6 ms·

Another problem is, Signal is broken by design. NSA cares about metadata, not content. Signal exposes a lot of metadata to Google CM, which is in relationship w

by akerro 11y ago

Another problem is, Signal is broken by design. NSA cares about metadata, not content. Signal exposes a lot of metadata to Google CM, which is in relationship with NSA. They also forbid releasing their app outside of Google-Play story, and that makes it even worse broken... Read more here: https://fdroid.eutopia.cz/ https://fdroid.eutopia.cz/

gpvos 11y ago
Google CM = Google Cloud Messaging
exo762 11y ago
I'll cite moxie: > 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. As long as US Army is not using metadata to shoot people with hellfire missiles on American soil, Signal is good enough for general population. If you want perfect protocol - work on Vuvuzela. But good luck porting traffic analysis resistant solution to mobile phones with their limited battery capacity.
- akerro 11y ago
  >As long as US Army is not using metadata to shoot people with hellfire missiles on American soil Not American soil... but... NSA 'drone strikes based on mobile phone data' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/nsa-drone-strikes-based-on-mobile-phone-data-9119735.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/nsa-drone-s...
- glogla 11y ago
  > on American soil, Signal is good enough for general population. What do you know, general population of the world does not live on American soil. I can't trust Moxie after he called Google, Microsoft and Apple having absolute control over people's good thing, and called people having control over their own devices "going back to the old broken desktop security model". Can you trust someone like that? It all makes me think that Signal is some kind of honeypot.
  - exo762 11y ago
    Propose alternatives. For general population. Go. ... Now, when you've suddenly realized that people: 1) will not stop using mobile phones 2) mobile phones are tracking devices 3) preventing mobiles from tracking you is well beyond skills of both average tech person and average joe 4) average person is not capable of keeping malware away from their machine What do you propose? Can you do better than moxie? Or will you continue to spread FUD about best available tech?
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > I can't trust Moxie after he called Google, Microsoft and Apple having absolute control over people's good thing, and called people having control over their own devices "going back to the old broken desktop security model". When speaking about non-technical, generally-clueless-about-computers people? This is ABSOLUTELY the correct attitude to have. Being able to trick someone into installing softare that reports back everything you do on your computer by getting the user to Punch The Monkey is a BUG, not a feature. The screaming hellpit that is the state of PC security is very bad for the average computer user. For technical users, systems (like Secure Boot, along with a chain of bootloader/kernel/userspace software verifiers [0]) that let you -say- securely attest that you trust an alternative source of software are really good, when implemented properly. They help prevent drive-by malware installation, as well as let you know when your machine has been tampered with. This is a GOOD property to have. What about users who want to run their homebrew software (or even start to learn how to code), but don't want to be bothered with code signing key enrollment? On the one hand, I guess -in this world- they're left out in the cold, if they're not doing something in the browser. On the other hand, any programmer is going to quickly face challenges far greater than any non-pathologically-bad key enrollment mechanisms... if the would-be non-web-programmer never gets over this hurdle, it's very likely (in its absence) he would have been stopped by any of the other couple-hundred difficult things along the way. [0] It's late, so some of these verifiers (particularly the userspace one) might not exist in any mainstream distro.
Arnt 11y ago
AIUI the leaked data is recipient and approximate length of the body. Is there more?
- makomk 11y ago
  Sender and recipient's mobile phone number, length of the body, time and date of communication - for every conversation using Signal. Which is pretty much all the metadata you need.
  - Arnt 11y ago
    I looked at the source code on github, and it seems as if the sender's phone number is part of the encrypted blob. What am I missing?
    - exo762 11y ago
      This is good since it protects you from snooping from ISPs/carriers. You are still exposed to Google/Apple, since it can easily combine your contact information with traffic information and with great deal of probability detect who was the recipient. I still would take it over encrypted SMS, where this data is open to carriers and carriers are basically perma-owned by everyone.
      - Arnt 11y ago
        The recipient is clear. Google can known with perfect certainty whether you receive messages using Signal. The sender of a message is not; only Moxie has any real ability to see who communicates with who. Google and those pwn Google can only see who receives messages, how many, how long, when.
        exo762 11y ago
        This are my assumptions: 1) Google can see Alice send message via Signal 2) Google can see Bob receive message via Signal 3) Google knows that Alice is in Bob's contacts, and Bob is in Alice's contacts Those three pieces of data should be enough. I don't see why Google can't do time correlation of those messages. Both Alice's and Bob's contact lists are very finite. It might be not obvious for single message, but for series of messages (and people chat this way) it should be very obvious who is talking to whom.
rmc 11y ago
Signal does not forbid using the app outside the App Store. They just discourage it.
- akerro 11y ago
  >Moxie Marlinspike apparently doesn't like the idea of independent builds of TextSecure and RedPhone so much, that he started with legal threats Hmmm...
  - exo762 11y ago
    Where do you see the problem? Moxie wants independent builds to have distinct names, to avoid confusion.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    so much, that he started with legal threats on Twitter. I wonder why they don't link the tweets?
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > ...Marlinspike apparently doesn't like the idea of independent builds of TextSecure and RedPhone so much... Except: (Feb 2013) "So that's where we are. I believe that the decision not to distribute prebuilt APKs achieves the following balance: 1) It does not encourage the average user to tick "allow 3rd party APKs" in Android settings. 2) It allows "power" users who can appropriately manage the risks to install TextSecure without Play by building from source. The thesis essentially being, if you aren't able to build TextSecure from source, you probably aren't capable of managing the risks associated with 3rd party sources." [0] and (Jul 2013) "Hey @rickbarton , to my knowledge we have not forbidden anything. People have requested that we distribute official binary APKs outside of the Play Store, which we are currently choosing not to do for several reasons (#127, #281). If we can address those issues we would be happy to distribute binary APKs. However, this does not "forbid" anyone else from doing whatever they please. ..." [1] Other things: * The author neither links to nor provides screenshots of, nor quotes from the Twitter comments that he references. This is a bit of a red flag. * The author asserts that "Moxie is not open to arguments and wants TextSecure to be distributed only via Google Play. He already locked this discussion.", which is plainly not true. If it was true, Issue #127 would be closed, and Moxie would not have made the comment that he did on issue #281. [2] It's also notable that the discussion lock didn't happen until 2015-01-09... a year and a half after the requirements for official distribution outside of Google Play were laid out in the comment attached to issue #281. The fellow running the Eutopia.cz F-Droid repo clearly has an axe to grind, and is either unable to, or in too much of a hurry to understand the actual situation on the ground. When dealing with security software, you really, really want skilled, careful, meticulous people to be in charge of design, implementation, and packaging. This guy doesn't seem to be such a person. [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#issuecomment-13335689 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#... [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282#issuecomment-21763403 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282#... [2] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#issuecomment-21762482 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#...

