san francisco. amazon phones don't ship with google service. cheap samsung models (most dual sim ones) sold overseas don't ship with it either. the cheap chinese phones don't have any google service. ...and those are only the ones i saw. i'm sure india/africa/europe have even more cases.
- marssaxman 11y agoDoes it actually use Google Play Services during normal operation or does it just depend on the Play Store for installation?
- furyg3 11y agoGreat! I've been using Signal for iOS and while it's not yet comparable to WhatsApp feature-wise, it's for sure good enough to use. I find it very difficult to get people to switch from the walled gardens of iOS messaging and WhatsApp (WhatsApp dominates the Dutch market for interesting historical reasons). I've been able to get a handful of privacy conscious friends to switch to Signal/TextSecure, hopefully the cross-platform branding makes this a bit easier.
- acqq 11y ago> switch from the walled gardens of iOS messaging and WhatsAp Doesn't Signal require my phone number? Isn't it dependent on the Whisper servers? Why isn't it a walled garden then?
- lsaferite 11y ago>Why isn't it a walled garden then? Because the client and server are both OSS? https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server
- acqq 11y agoCan I download the the Signal client from any store and then point it to my own server instead of Whisper's? Did anybody try to run his own server? Can such setup really work?
- Natanael_L 11y agoYou can run your own server, but there's no federation. The reason for that I imagine is that they want a privacy preserving automatic lookup method (a single server can confirm phone numbers and allow privacy preserving contact list comparisons for its own clients), and aren't convinced of using a model where the public key is the identifier instead of your phone number.
- Nexxxeh 11y agoAs was mentioned on another HN thread, why the ridiculous name? "Signal" is an already widely used term when talking about mobile communications. With cell phones in particular. "I'm trying to get signal on my phone" or "I'm trying to get Signal on my phone". Great(!)
- noja 11y agoCan you suggest a better name?
- iheartmemcache 11y agoNaming conflicts are a major problem - legal trademark implications, branding issues, searchability, etc etc. A name collision with someone, especially in a remotely similar industry, is problematic. IronChatApp.com is available. ("Steel"|"Lock"|"Forti"|<anything that conveys security>) + ("Chat"|"Talk"|...). I'm not sure, there are tons of professional marketing/branding/PR firms who do this really well. TextSecure et al were acquired, IIRC. If the parent company has 50k to throw around, approaching W+K might be a good investment. Edit: Mea culpa. It was WhisperSystems not OpenWhisperSystems which was acquired, both of which were founded by Marlinspike. This, incidentally, proves my point that naming similarities (WS vs OpenWS) within a similar domain (both mentally associated as "moxie" projects in my mind, in this case) can lead to problems.
- lorenzhs 11y ago> TextSecure et al were acquired, IIRC. If the parent company has 50k to throw around, approaching W+K might be a good investment. No, moxie's previous company (Whisper Systems) was acquired by Twitter (iirc), Open Whisper Systems is a different project. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Whisper_Systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Whisper_Systems and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_Systems
- anc84 11y agoOnly if you talk about it in English which is a fraction of the potential market.
- sbt 11y agoI have been using Signal (and TextSecure before that) for a while. The two features that would make me use it more would be: 1. Web client. (I send most of my texts from my laptop, which means I use Hangouts) 2. Search messages on the client. Thanks for a great product and keep up the good work.
- lorenzhs 11y agoA browser extension for Chrome/Chromium is being worked on! You can track it at https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Browser
- nailer 11y agoThat'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.
- Natanael_L 11y agoOpenKeychain ported to computers, maybe?
- rogeryu 11y ago> 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.
- nailer 11y agoFinding 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-to-academic-study/article/450835/ http://www.scmagazineuk.com/modern-pgp-is-unusable-according...
- deckiedan 11y agoOne of the reasons I didn't install WhatsApp is the sheer quantity of permissions it wants (on Android). Yes, I realise that this is part of Android's broken security model. But the Signal app also wants access to practically everything. Device & App History, Identity, Calendar, Contact, Location, SMS, Phone, Photos/Media/Files, Camera, Microphone, WiFi Connection info and Device ID and call info. Call me paranoid, but making an app with all those permissions seems kind of the obvious place for backdoors and similar. If there was a 'light' version of the app which only required access the internet, then I'd be much more likely to install and use it. (And maybe if I ended up trusting it, then later install add-ons / the full version later).
