5 ms·

This attitude is a big reason why doing constructive work in security is hard. Yes, there are huge challenges and lots of different attack vectors. No, that d

This attitude is a big reason why doing constructive work in security is hard. Yes, there are huge challenges and lots of different attack vectors. No, that doesn't invalidate the progress that's made when someone invests a lot of time and effort to solve 80% of an extremely difficult problem. Sometimes it feels like you could solve world hunger and world peace, but unless you also gave everyone a puppy, half of the security community would still complain. (And then there's always someone who wanted a kitten instead of a puppy...)

kuschku 9y ago
Well, it is a major step – but Moxie always sells his solutions, even if they’re just a puppy, as solutions for world hunger. As I mentioned, advertising with Snowden leads to a promise that Signal can not fulfill. Not even with this. But, you know, there is already a solution for all the issues here: Don’t use phone numbers, use usernames! As it turns out, that is far more private and secure.
- hdhzy 9y ago
  > Don’t use phone numbers, use usernames! As it turns out, that is far more private and secure. It is. But it's not convenient. Everyone has contact list with numbers and people want to talk to their friends immediately not call them for their ID for service X.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Everyone? I've got basically no phone numbers of many of my friends, or they've switched them so often that the ones I have are long wrong. Half the numbers in my contacts list don't exist anymore. I certainly prefer usernames.
    - hdhzy 9y ago
      Clearly you're not the target market for Signal but there are many encrypted messangers out there for you.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        I'm not so sure about that. Matrix is the closest thing, and that has a code quality that makes me want to puke. EDIT: Before I get complaints from the Matrix devs again that I’m bad-mouthing their app: ObjectOutputStream is NOT a suitable implementation for a "database": https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/blob/736643f5242861956436da594f65e2d4832d2335/matrix-sdk/src/main/java/org/matrix/androidsdk/data/store/MXFileStore.java#L2250 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/blob/736643...
        hdhzy 9y ago
        What about XMPP with OMEMO? I know it's not the latest hype but has decentralized usernames.
        Arathorn 9y ago
        Any project made up of hundreds of repos has bad areas which you can cherrypick if you want to bad-mouth, especially whilst still it's very actively in dev. For instance, conversely on iOS we have four different local store API implementations[1] ranging from in-memory, flatfile (via NSKeyedArchiver), CoreData and Realm. The equivalent work just hasn't yet happened on Android; PRs welcome. Once again, why not invest your time in doing something more productive than spreading FUD about Matrix? [1] https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/MatrixSDK/Crypto/Data/Store https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/Mat... and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/MatrixSDK/Data/Store https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/Mat...
        kuschku 9y ago
        > Once again, why not invest your time in doing something more productive than spreading FUD about Matrix? Because I’m already investing my time in improving IRC, and there’s little time left after that. > spreading FUD about Matrix? Every criticism of mine you’ve admitted to be true, yet call it FUD still. Even this one you admit that there is significant amounts of bad code in Matrix, just argue that other projects have as much. That’s no excuse. > The equivalent work just hasn't yet happened on Android; PRs welcome. So why did this happen in the first place? This isn’t even just bad code – someone spent significant amounts of work and time (far more than would’ve been spent for using existing solutions such as Realm) on this. And there’s many pieces of the Matrix code just like that.
- cvwright 9y ago
  First, you're not wrong about Signal being insufficient against nation state adversaries. The Grugq has a nice talk about opsec that I can't seem to find atm. He sums up the issues with Signal nicely in a Medium article. [1] That said, this particular development is a lot more than a puppy. It's at least a full grown, happy, friendly Golden Retriever who's already house trained and knows how to fetch your slippers. They've removed one of the biggest remaining weaknesses of their system, where they still required the users to "just trust" them. That's pretty cool, especially for the vast majority of us whose primary adversaries are smaller or profit-driven. [1] https://medium.com/@thegrugq/signal-intelligence-free-for-all-5993c2f72f90 https://medium.com/@thegrugq/signal-intelligence-free-for-al...
  - indiv0 9y ago
    Are you by any chance referring to this [0] talk? [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU

kuschku 9y ago

Well, it is a major step – but Moxie always sells his solutions, even if they’re just a puppy, as solutions for world hunger. As I mentioned, advertising with Snowden leads to a promise that Signal can not fulfill. Not even with this. But, you know, there is already a solution for all the issues here: Don’t use phone numbers, use usernames! As it turns out, that is far more private and secure.

hdhzy 9y ago
> Don’t use phone numbers, use usernames! As it turns out, that is far more private and secure. It is. But it's not convenient. Everyone has contact list with numbers and people want to talk to their friends immediately not call them for their ID for service X.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Everyone? I've got basically no phone numbers of many of my friends, or they've switched them so often that the ones I have are long wrong. Half the numbers in my contacts list don't exist anymore. I certainly prefer usernames.
  - hdhzy 9y ago
    Clearly you're not the target market for Signal but there are many encrypted messangers out there for you.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      I'm not so sure about that. Matrix is the closest thing, and that has a code quality that makes me want to puke. EDIT: Before I get complaints from the Matrix devs again that I’m bad-mouthing their app: ObjectOutputStream is NOT a suitable implementation for a "database": https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/blob/736643f5242861956436da594f65e2d4832d2335/matrix-sdk/src/main/java/org/matrix/androidsdk/data/store/MXFileStore.java#L2250 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/blob/736643...
      - hdhzy 9y ago
        What about XMPP with OMEMO? I know it's not the latest hype but has decentralized usernames.
      - Arathorn 9y ago
        Any project made up of hundreds of repos has bad areas which you can cherrypick if you want to bad-mouth, especially whilst still it's very actively in dev. For instance, conversely on iOS we have four different local store API implementations[1] ranging from in-memory, flatfile (via NSKeyedArchiver), CoreData and Realm. The equivalent work just hasn't yet happened on Android; PRs welcome. Once again, why not invest your time in doing something more productive than spreading FUD about Matrix? [1] https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/MatrixSDK/Crypto/Data/Store https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/Mat... and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/MatrixSDK/Data/Store https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/tree/master/Mat...
        kuschku 9y ago
        > Once again, why not invest your time in doing something more productive than spreading FUD about Matrix? Because I’m already investing my time in improving IRC, and there’s little time left after that. > spreading FUD about Matrix? Every criticism of mine you’ve admitted to be true, yet call it FUD still. Even this one you admit that there is significant amounts of bad code in Matrix, just argue that other projects have as much. That’s no excuse. > The equivalent work just hasn't yet happened on Android; PRs welcome. So why did this happen in the first place? This isn’t even just bad code – someone spent significant amounts of work and time (far more than would’ve been spent for using existing solutions such as Realm) on this. And there’s many pieces of the Matrix code just like that.
cvwright 9y ago
First, you're not wrong about Signal being insufficient against nation state adversaries. The Grugq has a nice talk about opsec that I can't seem to find atm. He sums up the issues with Signal nicely in a Medium article. [1] That said, this particular development is a lot more than a puppy. It's at least a full grown, happy, friendly Golden Retriever who's already house trained and knows how to fetch your slippers. They've removed one of the biggest remaining weaknesses of their system, where they still required the users to "just trust" them. That's pretty cool, especially for the vast majority of us whose primary adversaries are smaller or profit-driven. [1] https://medium.com/@thegrugq/signal-intelligence-free-for-all-5993c2f72f90 https://medium.com/@thegrugq/signal-intelligence-free-for-al...
- indiv0 9y ago
  Are you by any chance referring to this [0] talk? [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU