7 ms·

All the privacy solutions on the market are varying degrees of bad (from a privacy/security/freedom perspective), by which I mean they're all flawed in their ow

by iuguy 10y ago

All the privacy solutions on the market are varying degrees of bad (from a privacy/security/freedom perspective), by which I mean they're all flawed in their own ways. Signal requires Google Play Services on Android. That means it's put simply not a privacy messenger. Yes there's crypto, but it's also tied into Whisper Systems' infrastructure, there's no federation. I use Signal reluctantly, and only on IOS. Threema, which is popular in parts of Europe (and is what I use to an extent) is well established, but not open source, doesn't do voice chat or federation. Wire is moving in the right direction with respect to being open source and having lots of good features, but is still not open source. It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation. I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree. The Internet was built to be decentralised, literally to withstand nuclear war. A walled garden does not provide us with the redundancy or control the Internet offers. There are other metadata related issues that pretty much every messenger suffers from but I'll leave this out of the scope of this comment. What Open Whisper Systems and Wire need to do is open source the server components of their solutions, and try to remove the reliance on servers as much as possible. Only then will we have proper message privacy.

nickik 10y ago
Matrix has the crypto and the federation. But of course its still not hiding metadata. The Signal Server is open source, as far as I know.
- joecool1029 10y ago
  > The Signal Server is open source, as far as I know. Yes, except for the voice call component.
ashark 10y ago
I just tried out Signal earlier this week with my wife and a friend. The friend had a crash shortly after opening it on iOS, but it went OK after that. You can't paste or drag in images directly on any client, as far as I can tell. The "desktop app" is a Chrome app (not even Electron). Not loving that. There were some hiccups with contact syncing. It decided it should be responsible for alerting me to receiving ordinary phone calls (!?) on my iPhone, for some reason, which was annoying. We abandoned the experiment pretty quickly :-( [EDIT] it also lacked nice-to-haves one might be used to from other messengers, like auto-emojification.
whyever 10y ago
> It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation. I strongly disagree, Skype has always been a black box. The usability of Signal's crypto is a lot better than it has ever been for Jabber. > I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree. Yet you don't address any of the problems with federation. > What Open Whisper Systems and Wire need to do is open source the server components of their solutions, and try to remove the reliance on servers as much as possible. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server
- luxpir 10y ago
  > Skype has always been a black box I saw a BBC documentary in the mid-early 2000s (sorry, can't cite it right now) about law enforcement and intel having a really tough time with suspects using Skype, only being able to collect metadata and not call content due to its split routing protocols. Now, there's nothing to say the whole service wasn't backdoored at some point, but it appeared to be a real concern, at least to LE. A few security audits at the time also gave it a very positive report (ditto for citation). In the post-MS sale era, of course there's zero trust. Prior to that though, things seemed different.
kowdermeister 10y ago
What about WhatsApp, Telegram? I don't use them, but saying that there are no options today for secure, encrypted communication raises my eyebrow.
- otalp 10y ago
  Telegram is a farce. They don't have end-to-end encryption by default, and their encryption protocol(MTProto) is home-made and basically a secret. They haven't opened it up to testing or open sourced it, so it's pretty useless at ensuring 'privacy'. Plus recently 15 million phone numbers linked to Telegram accounts were hacked because of an SMS verification loophole. WhatsApp at least has end to end encryption- though that alone isn't enough, but it is not open source and is owned by Facebook. By default, it shares your number and your contacts' numbers with Facebook. Neither Telegram nor WhatsApp are viable alternatives to anyone interested in privacy.
  - kowdermeister 10y ago
    > though that alone isn't enough Why? I'm not trying to nitpick, I just don't know much on the subject. Not being open source doesn't really concern me nor the fact that my number is known by Facebook. My telecom company knows it, my mother knows it and all my friends know it + also all the companies know it who are used by my friends.
  - at612 10y ago
    > Neither Telegram nor WhatsApp are viable alternatives to anyone interested in privacy. Are you suggesting that the application under discussion here is a viable alternative? If so, how?
  - garaetjjte 10y ago
    >They haven't opened it up to testing or open sourced it https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://telegram.org/apps#source-code https://telegram.org/apps#source-code
cyberpunk 10y ago
Chaps. I think it's time we just admitted that everything we type/tap/say into any device, regardless of how it's being wrapped up in transit, is absolutely and irrepairably insecure and we're not going to be able to fix that anytime soon. Even with really smart crypto or some slick app; what makes you think that your messages aren't just being read by your os? Would you really notice? Why would you assume that the api this app talks to is trustworthy? There's no way to even tell if the code for the client on your device is the same as what's in that repo, as if it would make any kind of difference anyway since we can just load code from anywhere at runtime and you'd probably not even notice. This whole thing is a fucking stageshow, I can only assume we're here to create an illusion that we still have any kind of security. Why? Is it to get some low hanging fruit/tech amateurs who will trust it and expose themselves? I don't know. But, HN, I don't know why WE aren't admitting this to ourselves or why we defend such obvious ruses. Well, maybe some of you have signal stock I guess. It's over, we lost, we have no security, we will probably never be able to reverse that situation, things are getting worse rapidly, we can't even know what any of our devices are really doing anymore (even the switches in your dc, the firmware on the UPS's, whatever), and apps like signal are obviously, to me, impossible to trust and I don't know why that's not obvious to anyone who has spent a moment looking at our situation.. Argh.