- bad_user 11y agoIn Android Marshmallow you can deny / disable any of those permissions. And apps compatible with API Level 23 won't ask for those permissions from the start.
- iheartmemcache 11y agoI'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 put him up there with Bruce Schieder. b) The whole source is available on GitHub, compile the APK and see if it matches. c) it's incredibly easy to take an apk and disassemble it, to see if there are backdoors to begin with if you are really that cynical. Don't get me wrong, I'm a tinfoil hatter. I use GPG, run my own MTA for anything even remotely important, use DDG over Google, donate to the EFF and use their HTTPS Everywhere plugin, have all of the Ad-Opt outs enabled that Google/Doubleclick/etc make available but try to obscure, etc. I'd be willing to bet that Google is collecting way more information than Signal is. But hey, that's why rev-eng is so important. A wiser man than me once said "Don't turn it on, take it apart" ;)
- xenophonf 11y ago
- venomsnake 11y agoDo they have ZRTP in the baseband of normal GSM call? This is what I have been waiting for.
- biokoda 11y agoNo one has that
- venomsnake 11y agoPrivateWave claim they have.
- biokoda 11y agoNo they don't. It's not mentioned anywhere on their website.
- venomsnake 11y agoWho am I to argue. You could use a standard modem software to create a data channel over voice. https://web.archive.org/web/20150303132755/http://www.privatewave.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=5406768 https://web.archive.org/web/20150303132755/http://www.privat... ZRTP/S ZRTP/S is an extension to ZRTP protocol. It is designed to make ZRTP-secured calls work across Circuit Switched communication channels such as the traditional telephony networks (GSM, CDMA, PSTN, ISDN, etc) where internet protocol is not available. On these telecommunication technologies peers can have a sort of “serial connection” through which they send and receive raw digital data. The communication channel is so narrowband (9.6kbit/s) that it is not possible to run IP (internet protocol over IP) over it. So, PrivateWave and Philip Zimmermann jointly designed and implemented ZRTP/S. It is a transport and security protocol for Voice over Circuit Switched channel, carefully adapted to be extremely narrowband and minimalistic. After a year of researching and development, PrivateWave created a library, libzrtps. The library allowed PrivateWave to release the 1st version of PrivateGSM product - PrivateGSM CSD. It allows users to communicate securely in a point-to-point fashion with the ZRTP end-to-end encryption protocol and with a bandwidth as small as 5400bit/s. Full specification of ZRTP/S and Source Code will be soon published. Anyone willing to create his own project, improve and eventually establish interoperability between Circuit Switched secure telephony (ZRTP/S over GSM) and Packet Switch secure telephony (ZRTP over IP) can benefit from the publications. Interoperability represents one of the design goals of the ZRTP/S protocol.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoWhy not on my Nexus 7?
- maxerickson 11y agoIt uses an SMS to register your phone number.
- suenamy 11y agoYou can send the verification call/text to any old phone and type it in on the Signal device.
- justcommenting 11y agoIf you use a Nexus 7, you probably have a Google account, so you could use a Google Voice number to register.
- maxerickson 11y agoGoogle Play doesn't make it available to the Nexus 7 (at least, I don't see it on mine).
- artichokeheart 11y agoAs long as it still requires Google Play I'll still consider it snake oil.
- newjersey 11y agoIt uses Google Cloud Messaging. There needs to be a server in between and I believe GCM is free. Consider a situation where Bobs phone is switched off. Alice sends a message and turns off their phone. Now, Bob turns in their phone. How do we get the message Alice sent to Bob?
- a3_nm 11y agoGive me some open source code that I can run on my own server to manage the notifications for me and for my friends, and allow me to tell the client app on my phone to use it. That's way better than forcing me to rely on a specific Google server and protocol, which further requires proprietary software on the client.
- moxie 11y agoSee my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10500188
- bad_user 11y agoIn addition to what @newjersey said, you also need to handle push notifications, which in the context of a mobile phone aren't cheap at all. This is because you need infrastructure and because keeping connections open drains your battery and making it work well is wasted developer effort. This is why it is better to use whatever is available, like GCM on Android, APNS on iOS, or maybe Pushy (see pushy.me) or whatever Amazon does if you want distribution on alternative stores.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- creshal 11y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3rc9br/psa_signal_for_android_replaced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3rc9br/psa_signal_f... There seem to be concerns about the security of it.
