8 ms·

I still like Matrix' federated first approach to the server over Signal's, but this is a welcome change. Now we just need an F-droid build (official repo or bui

by yagni3 10y ago

I still like Matrix' federated first approach to the server over Signal's, but this is a welcome change. Now we just need an F-droid build (official repo or built by the F-droid team).

marco1 10y ago
Here's their stance on federation: https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- problems 10y ago
  They're pretty critical of XMPP but aren't there direct counter examples to it, like Conversations https://conversations.im https://conversations.im for one.
  - anc84 10y ago
    Conversations is the only counter example and only came into the scene fairly recently. Before, XMPP on Android (my OS) was not fun and battery draining.
- a3_nm 10y ago
  Fortunately, as the code is under a free license, F-Droid or anyone else can ship their own builds no matter what Open Whisper Systems prefer.
  - marco1 10y ago
    But there's a catch: They may not name it "Signal", probably.
    - whodknee 10y ago
      Firefox does the same thing, and I can see the reasoning behind it.
  - gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
    But their users won't be able to talk to signal users. It is hard enough trying to persuade people to use signal. Getting critical mass for a fork would be even more difficult.
x1798DE 10y ago
I honestly don't see Signal and Matrix as competitors. I guess Signal is trying to position themselves as a chat service, but I see it more as a replacement for SMS, whereas Matrix I see as more replacing IRC and instant messenger products. If we had to choose between them, I'd take Matrix in a heartbeat, but I just let them co-exist.
- dTal 10y ago
  WhisperSystems doomed Signal as an SMS replacement when they dropped encrypted SMS support. Now it's just another instant messenger. Big whoop, I had OTR encryption a decade ago (with more contacts, too - it's a lot easier to say to a friend "install this OTR plugin" than "switch to this IM network/app"). I use SilenceIM.
  - caf 10y ago
    I only use it as an SMS replacement. Really, as long as you have mobile data, there's no difference between supporting SMS encryption and not - you can only talk encrypted to other Signal users anyway, and other Signal users will get your non-SMS-routed encrypted message just fine. The use case for Signal-encrypted-SMS is continuing to send encrypted while you have no IP connectivity, but thankfully that is becoming a rarer corner-case. The last time I had SMS but no IP was on a cruise ship.
    - lukeschlather 10y ago
      Happens all the time for me. Pretty much anywhere in the US, I'd bet there's a spot within 50 miles where all you have is cell coverage.
      - caf 10y ago
        Ahh, I was not aware of that, in light of that it seems like dropping encrypted SMS support was premature. (Here I don't think there's any places with non-data coverage, though there is now some of the opposite - places with no circuit-switched voice coverage, voice there is only through VoLTE).
problems 10y ago
You might check out Conversations too (https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/), it's a federated XMPP (with some really clever extensions) based approach that uses the signal protocol.
- Certhas 10y ago
  Yes it is: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server It's sure become fashionable to hate on Signal/OWS. The price of actually successfully bringing good encryption mainstream? Edit: The comment I replied to originally included a question on whether Signals server is even open source.
  - problems 10y ago
    > The comment I replied to originally included a question on whether Signals server is even open source. Sorry about that, I had looked it up just a second after I posted and then removed that line. > hate on Signal/OWS I don't mean to hate on them, just their stance on getting away from Google, using F-Droid, federating their service and many other things has been more than a bit of a mess or disappointment. I'm glad they finally made a step in the right direction and I hope this will continue.
    - Certhas 10y ago
      The thing is, they gave good reasons on all these points. It's certainly valid to disagree with the trade offs, but people don't acknowledge that there are trade offs at all. As I said in another reply, I can get a completely non-technical user to start using Signal with me in a minute, and have them have an experience that is as accessible as WhatsApp. That's simply not true for any of the other options I'm aware of (and it relates directly to most of the points you raise, with the notable exception of F-Droid. There I also find their reasoning weakest).
  - nileshtrivedi 10y ago
    Signal is not mainstream. And you can't verify that Whatsapp/Allo have implemented the whisper protocol the way they claim to. We are being asked to "just trust them".
ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago
The problem with federated approach is that it leaks metadata. When you take centralized system apart and expose internal communications to the Internet, you reduce anonymity. Extreme case is when everyone uses his own homeserver and information on who calls who and when is completely exposed. It is not enough to make the system distributed, you need to exploit the fact that different parts of the network are controlled by different parties to build self-enforcing protocols that ensure anonymity. For comparison, see how bitcoin is just distributed and zerocoin is anonymous. Gnutella is just distributed and FreeNet is anonymous.
- tptacek 10y ago
  That's not the only problem, or the most important problem. The most important problem of federation is that it generates lowest-common-denominator security. For instance: https://whispersystems.org/blog/giphy-experiment/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/giphy-experiment/ This is how Signal provides Giphy search (spoiler: they tunnel a TLS connection through their own server, with TLS negotiated end-to-end from the Signal app to the Giphy server, so that Giphy can't tell what client is searching for what GIF while at the same time Signal's server's can't see what people are searching for). Does anyone believe that in a world where 90% of Signal-network client installs weren't Signal.app, that this is how features like this would work? It's not an unknowable question. All you have to do is look and see how Signal's competitors, like Wire, tackle this problem. It's true that in a federated Signal-network, you might get clients that have security features Signal itself lacks. But because it's far easier to produce an insecure client than a secure one, insecurity will dominate, and be a boat anchor around any efforts to improve security down the road. Call it "the libpurple problem".
  - comex 10y ago
    All true, but I think the situation looks a little worse for centralization if instead of 'security features', you think in terms of 'vulnerabilities' (almost but not quite an antonym). Signal probably has a lower vulnerability rate than competing software, but if someone finds an implementation bug, it can be used against every user on the network. Compare to, say, IRC, where there are a lot of really poorly written clients, but the sheer number of clients in use would limit the fallout of any one exploit. Likewise, Open Whisper Systems is pretty trustworthy, but if someone gets access to their servers, either by hacking or by coercion, and starts, say, logging metadata (who's chatting with who), all Signal users are compromised. When I chat on a private (and SSL-only) IRC server, the security guarantees are awful compared to Signal - and I'm not saying that's not a problem - but at least I know that my conversations will only be compromised if someone really has it out for my group in particular; they won't show up in some massive leak and/or government database. This also applies to binary distribution. When software is compiled by N different distros or package managers or by users directly, that does make it hard to get security updates out in a timely manner. But with a centralized system like Signal's, if the binaries are compromised, everyone is pwned. Yes, measures like reproducible builds can reduce the risk, but they're far from perfect. Is there even anyone who verifies Signal builds on a regular basis/automatically?

by yagni3 10y ago

I still like Matrix' federated first approach to the server over Signal's, but this is a welcome change. Now we just need an F-droid build (official repo or built by the F-droid team).

marco1 10y ago

Here's their stance on federation: https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

problems 10y ago
They're pretty critical of XMPP but aren't there direct counter examples to it, like Conversations https://conversations.im https://conversations.im for one.
- anc84 10y ago
  Conversations is the only counter example and only came into the scene fairly recently. Before, XMPP on Android (my OS) was not fun and battery draining.
a3_nm 10y ago
Fortunately, as the code is under a free license, F-Droid or anyone else can ship their own builds no matter what Open Whisper Systems prefer.
- marco1 10y ago
  But there's a catch: They may not name it "Signal", probably.
  - whodknee 10y ago
    Firefox does the same thing, and I can see the reasoning behind it.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y ago
  But their users won't be able to talk to signal users. It is hard enough trying to persuade people to use signal. Getting critical mass for a fork would be even more difficult.

x1798DE 10y ago

I honestly don't see Signal and Matrix as competitors. I guess Signal is trying to position themselves as a chat service, but I see it more as a replacement for SMS, whereas Matrix I see as more replacing IRC and instant messenger products. If we had to choose between them, I'd take Matrix in a heartbeat, but I just let them co-exist.

dTal 10y ago
WhisperSystems doomed Signal as an SMS replacement when they dropped encrypted SMS support. Now it's just another instant messenger. Big whoop, I had OTR encryption a decade ago (with more contacts, too - it's a lot easier to say to a friend "install this OTR plugin" than "switch to this IM network/app"). I use SilenceIM.
- caf 10y ago
  I only use it as an SMS replacement. Really, as long as you have mobile data, there's no difference between supporting SMS encryption and not - you can only talk encrypted to other Signal users anyway, and other Signal users will get your non-SMS-routed encrypted message just fine. The use case for Signal-encrypted-SMS is continuing to send encrypted while you have no IP connectivity, but thankfully that is becoming a rarer corner-case. The last time I had SMS but no IP was on a cruise ship.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    Happens all the time for me. Pretty much anywhere in the US, I'd bet there's a spot within 50 miles where all you have is cell coverage.
    - caf 10y ago
      Ahh, I was not aware of that, in light of that it seems like dropping encrypted SMS support was premature. (Here I don't think there's any places with non-data coverage, though there is now some of the opposite - places with no circuit-switched voice coverage, voice there is only through VoLTE).

problems 10y ago

You might check out Conversations too (https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/), it's a federated XMPP (with some really clever extensions) based approach that uses the signal protocol.

