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It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction due to ease of use a lot of others try to p

by cwmma 10y ago

It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction due to ease of use a lot of others try to pick at it due to it not being perfect even if many of those things are trade offs - phone numbers allow for signal to be a drop in replacement for other messaging apps with minimal to no registration required, I doubt I could have gotten my mother to use signal without switching from texting being so low-friction. - lack of federation means ows can control spam better unlike in a federated environment where lazy/malicious operators can cause lots of problems. Take a look at the 2 big federated protocols email and irc where due to spam and other issues they are both increasingly centralized.

jlg23 10y ago
> It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction The criticism of signal's closed ecosystem is not new, this is just another write-up of what has been criticized numerous times before.
binaryanomaly 10y ago
Your first point is absolutely true. I still have the biggest difficulties to persuade my "normal" friends and relatives to prefer signal over whatsapp. Everybody thinks whatsapp is more user friendly and convenient. In the end this is the key to adoption we should not forget that.
tptacek 10y ago
This isn't the security community. The security community is pretty much unanimous in supporting Signal over all other secure messengers. That's not to say that security people aren't critical of Signal, which isn't perfect for all the reasons this blog post points out --- Grugq is a pretty good source for these kinds of criticisms through the lens of an infosec person. But security people tend to deliver these criticisms as, you know, criticisms --- not angry appeals for people to abandon Signal. The entities most harshly critical of Signal are supporters of other messaging applications and protocols. I think the most important thing to understand about secure messengers is that messaging in general is a back-ally knife fight of a market, one of the most vicious I've seen in my career. Perhaps it's because of the WhatsApp outcome and a general belief that there's another such outcome for some other messaging app. Or it could just be the network affect. Messaging applications themselves are interesting UX challenges, but as programming challenges they're pretty close to socket projects. So there are a lot of entrants in the market. Whatever the reason, the knives are out for Signal. I don't so much care what messaging system you use to talk to your friends or chat with your gaming guild. But if you have real adversaries, the security part of your messaging system has to work, even more than the messaging part. For that situation, Signal is the only messaging system I'd recommend unreservedly.
- aftbit 10y ago
  How can you reasonably suggest trusting a mobile device if you have "real adversaries"? If you define your threat model to include any serious governmental interest, you cannot trust a cell phone. They have an always on network connection, remote auto-upgrade capability (at least for the baseband, if not the user software), and built-in microphone, cameras, gps, and other sensors.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Some of these concerns aren't valid (for instance: the baseband of your phone is less powerful, in its systems design, than is supposed by open hardware advocates), but mostly the issue is: security is about costs and prioritization, not absolutes. The systems people propose instead of Signal are likely to cough up secrets directly to adversaries; switching from Signal to something else reduces security. If you believe people with state-level adversaries should exclusively use transparent and open hardware, that's fine; you should see Moxie's comment on this thread to learn how you might go about ensuring that the tiny minority of users with that hardware have access to Signal on it.
  - egh5oon 10y ago
    Spot on. Many companies pushing "secure" applications conveniently forget to warn users about the false sense of security. The cryptography might be flawless, but everything else...
- smarinov 10y ago
  > This isn't the security community. The security community is pretty much unanimous in supporting Signal over all other secure messengers. Sorry, but I am still yet to see the proclaimed unanimous support for Signal as a messenger. As a protocol – sure, most infosec professionals obviously support Axolotl, but this does not imply your statement in any way. > The entities most harshly critical of Signal are supporters of other messaging applications and protocols. So the support for Signal isn't that “unanimous” after all, is it? Otherwise, of course they will if they think that Signal has lost the proper direction for some reason (according to their view). Even many protocol supporters prefer using something like WhatsApp or Wire, the former due to its purported network effect and the likes of the latter because of features like E2E encrypted file transfers, 1:1 video or group calls w/o apparent security trade-offs compared to Signal. > I don't so much care what messaging system you use to talk to your friends or chat with your gaming guild. But if you have real adversaries, the security part of your messaging system has to work, even more than the messaging part. For that situation, Signal is the only messaging system I'd recommend unreservedly. In the end, it turns out that this is your personal opinion, not that of the security community as a whole (hint: there is none), which is fine if you didn't misrepresent it in most of your post. The networks of other people may or may not choose to go a different way, although some (or even many) of them may support the same core technologies, just because they do not agree with some decisions OWS made along the way and don't want to reconsider for any reason opposing parties have presented, e.g. in articles like the one we are commenting under. To sum up, feel free to suggest Signal as an instant messenger, but please be careful with your supporting claims because there are other great and upcoming messengers out there like Matrix, Wire, Onion.chat, GNU Ring, any of the mentioned elsewhere Telegram and WhatsApp, or many, many others. Signal has legitimate reasons on its side that will make your argument weigh more than unjustified claims that it should apparently be the end-all and be-all of one's instant messaging needs.
zeveb 10y ago
> It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction due to ease of use a lot of others try to pick at it due to it not being perfect even if many of those things are trade offs That's because when it comes to security often theoretical vulnerabilities end up being protocol-destroying vulnerabilities in practice. Security folks are notorious for saying, 'that won't work,' being ignored — and then everyone being surprised when indeed it doesn't work. > phone numbers allow for signal to be a drop in replacement for other messaging apps with minimal to no registration required The issue is not allowing phone numbers as identifiers: the issue is in not allowing other identifiers. There's already a URN scheme for telephone numbers, and there are URN schemes for many other identifiers, to include email addresses, and there are even ways to add additional schemes. If Signal used URNs rather than telephone numbers, then users could continue to use telephone numbers but advanced users could use other identifiers, as they wish. > lack of federation means ows can control spam better unlike in a federated environment where lazy/malicious operators can cause lots of problems A spammer cannot spam someone whose public key he does not know. If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way for a spammer to send spam. It is possible for someone who knows one's public key to spam one, but since the sender's public key is tied to a public identifier, one knows who sent the spam. Does Signal perform any anti-spam activity anyway?
- cwmma 10y ago
  > That's because when it comes to security often theoretical vulnerabilities end up being protocol-destroying vulnerabilities in practice. Security folks are notorious for saying, 'that won't work,' being ignored — and then everyone being surprised when indeed it doesn't work. we're not talking about protocol destroying bugs, were talking about things firmly in the realm of trade offs between marginal security gains and usability with security folks tending to be far too focused on marginal security gains while loosing sight of the big picture of less then perfect security that people use is better then perfect security that nobody uses. I.E. ChaCha is better then AES because it is more resistant to side channel attacks among other things, but if you are creating a TLS server and can only choose one algo, you probably want to choose AES because more browsers support it compared to ChaCha and the marginal gains from ChaCha probably don't justify excluding those users that don't support it. > If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way for a spammer to send spam If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way my mom will use it to send me anything

