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> They seem to have replaced TLS/SSL between client and server with "Noise Pipes". WhatsApp was already using a custom protocol instead of TLS. We worked with
by moxie 11y ago
> They seem to have replaced TLS/SSL between client and server with "Noise Pipes".
WhatsApp was already using a custom protocol instead of TLS. We worked with them to transition over to Noise Pipes, which has some advantages over what they were doing before. Also, we've renamed Axolotl to Signal Protocol: https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and-out/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-inside-and-out/
- mike_hearn 11y agoThanks. As an aside, what's with Nietzsche? He seems to crop up in your screenshots quite frequently.
- defen 11y ago"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." (just a guess)
- tptacek 11y agoIt is killing me that you didn't rename Signal to Axolotl.
- aw3c2 11y agoWhy? "Axolotl" at least has seriously pronunciation issues so I am glad it is not used "user-side".
- ge0rg 11y agoBut it had a significantly better signal-to-noise (SCNR) ratio when looking for specifications, code and docs. The original "axolotl" term comes from a completely different domain, so it was easy to distinguish and filter for. "Signal" in IT usually means UNIX inter-process communication.
- tptacek 11y agoFor my part: because "Axolotl" is one of the most widely name-dropped terms in hipster cryptography, and because it's been adopted by other projects, and because it's distinctive, and because they basically own the term. In a stroke, everyone doing secure key ratchets would have been using their product. It's also just a cool name.
- aw3c2 11y agoThanks and I agree about that!
- garrettr_ 11y agoI always liked "Axolotol" because axolotols are a type of salamander with the amazing ability to regenerate parts of their bodies (including their brains!), and the Axolotol protocol, like OTR, is "self-healing", meaning it's capable of recovering from a compromised session key (https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/).
- vmasto 11y agoAnd you're spelling it wrong which pretty much validates the renaming.
- david-given 11y agoAxolotls are also cool because they're not really a species in their own right --- they're actually just the juvenile form of a salamander. But they can breed while in their juvenile form! It's as if tadpoles could lay eggs without having to turn into frogs first. In fact, axolotls only metamorphose into salamanders if triggered by the external environment. If you don't stimulate them in the right way, they stay axolotls. For a long time they were thought of as two different types of creature completely. There's a story of one of the very early researchers looking at his vivarium one day and discovering that it was now full of salamanders rather than the axolotls he was expecting. I would love to have heard the conversation...
- 11y ago
- jacobolus 11y agoBecause words coming from Nahuatl are cool! (coyotl, mesquitl, tomatl, ahuacatl, etc.) See more from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas#Words_from_Nahuatl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_from_ind... They’re distinctively spelled, don’t collide with existing search terms, often have available domains, etc. Most importantly, they anticipated the web 2.0 trend of ending words with two consonants in a row. ;) Finally, just look at this guy: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/AxolotlBE.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/AxolotlB...
- derefr 11y agoLinguistic tangent: the common suffix on those words is interesting. Is it required for Nahuatl nouns, like the Latin -t suffix? I notice that not all the other example words on the linked page-section have it, but a large majority do.
- ar-jan 11y agot͡ɬ is a phoneme in Nahuatl [0] (Voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [1] if you care to hear it), which explains why many Nahuatl words have sequences of "tl". I don't know if there's a specific reason why these words end with that sound (it doesn't have to be a suffix). Edit: yes, it's a suffix (for Classical Nahuatl): "Non-possessed nouns take a suffix called the absolutive. This suffix takes the form -tl after vowels (ā-tl, "water") and -tli after consonants [...]" ([2]). 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#Phonology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl#Phonology 1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_affricate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_aff... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Nahuatl_grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Nahuatl_grammar
- thaumasiotes 11y ago> Is it required for Nahuatl nouns, like the Latin -t suffix? I don't understand what you're thinking of here? Here are some Latin nouns, all in nominative case: nauta (first declension) puer (second) gladius (second) malum (second) lex (third) limen (third) tempus (third) virtus (third) civitas (third) cornu (fourth) manus (fourth) res (fifth) I gave the nominative case, but in fact none of those nouns has any form ending in -t. The only -t suffix I know of in Latin is for third-person singular verbs.
