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Wikipedia: "Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Open Whisper Systems." Would it be possible to use the same open source proto and crypt

Wikipedia: "Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Open Whisper Systems." Would it be possible to use the same open source proto and crypto that Signal chose, but in a way that does not rely on third parties to run servers, such as OWS, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.?

chrisballinger 9y ago
Yep. You can use Signal Protocol over XMPP by using an OMEMO-compatible client [1]. You can pretty "easily" host your own XMPP server using Prosody [2] on a Raspberry Pi. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO 2. https://prosody.im https://prosody.im
ReverseCold 9y ago
Yes, but decentralization is a difficult problem. I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. NAT, Firewall, etc all make it very difficult to do true P2P as well.
- figgis 9y ago
  >I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. Or Outlook(Office365), Ymail, Zoho, GMX, iCloud, Yandex, Proton.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - newscracker 9y ago
    Or Posteo, Mailbox.org, Tutanota, Riseup.net, etc.
    - tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
      Or self-hosted.
      - sgtmas2006 9y ago
        A lot of people are listing plenty of alternatives for email, but the majority of people aren't going to be this broad in email usage.
  - godelski 9y ago
    Let's be real here, the vast majority of people use Gmail or Outlook. And importantly, businesses. iCloud breaks into the consumer market though, but these are by far the leaders.
- jstanley 9y ago
  You might use GMail, but I can communicate with you perfectly fine even if I don't use GMail.
  - cpach 9y ago
    And that’s why end-to-end encrypted e-mail is so very hard
    - lettergram 9y ago
      I actually wrote a prototype to manage that: http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ The problem is we need to stop worrying about end-to-end encrypted <insert name here>. We need something that blocks javascript, and encrypts our messages before they even enter the pipeline (there will still be meta data though). The extension I built was a POC just showing how it could be done easily with Keybase.
      - carussell 9y ago
        You have a "Portfolio" link in the sidebar that doesn't seem to be for anything, and a broken #contact anchor.
  - yoavm 9y ago
    If by "perfectly fine" you mean highly likely to get into your recipient's spam folder - you're probably right. Having tried to self host my own mail server I can tell you it's never an easy task to actually get your message across.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      This comes up a lot but the reality is that its really only nerds and spammers that self-host. It's hard to fault spam filters of being suspicious of random domains. This doesn't mean there aren't many alternatives -- just about any personal email provider will make sure they're off the blacklists.
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
Signal the app uses OWS's servers, but Signal the protocol can run on anything. WhatsApp etc definitely aren't using OWS servers.
codelitt 9y ago
From what I can see, they're doing everything that they can to eliminate sending anything to servers. They recently launched private contact discovery which is really interesting. https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ Moxie has said repeatedly that they're working to do better on this front, but it's not without its technological challenges. He's written repeatedly about this and has also called for anyone willing to try to make it happen and offered to help them. Just one example springs to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410 And federation is possible over XMPP with Signal: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- 4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
  >And federation is possible over XMPP with Signal: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ That article does not say this. In fact, it more or less has the opposite meaning.

chrisballinger 9y ago

Yep. You can use Signal Protocol over XMPP by using an OMEMO-compatible client [1]. You can pretty "easily" host your own XMPP server using Prosody [2] on a Raspberry Pi. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO 2. https://prosody.im https://prosody.im

ReverseCold 9y ago

Yes, but decentralization is a difficult problem. I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. NAT, Firewall, etc all make it very difficult to do true P2P as well.

figgis 9y ago
>I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. Or Outlook(Office365), Ymail, Zoho, GMX, iCloud, Yandex, Proton.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- newscracker 9y ago
  Or Posteo, Mailbox.org, Tutanota, Riseup.net, etc.
  - tho9Ohx1eo 9y ago
    Or self-hosted.
    - sgtmas2006 9y ago
      A lot of people are listing plenty of alternatives for email, but the majority of people aren't going to be this broad in email usage.
- godelski 9y ago
  Let's be real here, the vast majority of people use Gmail or Outlook. And importantly, businesses. iCloud breaks into the consumer market though, but these are by far the leaders.
jstanley 9y ago
You might use GMail, but I can communicate with you perfectly fine even if I don't use GMail.
- cpach 9y ago
  And that’s why end-to-end encrypted e-mail is so very hard
  - lettergram 9y ago
    I actually wrote a prototype to manage that: http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ The problem is we need to stop worrying about end-to-end encrypted <insert name here>. We need something that blocks javascript, and encrypts our messages before they even enter the pipeline (there will still be meta data though). The extension I built was a POC just showing how it could be done easily with Keybase.
    - carussell 9y ago
      You have a "Portfolio" link in the sidebar that doesn't seem to be for anything, and a broken #contact anchor.
- yoavm 9y ago
  If by "perfectly fine" you mean highly likely to get into your recipient's spam folder - you're probably right. Having tried to self host my own mail server I can tell you it's never an easy task to actually get your message across.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    This comes up a lot but the reality is that its really only nerds and spammers that self-host. It's hard to fault spam filters of being suspicious of random domains. This doesn't mean there aren't many alternatives -- just about any personal email provider will make sure they're off the blacklists.

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

Signal the app uses OWS's servers, but Signal the protocol can run on anything. WhatsApp etc definitely aren't using OWS servers.

codelitt 9y ago

From what I can see, they're doing everything that they can to eliminate sending anything to servers. They recently launched private contact discovery which is really interesting. https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ Moxie has said repeatedly that they're working to do better on this front, but it's not without its technological challenges. He's written repeatedly about this and has also called for anyone willing to try to make it happen and offered to help them. Just one example springs to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410 And federation is possible over XMPP with Signal: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

4c2383f5c88e911 9y ago
>And federation is possible over XMPP with Signal: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ That article does not say this. In fact, it more or less has the opposite meaning.