4 ms·
What then is good for the masses?
by nxzero 11y ago
What then is good for the masses?
- Loque 11y agoIMHO it really depends on what you are doing; - Chatting with friends? = Whatsapp - International drug deals? != Whatsapp
- nxzero 11y agoGoal should be mass adoption of universal turnkey state-level OPSEC for everyday use.
- tptacek 11y agoI like the idea of a three-tier threat model: Tier 1: potentially inconvenient but maximally secure, in an OPSEC sense (PGP, for instance, though I would personally put Signal here too). Use carefully for security against state-level adversaries. Tier 2: convenient mainstream applications with strong security but some tradeoffs. Your default choice, security against criminal adversaries. I'd put WhatsApp and iMessage here (but not many others). Tier 3: unencrypted or dubiously encrypted mainstream applications, unsafe against any adversary, but potentially useful as an endpoint to (cautiously) bootstrap communications. Google Talk and AIM would go here for me.
- eru 11y agoPGP doesn't have plausible deniability. It actually has `you can prove anyone else what I said to you', if you sign anything. That's dangerous, so shouldn't be on tier 1. (Or at least that's how it used to be.)
- rschuetzler 11y agoIs plausible deniability something you want in your communication? Just curious, as this is something I haven't heard before. It seems like non-repudiation would be what you want in your comms.
- eru 11y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging Sometimes you want plausible deniability, sometimes you want to sign something for all the world to be able to verify.
- rschuetzler 11y agoGot it, thanks. I'd heard of OTR, but never really looked into what it meant. Makes sense now.
- tptacek 11y agoMost secure messengers don't have deniability.
- CaptSpify 11y agoSo because most of them implement security wrong, we should just accept that as normal? I feel like I'm mis-understanding your point?
- tptacek 11y agoI definitely do not think adopting a new, unverified cryptosystem simply to get better "deniability" is a good tradeoff. I see the value, but it's not the most important thing to get right in a secure messenger.
- CaptSpify 11y ago> I definitely do not think adopting a new, unverified cryptosystem simply to get better "deniability" is a good tradeoff. I agree, but I don't see how that's relevent. This could be added to pgp, without "adopting a new, unverified cryptosystem"
- antihero 11y agoSignal "runs on iPhones" which you've deemed to be a bad thing for some reason, so surely that should be tier 2 too. In fact, most things "run on iPhones" so it's kind of an odd argument. What's terrible about running on iPhones?
- tptacek 11y agoYou misunderstood the point I was making.
- antihero 11y agoAh yeah, it went totally over my head.
- parasubvert 11y agoHe was holding that up as a popular strawman argument, among the rest in that list.
- nabla9 11y agoIn addition to tiers, I think there are dimensions. Mainly: 1: security against targeted surveillance from criminals or state-level adversaries. (= spying targets). 2: security against mass surveillance. (= finding targets) I think it's possible to have Tier 2 system that is Tier 1 against mass surveillance. Individual connections don't have to be proofed against state level actor targeting individuals. It's enough that the whole system works in a way that makes mass surveillance too expensive. In fact, I think this kind of security is enough to ease most concerns against government surveillance.
- nxzero 11y agoRight, key is to make it so expensive that the obsession over mass surveillance becomes economically unhealthy.