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are you part of that knife fight? calling the article writer a hipster in this comment, and what seems to amount to "It's not wrong to criticize Signal. but don

are you part of that knife fight? calling the article writer a hipster in this comment, and what seems to amount to "It's not wrong to criticize Signal. but don't because telegram is worse and more likely to win" in your other comment (since they arn't asking for libresignal to take over, just for a decent alternative to exist which currently probably does not) It seems a really strong and a bit aggressive of an attitude to have against a person's opinions

tptacek 10y ago
No, because I'm not affiliated with any messaging applications. Nor, by the way, am I saying that the author is --- I don't know them. I'm saying it's a good thing to know about the conversation. Rereading my post here, I can see why a reader would infer from it the idea that the author might be a sockpuppet. I don't believe that! I was thinking more about the kinds of comments on message boards that say Signal is a "honey pot". I could have written that more carefully, so, sorry about that.
nextos 10y ago
I think the author is mostly right. While Signal might have an excellent protocol, also well audited all this comes with some bad compromises. E.g. you are forced to run GCM, or you share your address book. Both are unacceptable to many people that really need secure end-to-end encryption.
- tptacek 10y ago
  GCM has practically nothing to do with the security/privacy of Signal, but it is the #1 "concern" that people who don't understand cryptographic messaging security feel they must relate about Signal.
  - nextos 10y ago
    And? Even if GCM was completely secure, you are forced to use closed source libraries to pass messages onto GCM or root your phone to load microg. Both can compromise you.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Not so much, no.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - Kliment 10y ago
    My main concern with GCM is that it's unavailable on fully open OS builds, so requiring it compromises the security of the device as a whole, rather than Signal in particular.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      That's one of several things that are reasonable not to love about Signal. Criticism intended to urge Open Whisper Systems into changing their Signal policies are reasonable. A statement that someone would recommend less secure messaging solutions to investigative journalists is another --- something I find much harder to be supportive of.
      - nextos 10y ago
        Nobody is saying Signal has less secure cryptography than others. But being able to run it in CopperheadOS without loading microg would make the whole setup much more secure. And one cannot dissociate both things.
        md_ 10y ago
        What confuses me about the post is that the author does not make it clear if he recommends that journalists run CopperheadOS. It sounds like he does not recommend this, but rather opposes Signal's dependency on Play on general principals. But if his journalists are using Android or iOS anyway, there's no practical advantage in Signal not depending on GCM or the Play Store, and some real disadvantages (like less secure updates). So the whole complaint seems like rather contrived to me. (I would contest the claim that running a massive, not-practically-auditable open source OS is actually any more secure than running iOS or Android+Play Services, but whatever.)
        strcat 10y ago
        The point of CopperheadOS is not that it lacks Play Services... and Play does not provide more secure updates than an app store like F-Droid. In fact, Play abuses system privileges to bypass the signature system used by Android. It will happily clobber an app with another with a different signature. It moves all the security checks for that into the cloud... completely bypassing the standard trust-on-first-use signature system. Official builds of Signal could be hosted via an F-Droid repository, although there's no point when it depends on Play.
  - Drdrdrq 10y ago
    Couldn't attacker (NSA) infer times of phonecalls/messages from GCM? This might not seem like much, but it is another piece of metadata... </armchair>
    - md_ 10y ago
      What's the threat? An attacker who can observe only traffic on the wire (e.g. an ISP) probably gains nothing from observing GCM, since a) it's probably hard to distinguish different types of GCM messages and b) the attacker can just observe traffic to the Signal servers directly. An attacker who cannot generally passively intercept (but not decrpyt) traffic on the wire but can passively intercept traffic to/from the GCM servers would be foiled by not using GCM, but that's a very narrow case.

tptacek 10y ago

No, because I'm not affiliated with any messaging applications. Nor, by the way, am I saying that the author is --- I don't know them. I'm saying it's a good thing to know about the conversation. Rereading my post here, I can see why a reader would infer from it the idea that the author might be a sockpuppet. I don't believe that! I was thinking more about the kinds of comments on message boards that say Signal is a "honey pot". I could have written that more carefully, so, sorry about that.

nextos 10y ago

I think the author is mostly right. While Signal might have an excellent protocol, also well audited all this comes with some bad compromises. E.g. you are forced to run GCM, or you share your address book. Both are unacceptable to many people that really need secure end-to-end encryption.

tptacek 10y ago
GCM has practically nothing to do with the security/privacy of Signal, but it is the #1 "concern" that people who don't understand cryptographic messaging security feel they must relate about Signal.
- nextos 10y ago
  And? Even if GCM was completely secure, you are forced to use closed source libraries to pass messages onto GCM or root your phone to load microg. Both can compromise you.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Not so much, no.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- Kliment 10y ago
  My main concern with GCM is that it's unavailable on fully open OS builds, so requiring it compromises the security of the device as a whole, rather than Signal in particular.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    That's one of several things that are reasonable not to love about Signal. Criticism intended to urge Open Whisper Systems into changing their Signal policies are reasonable. A statement that someone would recommend less secure messaging solutions to investigative journalists is another --- something I find much harder to be supportive of.
    - nextos 10y ago
      Nobody is saying Signal has less secure cryptography than others. But being able to run it in CopperheadOS without loading microg would make the whole setup much more secure. And one cannot dissociate both things.
      - md_ 10y ago
        What confuses me about the post is that the author does not make it clear if he recommends that journalists run CopperheadOS. It sounds like he does not recommend this, but rather opposes Signal's dependency on Play on general principals. But if his journalists are using Android or iOS anyway, there's no practical advantage in Signal not depending on GCM or the Play Store, and some real disadvantages (like less secure updates). So the whole complaint seems like rather contrived to me. (I would contest the claim that running a massive, not-practically-auditable open source OS is actually any more secure than running iOS or Android+Play Services, but whatever.)
        strcat 10y ago
        The point of CopperheadOS is not that it lacks Play Services... and Play does not provide more secure updates than an app store like F-Droid. In fact, Play abuses system privileges to bypass the signature system used by Android. It will happily clobber an app with another with a different signature. It moves all the security checks for that into the cloud... completely bypassing the standard trust-on-first-use signature system. Official builds of Signal could be hosted via an F-Droid repository, although there's no point when it depends on Play.
- Drdrdrq 10y ago
  Couldn't attacker (NSA) infer times of phonecalls/messages from GCM? This might not seem like much, but it is another piece of metadata... </armchair>
  - md_ 10y ago
    What's the threat? An attacker who can observe only traffic on the wire (e.g. an ISP) probably gains nothing from observing GCM, since a) it's probably hard to distinguish different types of GCM messages and b) the attacker can just observe traffic to the Signal servers directly. An attacker who cannot generally passively intercept (but not decrpyt) traffic on the wire but can passively intercept traffic to/from the GCM servers would be foiled by not using GCM, but that's a very narrow case.