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The most interesting part of this (to me at least) is that even our 'secure' messaging systems rely entirely on trusted entities. I don't think Signal is immune

The most interesting part of this (to me at least) is that even our 'secure' messaging systems rely entirely on trusted entities. I don't think Signal is immune to this problem either, as you still need to communicate with their servers. As a distributed trust system, WhatsApp and Signal are single points of failure. Messaging is analogous to money in a lot of ways. Perhaps we'll see a good distributed peer to peer messaging protocol at some point in the future.

craftyguy 9y ago
> Perhaps we'll see a good distributed peer to peer messaging protocol at some point in the future. The Matrix protocol is actually fairly promising, as long as you only use it for Matrix<->Matrix communication. Things fall to pieces when you try to bridge it with IRC. It's certainly more user-friendly for non-tech. folks than, say, the awkward key exchange/setups of XMPP clients, but it's still a far cry from something like Signal in terms of 'ease of use'
- Shoothe 9y ago
  > awkward key exchange/setups of XMPP clients What do you mean by that? Conversations.im establishes e2e secure session without any fingerprint approving interaction whatsoever. Of course you can manually scan barcodes for paranoid mode but that's not necessary. For me it's a perfect balance between convenience and security. Read more at https://gultsch.de/trust.html https://gultsch.de/trust.html
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Hmm, I'll check this out, thanks. I was mainly speaking to previous experiences trying to set up Conversations on one device, Pidgin on another, there not being any good way to use a consistent key for my user on both, and trying to walk non-technical family members through that fiasco. This was about 2 years ago, maybe the situation has improved!
    - upofadown 9y ago
      You can check on the progress of Omemo support for the various XMPP clients here: * https://omemo.top/ https://omemo.top/
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      Keep in mind that Pidgin supporting many protocols means "lowest common denominator" in several cases. For OMEMO E2E I'd recommend Gajim or (still in alpha but promising) dino.im
- upofadown 9y ago
  Doesn't matrix do everything through federated servers?
pitaj 9y ago
Decentralized private messaging doesn't sound too hard. With the e2e encryption that already exists it doesn't seem to difficult to add more servers as you don't really need trust in the first place. I could be wrong though.
- dasil003 9y ago
  You always need trust, how do you know you're talking to your friend?
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    The theory with Signal is that you might verify their identity in meatspace, or some other way. But yes, it's definitely an interesting chicken and egg problem. As far as the thought exercise goes, it might be worth limiting your scope at this point.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    Side channels are the only way, practically speaking. Call them and have them read off the hash of their key and verify it against the key you received from "them". Or have them send a nonce value through the system to you that you provided over a side channel. Any time you have a central authority providing that validation, you have to trust that your "friend" hasn't fooled them.
  - dbrgn 9y ago
    Threema has a system where contacts are verified using a QR code scan: https://threema.ch/en/faq/levels_expl https://threema.ch/en/faq/levels_expl These three dots are shown throughout the UI, so with the identity of a contact you always see the trust level. This is much easier to explain to a non-techie than comparing security numbers or hashes. - Red = No trust - Yellow = You trust that the server has verified the identity - Green = You have verified the identity yourself (Edit: Formatting)
  - Sylos 9y ago
    Opinions about giving this trust matter to dedicated certificate authorities instead, like we do with HTTPS? Edit: Found the problem with that. Certificate authorities are supposed to actually go out and confirm that the person who requested the certificate, is the person that they say they are. This is far too much work, if you want to verify each individual person who wants to use a messenger.
quiq 9y ago
I'm no expert but GNU Ring https://www.ring.cx https://www.ring.cx does look interesting. It doesn't give the federated goodness that Matrix does, but is truly distributed P2P using DHT. It was absorbed by GNU in 2016, so it does have that going for it.
whyever 9y ago
There is Briar which is peer-to-peer and uses Tor (or even just Wifi): https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/
dingo_bat 9y ago
There are more entities we have to trust in this matter. For example when I download whatsapp on my phone I trust that Google hasn't injected its own spyware into the binary, because there is no way for me (as an end-user who doesn't want to hack my own phone to get root access) to verify that the binary came directly from whatsapp. As much as Jobs revolutionized the smartphone industry, this is the long-lasting legacy we will have to live with for decades (or forever?).