Certhas 10y ago
Yes it is: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server It's sure become fashionable to hate on Signal/OWS. The price of actually successfully bringing good encryption mainstream? Edit: The comment I replied to originally included a question on whether Signals server is even open source.
- problems 10y ago
  > The comment I replied to originally included a question on whether Signals server is even open source. Sorry about that, I had looked it up just a second after I posted and then removed that line. > hate on Signal/OWS I don't mean to hate on them, just their stance on getting away from Google, using F-Droid, federating their service and many other things has been more than a bit of a mess or disappointment. I'm glad they finally made a step in the right direction and I hope this will continue.
  - Certhas 10y ago
    The thing is, they gave good reasons on all these points. It's certainly valid to disagree with the trade offs, but people don't acknowledge that there are trade offs at all. As I said in another reply, I can get a completely non-technical user to start using Signal with me in a minute, and have them have an experience that is as accessible as WhatsApp. That's simply not true for any of the other options I'm aware of (and it relates directly to most of the points you raise, with the notable exception of F-Droid. There I also find their reasoning weakest).
- nileshtrivedi 10y ago
  Signal is not mainstream. And you can't verify that Whatsapp/Allo have implemented the whisper protocol the way they claim to. We are being asked to "just trust them".

ycmbntrthrwaway 10y ago

The problem with federated approach is that it leaks metadata. When you take centralized system apart and expose internal communications to the Internet, you reduce anonymity. Extreme case is when everyone uses his own homeserver and information on who calls who and when is completely exposed. It is not enough to make the system distributed, you need to exploit the fact that different parts of the network are controlled by different parties to build self-enforcing protocols that ensure anonymity. For comparison, see how bitcoin is just distributed and zerocoin is anonymous. Gnutella is just distributed and FreeNet is anonymous.

tptacek 10y ago
That's not the only problem, or the most important problem. The most important problem of federation is that it generates lowest-common-denominator security. For instance: https://whispersystems.org/blog/giphy-experiment/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/giphy-experiment/ This is how Signal provides Giphy search (spoiler: they tunnel a TLS connection through their own server, with TLS negotiated end-to-end from the Signal app to the Giphy server, so that Giphy can't tell what client is searching for what GIF while at the same time Signal's server's can't see what people are searching for). Does anyone believe that in a world where 90% of Signal-network client installs weren't Signal.app, that this is how features like this would work? It's not an unknowable question. All you have to do is look and see how Signal's competitors, like Wire, tackle this problem. It's true that in a federated Signal-network, you might get clients that have security features Signal itself lacks. But because it's far easier to produce an insecure client than a secure one, insecurity will dominate, and be a boat anchor around any efforts to improve security down the road. Call it "the libpurple problem".
- comex 10y ago
  All true, but I think the situation looks a little worse for centralization if instead of 'security features', you think in terms of 'vulnerabilities' (almost but not quite an antonym). Signal probably has a lower vulnerability rate than competing software, but if someone finds an implementation bug, it can be used against every user on the network. Compare to, say, IRC, where there are a lot of really poorly written clients, but the sheer number of clients in use would limit the fallout of any one exploit. Likewise, Open Whisper Systems is pretty trustworthy, but if someone gets access to their servers, either by hacking or by coercion, and starts, say, logging metadata (who's chatting with who), all Signal users are compromised. When I chat on a private (and SSL-only) IRC server, the security guarantees are awful compared to Signal - and I'm not saying that's not a problem - but at least I know that my conversations will only be compromised if someone really has it out for my group in particular; they won't show up in some massive leak and/or government database. This also applies to binary distribution. When software is compiled by N different distros or package managers or by users directly, that does make it hard to get security updates out in a timely manner. But with a centralized system like Signal's, if the binaries are compromised, everyone is pwned. Yes, measures like reproducible builds can reduce the risk, but they're far from perfect. Is there even anyone who verifies Signal builds on a regular basis/automatically?