- mc32 11y agoKids would love that name because they know it as that cool looking salamander with gills (or whatever they are).
- tptacek 11y agoConfirming this: my daughter was thrilled that there was something in my field actually called "axolotl".
- ironsides 11y agoIf user growth and mainstream adoption are your goals then calling the product 'Signal' is the better choice by leaps and bounds. Axolotl is cool in a techy/underground sort of way (if your into that) but completely misses the boat on being 1) Easy to spell, 2) easy to pronounce, 3) easy to understand. Mainstream users would just say "wtf" and move on to whatsapp/telegram/facebook messenger.
- coroutines 11y agoThis thread is making me want to reread Dune.
- mtgx 11y agoMoxie, what do you say to this? https://twitter.com/JZdziarski/status/717399098563891200 https://twitter.com/JZdziarski/status/717399098563891200 Is that true? Are the messages decrypted server-side for iOS users?
- dewey 11y agoHe said: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/717403659298942976 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/717403659298942976
- narrowrail 11y agoThis post illustrates how silly it is to link to a tweet, and not just paste the text of the message directly. This tweet has been deleted. And for anyone else that hates visiting these social networks, Moxie's reply was, "I'm sure, but it'd be to everyone's benefit for you to verify."
- ianmiers 11y agoIs there any documentation on the old custom protocol?
- baby 11y agoWhat's the incentive of not using TLS?
- mahyarm 11y agoAbout 6 round trips, which gives you about a 30s latency on EDGE networks. Doing a key exchange once, retaining it and then doing future communications with just 1 round trip is significantly faster.
- jd20 11y agoIsn't a full TLS handshake 6 messages (thus 3 round trips)? Also with false start and resumption, TLS can also typically achieve 1 roundtrip, right? (I'm also confused by 30s latency for 6 RTT, but maybe I"m too focused on US market, where EDGE latency would be more like 500ms each way.) Maybe not all of WhatsApp's platforms support the latest TLS improvements though, thus it's easier to roll their own?
- jd20 11y agoI'm curious about this too. Short of some rigid technical requirement, it's hard to imagine why you'd want to reinvent the wheel or forgo a protocl which is so widely available and studied. (Although I've not read the Noise whitepaper though, I'm sure it must have some benefits compared to TLS.)
- rakoo 11y agoIt's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with TLS (see: OpenSSL). Also, TLS has roots in a time where we knew much less in terms of crypto; as time went on and flaws were discovered, SSL/TLS was patched all around, meaning it has become much harder to implement correctly. Noise starts from a clean state with modern knowledge of cryptography and modern cryptography. Much easier to understand and replicate, much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with. TLS brings modularity and evolutivity, much needed in a protocol the scale of HTTP. In Whatsapp's case, Whatsapp controls both the server and the client; it is much easier to transition between versions because all bricks are under control. When you don't need what TLS brings anymore it makes sense to discard it. As another example: Tarsnap (https://www.tarsnap.com/ https://www.tarsnap.com/) uses spiped (https://www.tarsnap.com/spiped.html https://www.tarsnap.com/spiped.html), a very simple yet powerful mechanism to build an encrypted channel. Its protocol and proof fit in ~100 lines (https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/blob/master/README https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped/blob/master/README). When you don't need all the jazz provided by TLS (and when you're lucky enough to be able to pre-share keys, which helps a lot) then a simple protocol is good.
- andersen1488 11y agoWhat exactly is wrong with TLS? Why the switch?
- KingMob 11y agoAs a protocol, it's quite old, complex, and has a huge surface area for attacks. E.g., the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Attacks_against_TLS.2FSSL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Attac...) lists over a dozen major attacks against TLS/SSL. Its only advantage is ubiquity; it's the standard in every browser and web server.
- antihero 11y agoFor me the biggest thing is - how do we have any idea that WhatsApp is actually using this wonderful crypto tech under the hood? For example my WhatsApp is claiming my messages to my friend are encrypted, whereas his phone is claiming they are not. This is not exactly conducive to trust!
- russgray 11y agoMine did that for a while, then it resolved itself. Maybe it takes some time for all instances in a group to agree they are encrypted; I also think at least one of my groups marked itself encrypted after everyone in it had posted at least one comment since yesterday.