- Natanael_L 11y agoSeems like the persistence for automatic VoIP authentication confirmation is currently disabled. Meaning you need to confirm our again each time. But have they confirmed this is in the release, not just in a development branch?
- Johnny_Brahms 11y agoThey have been encouraging people to read the two words on the screen on the start of every conversation forever, so I'm not really worried. Hopefully it will get back in, though.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mrmondo 11y agoI'm glad it's not called RedPhone for Android users, they may get it confused with YouRed I mean YouTubeRed I mean RedTube or whatever it's called now. In all seriousness though - what was (is) with the trend of apps with Red in the name? Red to me gives the idea of danger or something that's stopped / blocked.
- maxerickson 11y agoThere's a long history of calling a secure phone a red phone, like the connection between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War. In the cheesy TV show from the 60s, Batman and the police commissioner had literal red phones that they used to talk to each other.
- mrmondo 11y agoAh! That's quite interesting and now that you say it I of course remember seeing red phones in films in such situations. Thank you for taking he time to reply.
- mtgx 11y agoAny ETA for the desktop version?
- Tepix 11y agoSignal 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.
- IshKebab 11y agoBut 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
- darklajid 11y agoI disagree that a phone number is required. You don't have one here, nor on Facebook should you use that. Identity doesn't need to be tied to a phone number and arguably .. shouldn't be. How is centrali[zs]ation important? Mail works transparently and you don't know a thing about the stack behind a random address, right? I'd side with the GP: The 'one server, ours' and 'your phone number is your identity' limitations are what I'd like to see go away. Prioritizing the 'no phone number' over 'hosting my own server', as far as I'm concerned.
- vox_mollis 11y agoHuge respect for Moxie, but the requirement of a phone number really is a dealkiller. 1. Phone number requires a service provider 2. Service provider owns the baseband and root of your phone. 3. $government makes a "lawful request" of Verizon et. al. to install keyloggers/screenshotters on your phone. 4. Your "secure" commms are compromised. Signal needs to work on comprehensively rooted devices connected only via wifi for the above threat model to go away.
- moxie 11y agoIf 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 designing for.
- verusfossa 11y agoTextSecure used to be on fDroid, then this happened https://f-droid.org/posts/security-notice-textsecure/ 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.
- TheHippo 11y agoIt's open source. So could compile on your own.
- verusfossa 11y agoI'm pretty sure it requires gapps, although I did see a websockets version so not 100%. Also, keeping your own builds up to date is possible, but a hassle. For anyone else doing that https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=fr.kwiatkowski.ApkTrack https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=fr.kwiatkowski.A... is an easy way to ensure your apks are up to date without a repo store.
- a3_nm 11y agoTextSecure requires proprietary Google applications and this is deliberate: http://support.whispersystems.org/customer/portal/articles/2123166-why-do-i-need-google-play-installed-to-use-textsecure-on-android- http://support.whispersystems.org/customer/portal/articles/2... SMSSecure is an acceptable alternative (for text messages), available on F-Droid.
- suenamy 11y agohttps://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore https://github.com/mar-v-in/BlankStore https://github.com/mar-v-in/BlankStore
- rogerbraun 11y agoJust 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.
- pasbesoin 11y agoI just updated, after which I checked the settings. I noticed that auto-downloading in MMS text messages was enabled (moxie stated for a prior version that it was not, at that time), whereupon I changed the settings to disable. I may well be misinterpreting what I was seeing, but better safe than sorry. (I'm stuck on Android 5.1 (not 5.1.1) on a Verizon phone. I was thinking of the ongoing Stagefright problems.)
- Omnipresent 11y agoIs Signal for Android open source like other things coming out of open whisper? I didn't see it on their github page [0] [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems https://github.com/WhisperSystems
- scienhack 11y agoSignal for Android is effectively TextSecure v3+, with a new label. So it's TextSecure repo that holds Signal's code.
- Johnny_Brahms 11y agoIt is still called TextSecure on there.
- amluto 11y agoWhat happened to short authentication strings? The SAS protocol is nicely documented in the Silent Circle Instant Messaging Protocol paper [1], but when I go to "Verify identity" in the app I'm asked to verify an obnoxiously long pair of hexadecimal strings. The phone call feature supports it (with a curious lack of documentation), but it would be easy to imagine a UI that allowed verification without making a phone call and without allowing users to screw it up: one phone shows the SAS string, the other phone asks you to type it in, and neither phone allows IMs to be sent while doing this.