by cwmma 10y ago

jlg23 10y ago

> It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction The criticism of signal's closed ecosystem is not new, this is just another write-up of what has been criticized numerous times before.

binaryanomaly 10y ago

Your first point is absolutely true. I still have the biggest difficulties to persuade my "normal" friends and relatives to prefer signal over whatsapp. Everybody thinks whatsapp is more user friendly and convenient. In the end this is the key to adoption we should not forget that.

tptacek 10y ago

This isn't the security community. The security community is pretty much unanimous in supporting Signal over all other secure messengers. That's not to say that security people aren't critical of Signal, which isn't perfect for all the reasons this blog post points out --- Grugq is a pretty good source for these kinds of criticisms through the lens of an infosec person. But security people tend to deliver these criticisms as, you know, criticisms --- not angry appeals for people to abandon Signal. The entities most harshly critical of Signal are supporters of other messaging applications and protocols. I think the most important thing to understand about secure messengers is that messaging in general is a back-ally knife fight of a market, one of the most vicious I've seen in my career. Perhaps it's because of the WhatsApp outcome and a general belief that there's another such outcome for some other messaging app. Or it could just be the network affect. Messaging applications themselves are interesting UX challenges, but as programming challenges they're pretty close to socket projects. So there are a lot of entrants in the market. Whatever the reason, the knives are out for Signal. I don't so much care what messaging system you use to talk to your friends or chat with your gaming guild. But if you have real adversaries, the security part of your messaging system has to work, even more than the messaging part. For that situation, Signal is the only messaging system I'd recommend unreservedly.

aftbit 10y ago
How can you reasonably suggest trusting a mobile device if you have "real adversaries"? If you define your threat model to include any serious governmental interest, you cannot trust a cell phone. They have an always on network connection, remote auto-upgrade capability (at least for the baseband, if not the user software), and built-in microphone, cameras, gps, and other sensors.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Some of these concerns aren't valid (for instance: the baseband of your phone is less powerful, in its systems design, than is supposed by open hardware advocates), but mostly the issue is: security is about costs and prioritization, not absolutes. The systems people propose instead of Signal are likely to cough up secrets directly to adversaries; switching from Signal to something else reduces security. If you believe people with state-level adversaries should exclusively use transparent and open hardware, that's fine; you should see Moxie's comment on this thread to learn how you might go about ensuring that the tiny minority of users with that hardware have access to Signal on it.
- egh5oon 10y ago
  Spot on. Many companies pushing "secure" applications conveniently forget to warn users about the false sense of security. The cryptography might be flawless, but everything else...
smarinov 10y ago
> This isn't the security community. The security community is pretty much unanimous in supporting Signal over all other secure messengers. Sorry, but I am still yet to see the proclaimed unanimous support for Signal as a messenger. As a protocol – sure, most infosec professionals obviously support Axolotl, but this does not imply your statement in any way. > The entities most harshly critical of Signal are supporters of other messaging applications and protocols. So the support for Signal isn't that “unanimous” after all, is it? Otherwise, of course they will if they think that Signal has lost the proper direction for some reason (according to their view). Even many protocol supporters prefer using something like WhatsApp or Wire, the former due to its purported network effect and the likes of the latter because of features like E2E encrypted file transfers, 1:1 video or group calls w/o apparent security trade-offs compared to Signal. > I don't so much care what messaging system you use to talk to your friends or chat with your gaming guild. But if you have real adversaries, the security part of your messaging system has to work, even more than the messaging part. For that situation, Signal is the only messaging system I'd recommend unreservedly. In the end, it turns out that this is your personal opinion, not that of the security community as a whole (hint: there is none), which is fine if you didn't misrepresent it in most of your post. The networks of other people may or may not choose to go a different way, although some (or even many) of them may support the same core technologies, just because they do not agree with some decisions OWS made along the way and don't want to reconsider for any reason opposing parties have presented, e.g. in articles like the one we are commenting under. To sum up, feel free to suggest Signal as an instant messenger, but please be careful with your supporting claims because there are other great and upcoming messengers out there like Matrix, Wire, Onion.chat, GNU Ring, any of the mentioned elsewhere Telegram and WhatsApp, or many, many others. Signal has legitimate reasons on its side that will make your argument weigh more than unjustified claims that it should apparently be the end-all and be-all of one's instant messaging needs.

zeveb 10y ago

> It sometimes feels like the security community is a bucket of crabs where any time something starts getting traction due to ease of use a lot of others try to pick at it due to it not being perfect even if many of those things are trade offs That's because when it comes to security often theoretical vulnerabilities end up being protocol-destroying vulnerabilities in practice. Security folks are notorious for saying, 'that won't work,' being ignored — and then everyone being surprised when indeed it doesn't work. > phone numbers allow for signal to be a drop in replacement for other messaging apps with minimal to no registration required The issue is not allowing phone numbers as identifiers: the issue is in not allowing other identifiers. There's already a URN scheme for telephone numbers, and there are URN schemes for many other identifiers, to include email addresses, and there are even ways to add additional schemes. If Signal used URNs rather than telephone numbers, then users could continue to use telephone numbers but advanced users could use other identifiers, as they wish. > lack of federation means ows can control spam better unlike in a federated environment where lazy/malicious operators can cause lots of problems A spammer cannot spam someone whose public key he does not know. If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way for a spammer to send spam. It is possible for someone who knows one's public key to spam one, but since the sender's public key is tied to a public identifier, one knows who sent the spam. Does Signal perform any anti-spam activity anyway?

cwmma 10y ago
> That's because when it comes to security often theoretical vulnerabilities end up being protocol-destroying vulnerabilities in practice. Security folks are notorious for saying, 'that won't work,' being ignored — and then everyone being surprised when indeed it doesn't work. we're not talking about protocol destroying bugs, were talking about things firmly in the realm of trade offs between marginal security gains and usability with security folks tending to be far too focused on marginal security gains while loosing sight of the big picture of less then perfect security that people use is better then perfect security that nobody uses. I.E. ChaCha is better then AES because it is more resistant to side channel attacks among other things, but if you are creating a TLS server and can only choose one algo, you probably want to choose AES because more browsers support it compared to ChaCha and the marginal gains from ChaCha probably don't justify excluding those users that don't support it. > If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way for a spammer to send spam If there is no central directory of identifiers to public keys, there's no way my mom will use it to send me anything