3 ms·

> But Keybase teamwork is end-to-end encrypted, which means you don't have to worry about server hacks. Alternatively, you can lie awake at night...fearing a br

by e12e 9y ago

> But Keybase teamwork is end-to-end encrypted, which means you don't have to worry about server hacks. Alternatively, you can lie awake at night...fearing a breach of your company's messaging history. What if your team's history got stolen from Slack and leaked or published? The legal and emotional nightmare. I think it's great that this is an e2e solution, and obviously the path for an attacker from total compromise of keybase, to total compromise of user data is one step removed - it needs to go via pushing a backdoored keybase client (or, ahem, a secret entity needs to force that to happen). But either way, in terms of a targeted attack for a company's data - surely the clients (phones, workstations) are the weak point? In other words, I think the paragraph oversells the benefit of e2e a little bit? This isn't really keybases' fault - consumer computing is pathetically insecure and hard to secure (with the possible exception of iOS devices). That's just how things are right now.

nickpsecurity 9y ago
" it needs to go via pushing a backdoored keybase client (or, ahem, a secret entity needs to force that to happen)." Or just one or more packets directed at the client if it has some kind of listener open with a vulnerability. If nothing else, most security-focused apps don't do covert channel analyses. If this one doesn't, its secrets might be intercepted through storage or timing channels via another compromised app (even unprivileged) on the computer. Mitigating that usually has a performance hit and/or takes a language whose operations map pretty well to hardware where developers can estimate timing well. So, they've removed one step. That's good. Opponents don't have to go straight to subversion from there, though. There's a few more possibilities.
AFNobody 9y ago
> But either way, in terms of a targeted attack for a company's data - surely the clients (phones, workstations) are the weak point? In other words, I think the paragraph oversells the benefit of e2e a little bit? Literally no encrypted channel is secure against a client-side compromise that allows an attacker to observe the conversation. It is effectively equivalent to a trusted user deciding to knife you in the back. Even e2e 1:1 conversations have that weakness. The trust in the group is only as strong as the human element (and in the case of computing, the least secured client device). So I don't think it really oversells it, personally, given the fact there is no option that is universally agreed to be substantially better secured and immune to a traitor and/or compromised client.

by e12e 9y ago

nickpsecurity 9y ago

" it needs to go via pushing a backdoored keybase client (or, ahem, a secret entity needs to force that to happen)." Or just one or more packets directed at the client if it has some kind of listener open with a vulnerability. If nothing else, most security-focused apps don't do covert channel analyses. If this one doesn't, its secrets might be intercepted through storage or timing channels via another compromised app (even unprivileged) on the computer. Mitigating that usually has a performance hit and/or takes a language whose operations map pretty well to hardware where developers can estimate timing well. So, they've removed one step. That's good. Opponents don't have to go straight to subversion from there, though. There's a few more possibilities.

AFNobody 9y ago

> But either way, in terms of a targeted attack for a company's data - surely the clients (phones, workstations) are the weak point? In other words, I think the paragraph oversells the benefit of e2e a little bit? Literally no encrypted channel is secure against a client-side compromise that allows an attacker to observe the conversation. It is effectively equivalent to a trusted user deciding to knife you in the back. Even e2e 1:1 conversations have that weakness. The trust in the group is only as strong as the human element (and in the case of computing, the least secured client device). So I don't think it really oversells it, personally, given the fact there is no option that is universally agreed to be substantially better secured and immune to a traitor and/or compromised client.