- JshWright 11y agoAxolotl (the crypto protocol used by Signal/TextSecure) never used SAS. The calling feature uses ZRTP, which does do SAS.
- oha 11y agoIf they would add support for sending pdf and doc files and any other file and release a desktop client it would be an unbeatable messenger.
- newman314 11y agoI'm really hoping for some intersection of Signal, Ricochet.im and Burner. * Signal for the security piece. * Ricochet.im for the Tor (optional?) and anonymous endpoint * Burner for the idea that we can have lots of throwaway identities (if so desired).
- redwards510 11y agoWow, tough room! So much negativity. Whisper Systems, thanks for making encryption simple enough that my Mom can use it, and open enough that I can trust it. That is the success story here.
- anonbanker 11y agoI can't wait to see the number of pull requests to their repositories for all the bugs/features people are demanding!
- gozo 11y agoThat's not really how the world works though. People have de facto ownership over projects. A lot of the features are things which the project have repeatedly rejected. Very few people are going to spend time on things they believe are futile. The technology isn't the problem here, it's the leadership of the project.
- tabrischen 11y agoUnfortunately when I used Redphone previously the call quality is pretty bad. The volume of the call would get screwed up and I know it's not to do with the signals (lol) because I would hang up and call the person back without redphone and it would work perfectly.
- mtgx 11y agoSupporting android 2.3 is the equivalent of supporting Windows XP at this point. Why do it? Those Android 2.3 devices will be vulnerable as hell anyway, and I imagine it just makes it hard to support them, too, taking precious time from working on new features or cryptography. IMO, you should support only Android 4.1+ and up. Also, I'm confused as to why Signal still asks to be my "default SMS app" when I thought the code to encrypt SMS texts was removed from TextSecure? Why would I still want my SMS's handled by Signal?
- muppetman 11y agoBecause you want to store them on your phone encrypted, so that no one else can read them without knowing your passphrase? Sure, the fact they're transmitted to your carrier in a 100% readable form removes most of the benefit of this, but it can still stop prying eyes from reading your texts. Also, it's trying to be like iMessage. You have a single messenger, where you default to unsecure SMS for those contacts that don't have Signal, but default to secure messaging for those that do, all in the one app without you having to think about it.
- oggy 11y agoThis is great news, and thanks to everyone involved. I've been using TextSecure for a while, and it's really "pretty good security made easy". Yes it is not perfect for the super privacy-conscious (depends on Google Play services and all that) and a fork with these features might be useful, but if I understand the motivation correctly, the main goal is to make good crypto accessible to the masses. I do have a personal gripe with that, though. I'm hoping a "high up" might read it so I am posting it here. The only people in my contact list who use the app are crypto nerds. It's really hard to get traction. I thought that the TextSecure people had a great idea to solve this chicken and egg problem; a unified messaging app that would handle your sms, and send secure messages wherever possible. One feature that I find is missing though, is the ability to semd broadcast (unencrypted) sms texts. In my experience (Europe, people around 30) this is used a lot, and a drop-in replacement for the built-in messenger would need to have this. Actually, I would like to see this happen so much that I would be willing to do the work, if someone is willing to provide the handholding...
- JshWright 11y agoDoes the calling functionality support any wideband codecs? I've tried RedPhone in the past, but the audio quality left a lot to be desired.
- jugbee 11y agoGuys, cut with the negativity. I'm a crypto nerd as well, and with my other truly paranoid friends we use Chatsecure which does not require your number, is compatible with Tor, etc. However, my mom uses Signal, my father yesterday called me via Signal and he's fuckin' 67 years old. That is truly amazing and I admire Moxie et.al for the work they do. Do you seem to forget that it is encryption for the masses. Not only for the few tin foils like myself. And even if it uses GCM, it's still an great, since i could never persuade my non-paranoid friends to contact me only via Chatsecure. They would say - "why the fuck can't you be like a normal person and use whatsapp or fb messenger?".
- droopyar12 11y agoRedphone and Signal are all backdoor applications with bugs and exploits that i have found. Even the server is backdoor. Nobody in the security scene could use this, except a kid.