by akerro 11y ago

gpvos 11y ago

Google CM = Google Cloud Messaging

exo762 11y ago

I'll cite moxie: > 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. As long as US Army is not using metadata to shoot people with hellfire missiles on American soil, Signal is good enough for general population. If you want perfect protocol - work on Vuvuzela. But good luck porting traffic analysis resistant solution to mobile phones with their limited battery capacity.

akerro 11y ago
>As long as US Army is not using metadata to shoot people with hellfire missiles on American soil Not American soil... but... NSA 'drone strikes based on mobile phone data' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/nsa-drone-strikes-based-on-mobile-phone-data-9119735.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/nsa-drone-s...
glogla 11y ago
> on American soil, Signal is good enough for general population. What do you know, general population of the world does not live on American soil. I can't trust Moxie after he called Google, Microsoft and Apple having absolute control over people's good thing, and called people having control over their own devices "going back to the old broken desktop security model". Can you trust someone like that? It all makes me think that Signal is some kind of honeypot.
- exo762 11y ago
  Propose alternatives. For general population. Go. ... Now, when you've suddenly realized that people: 1) will not stop using mobile phones 2) mobile phones are tracking devices 3) preventing mobiles from tracking you is well beyond skills of both average tech person and average joe 4) average person is not capable of keeping malware away from their machine What do you propose? Can you do better than moxie? Or will you continue to spread FUD about best available tech?
- simoncion 11y ago
  > I can't trust Moxie after he called Google, Microsoft and Apple having absolute control over people's good thing, and called people having control over their own devices "going back to the old broken desktop security model". When speaking about non-technical, generally-clueless-about-computers people? This is ABSOLUTELY the correct attitude to have. Being able to trick someone into installing softare that reports back everything you do on your computer by getting the user to Punch The Monkey is a BUG, not a feature. The screaming hellpit that is the state of PC security is very bad for the average computer user. For technical users, systems (like Secure Boot, along with a chain of bootloader/kernel/userspace software verifiers [0]) that let you -say- securely attest that you trust an alternative source of software are really good, when implemented properly. They help prevent drive-by malware installation, as well as let you know when your machine has been tampered with. This is a GOOD property to have. What about users who want to run their homebrew software (or even start to learn how to code), but don't want to be bothered with code signing key enrollment? On the one hand, I guess -in this world- they're left out in the cold, if they're not doing something in the browser. On the other hand, any programmer is going to quickly face challenges far greater than any non-pathologically-bad key enrollment mechanisms... if the would-be non-web-programmer never gets over this hurdle, it's very likely (in its absence) he would have been stopped by any of the other couple-hundred difficult things along the way. [0] It's late, so some of these verifiers (particularly the userspace one) might not exist in any mainstream distro.