- antocv 10y ago
  > I think it's time we just admitted that everything we type/tap/say into any device, regardless of how it's being wrapped up in transit, is absolutely and irrepairably insecure and we're not going to be able to fix that anytime soon. We dont have to set the bar that high. Just lower it slightly and we can achieve great success. Can we make the job of NSA and CIA harder? Not necessarily impossible, just to increase the costs they have to spend on whatever it is they are doing, much higher than it is now. That would be nice. We can do that with bitmessage, avoid Signal, use Telegram which means outsource to Russia/KGB - so NSA will for sure need to spend more resources if they want to access your "secure chat" on Telegram. EDIT: but of course, as you say, the problem is socio systematic - any technical system which can or would be used to subvert the state is a threat to the state and will be neutrialized, by takeover, sabotage, lack of funding, the means the state has are enormous. The list we have of secure or safe systems are still zero. Only another state can go against the state. For example, it was mandated that GSM had backdoors. Any system used for communication, especially mass/group communication, is not free and not allowed to exist. So simple is that. They even tried to go after the creators of secure systems, wasnt the PGP guy scrutinized?
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Re: Google Play Services. Here's is the way I understand this to work, so please do correct me if I'm wrong. Signal uses Google Play Services to notify me that I have an incoming message from Signal. The Signal app is then woken up and the signal app then retrieves my (encrypted) message. So, therefore, the only thing Google knows is that I received a Signal message, what time and if I have location services on, where I was at the time, yes? On iOS, how is this any different? If I get a notification, iOS knows I got a notification from signal, when and where i was at if Location is turned on. What am I missing? Note: I _don't_ like that either system has that much meta data about my conversations available to them, but I don't see how one is better than the other, here.
- gaius 10y ago
  The metadata is considered super important in modern surveillance. Your receipt can be correlated with a sender for example, over the course of many messages. Now they can start on a network analysis, start correlating with other people or events etc...
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Oh, yes, I understand this. I don't understand how it is different for iOS than Android. Sorry if my initial post was not clear on that.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > So, therefore, the only thing Google knows is that I received a Signal message, what time and if I have location services on, where I was at the time, yes? Considering that Signal compiles code from Google into their app, there’s an actual issue there: the Google code could just intercept and take control of any of the messages. And there’s a lot of code from Google in there that no one has audited yet.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    What about on iOS? Couldn't the libraries that are used on iOS do the same?
mrbiber 10y ago
Matrix.org/riot.im has working federation, end-to-end cryptography, works without Google Play and is completely open source. The encryption is audited, but not yet enabled by default, as there are still some rough edges. But the apps have tremendously improved over the last few weeks alone and I am very happy with it.
- iuguy 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this, I'm going to try and take a look over the christmas break.
Jarwain 10y ago
I agree that decentralization and federation is an important step for security and privacy, reducing the dependence on a signal entity. That said, based on OWS' writeup on the subpoena they received[1], the only user metadata they collect are the user's phone number(or a hash of it? for identification), that user's last connection date, and the dat etheir account was created. [1] https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/ https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand...
resonanttoe 10y ago
Geniune question. For Wire: what is missing from what code they have available? https://github.com/wireapp https://github.com/wireapp
- iuguy 10y ago
  Have they released the full server source yet? Last I checked they hadn't.
  - resonanttoe 10y ago
    Yeh on researching a bit after this comment, I found exactly that. Server source code is still a "To be released" without a strong date. Other criticisms are generally around lack of full crypto audit, which as far as I'm aware (i.e, not very), is a criticism of most of the modern crypto-chat apps (with exception to OpenWhisper when it was TextSecure).
- Siimteller 10y ago
  Servers are closed source, will open source in 2017.
at612 10y ago
> It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation. Actually, Jabber with OTR is pretty solid. If need be, you can use throwaway addresses too. > I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree. I disagree and can't understand the reasons, which however I suspect to be rather shortsighted. Just imagine if email had not been what came to be called a federated system.
confounded 10y ago
Check out Matrix/Riot.
dTal 10y ago
I don't know why SilenceIM isn't more popular. It's a fork of Signal's now-discontinued SMS encryption. Usernames are still telephone numbers (because SMS) and metadata is still leaked (to telcos, because SMS) but there's no reliance on any centralised servers or organisations, no requirement for Play services, and delivery is as reliable as regular SMS. I don't know the real reason for Signal getting rid of SMS encryption but it's the only feature I'm interested in. I can get glorified internet messaging anywhere, but OTR encryption over SMS is a difficult problem due to the inability to conduct handshakes. We should not throw this work away.

