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I remember receiving the downvote brigade[1], when Moxie himself said that I should trust WhatsApp without having the source code and the ability to put it on m

by geocar 10y ago

I remember receiving the downvote brigade[1], when Moxie himself said that I should trust WhatsApp without having the source code and the ability to put it on my device. We (even a "smart" community like HN) clearly do not have the ability to think critically about security, and even when our leaders are sincere -- and I really don't mean to suggest Moxie/Signal was complicit in this move -- we still rush to defend our champions so quickly that we don't even think about what's going on. However something really important is that this might be mere incompetence: FaceBook might not have any mechanism for launching this attack, they just thought the notification message was annoying so they didn't display it. To that end we need to be vigilant about stupidity as well. Where does it end? Will we actually stop being okay with buffer overflows and sloppy programming? Or are we going to continue trying to "be safer" and use "safe languages" and continuing to try to solve the problem of too much code to read clearly with more code. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11669395

d33 10y ago
Not sure if I understood you well: do you imply that Moxie was involved in creating this backdoor? EDIT: Sorry, misread.
- geocar 10y ago
  No, I do not mean to imply that at all. That is why I said I really don't mean to suggest Moxie/Signal was complicit in this move
svkkfnisgkcn3ta 10y ago
I'd go further and say Moxie is complicit by way of negligence. It's unethical to assist in the implementation of your protocol when you can't guarantee its privacy protections will actually stand. Otherwise it's free PR for Facebook to tout "Snowden-approved crypto". I have no doubt Moxie acted in good faith and wanted to expand encryption to a large number of users, but this is just another example of why proprietary software cannot be trusted. Any and all proprietary implementations of the Signal protocol are now suspect. OWS should denounce these implementations as least as firmly as they do interoperable open source Signal client forks.
- whyever 10y ago
  > OWS should denounce these implementations as least as firmly as they do open source Signal client forks. They don't. Moxie does not want the forks to use his servers or the name of his app, that is all.
  - compuguy 10y ago
    Well since the server for Signal is closed source, the signal client forks are pretty much useless (correct me if I’m wrong)?
    - kuschku 10y ago
      The server for the text messaging is open source, only calls, and other stuff is closed.
- unfortunateface 10y ago
  On a completely unconnected note, what was the name of that technique that GCHQ uses to disrupt online forums and subtly undermine peoples reputations?
  - svkkfnisgkcn3ta 10y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
  - eternalban 10y ago
    > On a completely unconnected note You are not being sincere. You are implying that GP is a paid troll of spooks.
  - unfortunateface 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900
- 55555 10y ago
whyever 10y ago
> when Moxie himself said that I should trust WhatsApp without having the source code and the ability to put it on my device. What are you talking about? All I can see there is that you asked for the source code of the QR generator and he delivered. He does not say you should trust WhatsApp.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mike_hearn 10y ago
  That's not what geocar asked. He didn't ask anything, actually. Rather he pointed out that what you see in the WhatsApp UI is meaningless because you have no way of knowing that the app you're running matches the code Moxie linked, or that the code your friends are running does. Moxie replied with a link to the QR generation code but this didn't answer geocar's question, probably because there is no answer. Here's a simple way to put it. End-to-end messaging security is assumed to be (at least traditionally) about moving the root of trust. Before you had to trust Facebook. Now you don't. A closed source app that can update on demand doesn't move the root of trust and this probably doesn't match people's intuitive expectations of what it does. Many people have pointed out similar things to what geocar has pointed out: E2E encryption is essentially meaningless if you can't verify what your computers are actually doing. Unfortunately fixing this is a hard problem. I wrote about this issue extensively in 2015 in the context of encrypted email and bitcoin apps (where you can steal money by pushing a bad auto update): https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2015/001510.html https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2015/001510.... I proposed an app architecture that would allow for flexible control over the roots of trust of programs using sandboxing techniques. Unfortunately there's been very little (no?) research into how to solve this problem, even though it's the next step in completing the journey that Signal has started. By the way, just to make it super clear, the work Moxie has done on both Signal and WhatsApp is still excellent. It is, as I said, necessary work. But the Guardian has unfortunately not understood security well enough, nor have people from the cryptography community really helped journalists understand the limits of this approach. Nor has Facebook, I think.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
nickpsecurity 10y ago
More interesting, I stand by my prediction that WhatApp would have a backdoor in it or start selling information once Facebook acquired it regardless of Moxie's improvements. Looks like I called it again. People need to stay away from this messenger unless they absolutely have to be on it for friends and family. Still encourage them to download Signal for anything private.
riazrizvi 10y ago
It's always hard to tell whether aggressive down voting is real people or digital marketing campaign driven.
m-p-3 10y ago
Yup, the protocol might be secure, but the implementation might not be. Without the source code, you can only guess and hope for the best.
- FabHK 10y ago
  As many argue (e.g. tptacek), and I find myself increasingly convinced by this: - source code can be looked at, even verified, but it's hard. (Remember many bugs in OpenSSL, for example.) - but binaries, too, can be disassembled, even verified. It might be harder, but it's a shades of grey, not binary (ha). - even if you have the source code, you have to ensure that the binaries actually distributed to your phone correspond to the source code. That muddles the issue further.
pvg 10y ago
The vulnerability was found, published and reported without source and before your previous comment.
- FabHK 10y ago
  The vulnerability was found and published in April 2016, btw. https://tobi.rocks/2016/04/whats-app-retransmission-vulnerability/ https://tobi.rocks/2016/04/whats-app-retransmission-vulnerab...