Arnt 11y ago

AIUI the leaked data is recipient and approximate length of the body. Is there more?

makomk 11y ago
Sender and recipient's mobile phone number, length of the body, time and date of communication - for every conversation using Signal. Which is pretty much all the metadata you need.
- Arnt 11y ago
  I looked at the source code on github, and it seems as if the sender's phone number is part of the encrypted blob. What am I missing?
  - exo762 11y ago
    This is good since it protects you from snooping from ISPs/carriers. You are still exposed to Google/Apple, since it can easily combine your contact information with traffic information and with great deal of probability detect who was the recipient. I still would take it over encrypted SMS, where this data is open to carriers and carriers are basically perma-owned by everyone.
    - Arnt 11y ago
      The recipient is clear. Google can known with perfect certainty whether you receive messages using Signal. The sender of a message is not; only Moxie has any real ability to see who communicates with who. Google and those pwn Google can only see who receives messages, how many, how long, when.
      - exo762 11y ago
        This are my assumptions: 1) Google can see Alice send message via Signal 2) Google can see Bob receive message via Signal 3) Google knows that Alice is in Bob's contacts, and Bob is in Alice's contacts Those three pieces of data should be enough. I don't see why Google can't do time correlation of those messages. Both Alice's and Bob's contact lists are very finite. It might be not obvious for single message, but for series of messages (and people chat this way) it should be very obvious who is talking to whom.

rmc 11y ago

Signal does not forbid using the app outside the App Store. They just discourage it.

akerro 11y ago
>Moxie Marlinspike apparently doesn't like the idea of independent builds of TextSecure and RedPhone so much, that he started with legal threats Hmmm...
- exo762 11y ago
  Where do you see the problem? Moxie wants independent builds to have distinct names, to avoid confusion.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  so much, that he started with legal threats on Twitter. I wonder why they don't link the tweets?
- simoncion 11y ago
  > ...Marlinspike apparently doesn't like the idea of independent builds of TextSecure and RedPhone so much... Except: (Feb 2013) "So that's where we are. I believe that the decision not to distribute prebuilt APKs achieves the following balance: 1) It does not encourage the average user to tick "allow 3rd party APKs" in Android settings. 2) It allows "power" users who can appropriately manage the risks to install TextSecure without Play by building from source. The thesis essentially being, if you aren't able to build TextSecure from source, you probably aren't capable of managing the risks associated with 3rd party sources." [0] and (Jul 2013) "Hey @rickbarton , to my knowledge we have not forbidden anything. People have requested that we distribute official binary APKs outside of the Play Store, which we are currently choosing not to do for several reasons (#127, #281). If we can address those issues we would be happy to distribute binary APKs. However, this does not "forbid" anyone else from doing whatever they please. ..." [1] Other things: * The author neither links to nor provides screenshots of, nor quotes from the Twitter comments that he references. This is a bit of a red flag. * The author asserts that "Moxie is not open to arguments and wants TextSecure to be distributed only via Google Play. He already locked this discussion.", which is plainly not true. If it was true, Issue #127 would be closed, and Moxie would not have made the comment that he did on issue #281. [2] It's also notable that the discussion lock didn't happen until 2015-01-09... a year and a half after the requirements for official distribution outside of Google Play were laid out in the comment attached to issue #281. The fellow running the Eutopia.cz F-Droid repo clearly has an axe to grind, and is either unable to, or in too much of a hurry to understand the actual situation on the ground. When dealing with security software, you really, really want skilled, careful, meticulous people to be in charge of design, implementation, and packaging. This guy doesn't seem to be such a person. [0] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#issuecomment-13335689 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127#... [1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282#issuecomment-21763403 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282#... [2] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#issuecomment-21762482 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281#...