craftyguy 9y ago

> Perhaps we'll see a good distributed peer to peer messaging protocol at some point in the future. The Matrix protocol is actually fairly promising, as long as you only use it for Matrix<->Matrix communication. Things fall to pieces when you try to bridge it with IRC. It's certainly more user-friendly for non-tech. folks than, say, the awkward key exchange/setups of XMPP clients, but it's still a far cry from something like Signal in terms of 'ease of use'

Shoothe 9y ago
> awkward key exchange/setups of XMPP clients What do you mean by that? Conversations.im establishes e2e secure session without any fingerprint approving interaction whatsoever. Of course you can manually scan barcodes for paranoid mode but that's not necessary. For me it's a perfect balance between convenience and security. Read more at https://gultsch.de/trust.html https://gultsch.de/trust.html
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Hmm, I'll check this out, thanks. I was mainly speaking to previous experiences trying to set up Conversations on one device, Pidgin on another, there not being any good way to use a consistent key for my user on both, and trying to walk non-technical family members through that fiasco. This was about 2 years ago, maybe the situation has improved!
  - upofadown 9y ago
    You can check on the progress of Omemo support for the various XMPP clients here: * https://omemo.top/ https://omemo.top/
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    Keep in mind that Pidgin supporting many protocols means "lowest common denominator" in several cases. For OMEMO E2E I'd recommend Gajim or (still in alpha but promising) dino.im
upofadown 9y ago
Doesn't matrix do everything through federated servers?

pitaj 9y ago

Decentralized private messaging doesn't sound too hard. With the e2e encryption that already exists it doesn't seem to difficult to add more servers as you don't really need trust in the first place. I could be wrong though.

dasil003 9y ago
You always need trust, how do you know you're talking to your friend?
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  The theory with Signal is that you might verify their identity in meatspace, or some other way. But yes, it's definitely an interesting chicken and egg problem. As far as the thought exercise goes, it might be worth limiting your scope at this point.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Side channels are the only way, practically speaking. Call them and have them read off the hash of their key and verify it against the key you received from "them". Or have them send a nonce value through the system to you that you provided over a side channel. Any time you have a central authority providing that validation, you have to trust that your "friend" hasn't fooled them.
- dbrgn 9y ago
  Threema has a system where contacts are verified using a QR code scan: https://threema.ch/en/faq/levels_expl https://threema.ch/en/faq/levels_expl These three dots are shown throughout the UI, so with the identity of a contact you always see the trust level. This is much easier to explain to a non-techie than comparing security numbers or hashes. - Red = No trust - Yellow = You trust that the server has verified the identity - Green = You have verified the identity yourself (Edit: Formatting)
- Sylos 9y ago
  Opinions about giving this trust matter to dedicated certificate authorities instead, like we do with HTTPS? Edit: Found the problem with that. Certificate authorities are supposed to actually go out and confirm that the person who requested the certificate, is the person that they say they are. This is far too much work, if you want to verify each individual person who wants to use a messenger.

quiq 9y ago

I'm no expert but GNU Ring https://www.ring.cx https://www.ring.cx does look interesting. It doesn't give the federated goodness that Matrix does, but is truly distributed P2P using DHT. It was absorbed by GNU in 2016, so it does have that going for it.

whyever 9y ago

There is Briar which is peer-to-peer and uses Tor (or even just Wifi): https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/

dingo_bat 9y ago

There are more entities we have to trust in this matter. For example when I download whatsapp on my phone I trust that Google hasn't injected its own spyware into the binary, because there is no way for me (as an end-user who doesn't want to hack my own phone to get root access) to verify that the binary came directly from whatsapp. As much as Jobs revolutionized the smartphone industry, this is the long-lasting legacy we will have to live with for decades (or forever?).