by geocar 10y ago

d33 10y ago

Not sure if I understood you well: do you imply that Moxie was involved in creating this backdoor? EDIT: Sorry, misread.

geocar 10y ago
No, I do not mean to imply that at all. That is why I said I really don't mean to suggest Moxie/Signal was complicit in this move

svkkfnisgkcn3ta 10y ago

I'd go further and say Moxie is complicit by way of negligence. It's unethical to assist in the implementation of your protocol when you can't guarantee its privacy protections will actually stand. Otherwise it's free PR for Facebook to tout "Snowden-approved crypto". I have no doubt Moxie acted in good faith and wanted to expand encryption to a large number of users, but this is just another example of why proprietary software cannot be trusted. Any and all proprietary implementations of the Signal protocol are now suspect. OWS should denounce these implementations as least as firmly as they do interoperable open source Signal client forks.

whyever 10y ago
> OWS should denounce these implementations as least as firmly as they do open source Signal client forks. They don't. Moxie does not want the forks to use his servers or the name of his app, that is all.
- compuguy 10y ago
  Well since the server for Signal is closed source, the signal client forks are pretty much useless (correct me if I’m wrong)?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    The server for the text messaging is open source, only calls, and other stuff is closed.
unfortunateface 10y ago
On a completely unconnected note, what was the name of that technique that GCHQ uses to disrupt online forums and subtly undermine peoples reputations?
- svkkfnisgkcn3ta 10y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
- eternalban 10y ago
  > On a completely unconnected note You are not being sincere. You are implying that GP is a paid troll of spooks.
- unfortunateface 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394900
55555 10y ago

whyever 10y ago

> when Moxie himself said that I should trust WhatsApp without having the source code and the ability to put it on my device. What are you talking about? All I can see there is that you asked for the source code of the QR generator and he delivered. He does not say you should trust WhatsApp.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mike_hearn 10y ago
That's not what geocar asked. He didn't ask anything, actually. Rather he pointed out that what you see in the WhatsApp UI is meaningless because you have no way of knowing that the app you're running matches the code Moxie linked, or that the code your friends are running does. Moxie replied with a link to the QR generation code but this didn't answer geocar's question, probably because there is no answer. Here's a simple way to put it. End-to-end messaging security is assumed to be (at least traditionally) about moving the root of trust. Before you had to trust Facebook. Now you don't. A closed source app that can update on demand doesn't move the root of trust and this probably doesn't match people's intuitive expectations of what it does. Many people have pointed out similar things to what geocar has pointed out: E2E encryption is essentially meaningless if you can't verify what your computers are actually doing. Unfortunately fixing this is a hard problem. I wrote about this issue extensively in 2015 in the context of encrypted email and bitcoin apps (where you can steal money by pushing a bad auto update): https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2015/001510.html https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2015/001510.... I proposed an app architecture that would allow for flexible control over the roots of trust of programs using sandboxing techniques. Unfortunately there's been very little (no?) research into how to solve this problem, even though it's the next step in completing the journey that Signal has started. By the way, just to make it super clear, the work Moxie has done on both Signal and WhatsApp is still excellent. It is, as I said, necessary work. But the Guardian has unfortunately not understood security well enough, nor have people from the cryptography community really helped journalists understand the limits of this approach. Nor has Facebook, I think.
squeaky-clean 10y ago

nickpsecurity 10y ago

More interesting, I stand by my prediction that WhatApp would have a backdoor in it or start selling information once Facebook acquired it regardless of Moxie's improvements. Looks like I called it again. People need to stay away from this messenger unless they absolutely have to be on it for friends and family. Still encourage them to download Signal for anything private.

riazrizvi 10y ago

It's always hard to tell whether aggressive down voting is real people or digital marketing campaign driven.

m-p-3 10y ago

Yup, the protocol might be secure, but the implementation might not be. Without the source code, you can only guess and hope for the best.

FabHK 10y ago
As many argue (e.g. tptacek), and I find myself increasingly convinced by this: - source code can be looked at, even verified, but it's hard. (Remember many bugs in OpenSSL, for example.) - but binaries, too, can be disassembled, even verified. It might be harder, but it's a shades of grey, not binary (ha). - even if you have the source code, you have to ensure that the binaries actually distributed to your phone correspond to the source code. That muddles the issue further.

pvg 10y ago

The vulnerability was found, published and reported without source and before your previous comment.

FabHK 10y ago
The vulnerability was found and published in April 2016, btw. https://tobi.rocks/2016/04/whats-app-retransmission-vulnerability/ https://tobi.rocks/2016/04/whats-app-retransmission-vulnerab...