by iuguy 10y ago

nickik 10y ago

Matrix has the crypto and the federation. But of course its still not hiding metadata. The Signal Server is open source, as far as I know.

joecool1029 10y ago
> The Signal Server is open source, as far as I know. Yes, except for the voice call component.

ashark 10y ago

I just tried out Signal earlier this week with my wife and a friend. The friend had a crash shortly after opening it on iOS, but it went OK after that. You can't paste or drag in images directly on any client, as far as I can tell. The "desktop app" is a Chrome app (not even Electron). Not loving that. There were some hiccups with contact syncing. It decided it should be responsible for alerting me to receiving ordinary phone calls (!?) on my iPhone, for some reason, which was annoying. We abandoned the experiment pretty quickly :-( [EDIT] it also lacked nice-to-haves one might be used to from other messengers, like auto-emojification.

whyever 10y ago

> It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation. I strongly disagree, Skype has always been a black box. The usability of Signal's crypto is a lot better than it has ever been for Jabber. > I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree. Yet you don't address any of the problems with federation. > What Open Whisper Systems and Wire need to do is open source the server components of their solutions, and try to remove the reliance on servers as much as possible. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server

luxpir 10y ago
> Skype has always been a black box I saw a BBC documentary in the mid-early 2000s (sorry, can't cite it right now) about law enforcement and intel having a really tough time with suspects using Skype, only being able to collect metadata and not call content due to its split routing protocols. Now, there's nothing to say the whole service wasn't backdoored at some point, but it appeared to be a real concern, at least to LE. A few security audits at the time also gave it a very positive report (ditto for citation). In the post-MS sale era, of course there's zero trust. Prior to that though, things seemed different.

kowdermeister 10y ago

What about WhatsApp, Telegram? I don't use them, but saying that there are no options today for secure, encrypted communication raises my eyebrow.

otalp 10y ago
Telegram is a farce. They don't have end-to-end encryption by default, and their encryption protocol(MTProto) is home-made and basically a secret. They haven't opened it up to testing or open sourced it, so it's pretty useless at ensuring 'privacy'. Plus recently 15 million phone numbers linked to Telegram accounts were hacked because of an SMS verification loophole. WhatsApp at least has end to end encryption- though that alone isn't enough, but it is not open source and is owned by Facebook. By default, it shares your number and your contacts' numbers with Facebook. Neither Telegram nor WhatsApp are viable alternatives to anyone interested in privacy.
- kowdermeister 10y ago
  > though that alone isn't enough Why? I'm not trying to nitpick, I just don't know much on the subject. Not being open source doesn't really concern me nor the fact that my number is known by Facebook. My telecom company knows it, my mother knows it and all my friends know it + also all the companies know it who are used by my friends.
- at612 10y ago
  > Neither Telegram nor WhatsApp are viable alternatives to anyone interested in privacy. Are you suggesting that the application under discussion here is a viable alternative? If so, how?
- garaetjjte 10y ago
  >They haven't opened it up to testing or open sourced it https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://core.telegram.org/mtproto https://telegram.org/apps#source-code https://telegram.org/apps#source-code

cyberpunk 10y ago

Chaps. I think it's time we just admitted that everything we type/tap/say into any device, regardless of how it's being wrapped up in transit, is absolutely and irrepairably insecure and we're not going to be able to fix that anytime soon. Even with really smart crypto or some slick app; what makes you think that your messages aren't just being read by your os? Would you really notice? Why would you assume that the api this app talks to is trustworthy? There's no way to even tell if the code for the client on your device is the same as what's in that repo, as if it would make any kind of difference anyway since we can just load code from anywhere at runtime and you'd probably not even notice. This whole thing is a fucking stageshow, I can only assume we're here to create an illusion that we still have any kind of security. Why? Is it to get some low hanging fruit/tech amateurs who will trust it and expose themselves? I don't know. But, HN, I don't know why WE aren't admitting this to ourselves or why we defend such obvious ruses. Well, maybe some of you have signal stock I guess. It's over, we lost, we have no security, we will probably never be able to reverse that situation, things are getting worse rapidly, we can't even know what any of our devices are really doing anymore (even the switches in your dc, the firmware on the UPS's, whatever), and apps like signal are obviously, to me, impossible to trust and I don't know why that's not obvious to anyone who has spent a moment looking at our situation.. Argh.

