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Couldn't Signal use popular domains to host IP addresses as a rudimentary DNS server of sorts? For example, host a text file containing Signal server IPs on Goo
by cddotdotslash 8y ago
Couldn't Signal use popular domains to host IP addresses as a rudimentary DNS server of sorts? For example, host a text file containing Signal server IPs on Google App engine (using the app.google.com address), Azure Blob Storage (using blob.azure.com endpoint), GitHub (raw.githubusercontent.com), S3 (s3.amazonaws.com), etc. There are hundreds of possibilities on some really popular hosting services. Then, when the app starts, it queries in them in series, gets a list of IPs used by Signal, and tries them directly. Signal can then push new IPs (preferably ones in the AWS address space) to the list as often as needed to avoid blocking. Need a new IP? Just grab another from AWS elastic IP service, update the text file, etc.
- gregschlom 8y agoAnd then the censors can very conveniently block all those IPs too, can't they?
- cddotdotslash 8y agoThat's the point, it'd be a never ending game of cat and mouse, resulting in them blocking thousands of Amazon IPs. You don't have to plaintext the text files either, you could require some kind of shared secret from the app or user login to prevent the censors from just pulling the file in plaintext.