antocv 10y ago
> I think it's time we just admitted that everything we type/tap/say into any device, regardless of how it's being wrapped up in transit, is absolutely and irrepairably insecure and we're not going to be able to fix that anytime soon. We dont have to set the bar that high. Just lower it slightly and we can achieve great success. Can we make the job of NSA and CIA harder? Not necessarily impossible, just to increase the costs they have to spend on whatever it is they are doing, much higher than it is now. That would be nice. We can do that with bitmessage, avoid Signal, use Telegram which means outsource to Russia/KGB - so NSA will for sure need to spend more resources if they want to access your "secure chat" on Telegram. EDIT: but of course, as you say, the problem is socio systematic - any technical system which can or would be used to subvert the state is a threat to the state and will be neutrialized, by takeover, sabotage, lack of funding, the means the state has are enormous. The list we have of secure or safe systems are still zero. Only another state can go against the state. For example, it was mandated that GSM had backdoors. Any system used for communication, especially mass/group communication, is not free and not allowed to exist. So simple is that. They even tried to go after the creators of secure systems, wasnt the PGP guy scrutinized?

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Re: Google Play Services. Here's is the way I understand this to work, so please do correct me if I'm wrong. Signal uses Google Play Services to notify me that I have an incoming message from Signal. The Signal app is then woken up and the signal app then retrieves my (encrypted) message. So, therefore, the only thing Google knows is that I received a Signal message, what time and if I have location services on, where I was at the time, yes? On iOS, how is this any different? If I get a notification, iOS knows I got a notification from signal, when and where i was at if Location is turned on. What am I missing? Note: I _don't_ like that either system has that much meta data about my conversations available to them, but I don't see how one is better than the other, here.

gaius 10y ago
The metadata is considered super important in modern surveillance. Your receipt can be correlated with a sender for example, over the course of many messages. Now they can start on a network analysis, start correlating with other people or events etc...
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Oh, yes, I understand this. I don't understand how it is different for iOS than Android. Sorry if my initial post was not clear on that.
kuschku 10y ago
> So, therefore, the only thing Google knows is that I received a Signal message, what time and if I have location services on, where I was at the time, yes? Considering that Signal compiles code from Google into their app, there’s an actual issue there: the Google code could just intercept and take control of any of the messages. And there’s a lot of code from Google in there that no one has audited yet.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  What about on iOS? Couldn't the libraries that are used on iOS do the same?

mrbiber 10y ago

Matrix.org/riot.im has working federation, end-to-end cryptography, works without Google Play and is completely open source. The encryption is audited, but not yet enabled by default, as there are still some rough edges. But the apps have tremendously improved over the last few weeks alone and I am very happy with it.

iuguy 10y ago
Thanks for posting this, I'm going to try and take a look over the christmas break.

Jarwain 10y ago

I agree that decentralization and federation is an important step for security and privacy, reducing the dependence on a signal entity. That said, based on OWS' writeup on the subpoena they received[1], the only user metadata they collect are the user's phone number(or a hash of it? for identification), that user's last connection date, and the dat etheir account was created. [1] https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand-jury/ https://whispersystems.org/bigbrother/eastern-virginia-grand...

resonanttoe 10y ago

Geniune question. For Wire: what is missing from what code they have available? https://github.com/wireapp https://github.com/wireapp

iuguy 10y ago
Have they released the full server source yet? Last I checked they hadn't.
- resonanttoe 10y ago
  Yeh on researching a bit after this comment, I found exactly that. Server source code is still a "To be released" without a strong date. Other criticisms are generally around lack of full crypto audit, which as far as I'm aware (i.e, not very), is a criticism of most of the modern crypto-chat apps (with exception to OpenWhisper when it was TextSecure).
Siimteller 10y ago
Servers are closed source, will open source in 2017.

at612 10y ago

> It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation. Actually, Jabber with OTR is pretty solid. If need be, you can use throwaway addresses too. > I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree. I disagree and can't understand the reasons, which however I suspect to be rather shortsighted. Just imagine if email had not been what came to be called a federated system.

confounded 10y ago

Check out Matrix/Riot.

dTal 10y ago

I don't know why SilenceIM isn't more popular. It's a fork of Signal's now-discontinued SMS encryption. Usernames are still telephone numbers (because SMS) and metadata is still leaked (to telcos, because SMS) but there's no reliance on any centralised servers or organisations, no requirement for Play services, and delivery is as reliable as regular SMS. I don't know the real reason for Signal getting rid of SMS encryption but it's the only feature I'm interested in. I can get glorified internet messaging anywhere, but OTR encryption over SMS is a difficult problem due to the inability to conduct handshakes. We should not throw this work away.