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Well. I'd rather not have anyone suggest tox. The whole "we use nacl so we are safe" attitude from a couple of years ago seems to still be around. Good on them

by bjoli 8y ago

Well. I'd rather not have anyone suggest tox. The whole "we use nacl so we are safe" attitude from a couple of years ago seems to still be around. Good on them for using nacl. A shame they don't seem to realize that you can write bad crypto with it. The whole forward secrecy seems to be unresolved still. They have session keys,but other than that there is no rekeying. And then we have the whole issue with it relying on supernodes for much of its functionality (offline messages, mobile phone client rs) which leads to it having a subset of the issues many have with signal.

snvzz 8y ago
>The whole "we use nacl so we are safe" attitude from a couple of years ago seems to still be around. Citation needed. >Well. I'd rather not have anyone suggest tox. I'm repeating myself, but for all the hate it gets, I'm unable to come up with a better suggestion than Tox. There's always some kind of flaw: Centralized, no forward secrecy, end to end encryption optional, no way to verify contacts and so on.
- bjoli 8y ago
  Regarding the citation, it is just a matter of reading how the core devs reply to potential security issues. Sure, it has gotten better, but it is not too far from the good old https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121 https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121 The fact is we mostly know what kind of attacks are possible on signal. We know metadata is a potential problem. We know what kind of tradeoffs we get with a centralised architecture. We know how that works and how to mitigate some things. Openwhispersystems have been clear about what Signal provides and what it does not provide (even the wording around disappearing messages is well chosen not to confuse people ). With tox there is a lot we don't know. Are the supernodes an attack vector? Why aren't the devs clear about using a less distributed architecture for mobile clients? Why don't they provide proper forward secrecy yet they claim to do so? There might be lots of strange properties of doing crypto distributed. I would not recommend it for secure communication until the amount of unknowns is smaller. It is really that simple.
  - snvzz 8y ago
    >Sure, it has gotten better, but it is not too far from the good old So your citation for sticking to their old ways is pointing to some old example? That's not what I was looking for. >Why aren't the devs clear about using a less distributed architecture for mobile clients? Because it's not a priority to them; Or to me, for that matter. (I don't IM on the phone) >I would not recommend it for secure communication until the amount of unknowns is smaller. I don't see how the likes of Signal or the popular Telegram are any better in that regard. Also, adding more features (your phone suggestion) wouldn't help.
    - bjoli 8y ago
      Signal is better because people who knows their shit has vetted the design and quite a bit of research on the protocol has been done. We a quite certain of the security properties of the signal protocol. Tox has not had this amount of attention and it is written by people who seemed to sincerely believe that using nacl/libsodium made tox safe. If that is not a huge red flag, then I don't know what is. Telegram is not encrypted by default and when it is it uses a weird protocol, which people warned about from the beginning. The devs were cocky even after a probably unintentional backdoor was found that would have let the server mitm every encrypted communication. The difference between these three for secure communication is huge.
      - snvzz 8y ago
        >Signal is better because people who knows their shit has vetted the design So basically, argument from authority. No Good.
        bjoli 8y ago
        Then I ask you: as a non-cryptographer who knows enough to understand RSA, how should I verify cryptographic claims? People i find trustworthy claim signal is good, which is further confirmed by studies and third party suits. I know this is an appeal to authority, but nobody can personally verify every claim made to them. I believe I have done due diligence.

by bjoli 8y ago

snvzz 8y ago

>The whole "we use nacl so we are safe" attitude from a couple of years ago seems to still be around. Citation needed. >Well. I'd rather not have anyone suggest tox. I'm repeating myself, but for all the hate it gets, I'm unable to come up with a better suggestion than Tox. There's always some kind of flaw: Centralized, no forward secrecy, end to end encryption optional, no way to verify contacts and so on.

bjoli 8y ago
Regarding the citation, it is just a matter of reading how the core devs reply to potential security issues. Sure, it has gotten better, but it is not too far from the good old https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121 https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/121 The fact is we mostly know what kind of attacks are possible on signal. We know metadata is a potential problem. We know what kind of tradeoffs we get with a centralised architecture. We know how that works and how to mitigate some things. Openwhispersystems have been clear about what Signal provides and what it does not provide (even the wording around disappearing messages is well chosen not to confuse people ). With tox there is a lot we don't know. Are the supernodes an attack vector? Why aren't the devs clear about using a less distributed architecture for mobile clients? Why don't they provide proper forward secrecy yet they claim to do so? There might be lots of strange properties of doing crypto distributed. I would not recommend it for secure communication until the amount of unknowns is smaller. It is really that simple.
- snvzz 8y ago
  >Sure, it has gotten better, but it is not too far from the good old So your citation for sticking to their old ways is pointing to some old example? That's not what I was looking for. >Why aren't the devs clear about using a less distributed architecture for mobile clients? Because it's not a priority to them; Or to me, for that matter. (I don't IM on the phone) >I would not recommend it for secure communication until the amount of unknowns is smaller. I don't see how the likes of Signal or the popular Telegram are any better in that regard. Also, adding more features (your phone suggestion) wouldn't help.
  - bjoli 8y ago
    Signal is better because people who knows their shit has vetted the design and quite a bit of research on the protocol has been done. We a quite certain of the security properties of the signal protocol. Tox has not had this amount of attention and it is written by people who seemed to sincerely believe that using nacl/libsodium made tox safe. If that is not a huge red flag, then I don't know what is. Telegram is not encrypted by default and when it is it uses a weird protocol, which people warned about from the beginning. The devs were cocky even after a probably unintentional backdoor was found that would have let the server mitm every encrypted communication. The difference between these three for secure communication is huge.
    - snvzz 8y ago
      >Signal is better because people who knows their shit has vetted the design So basically, argument from authority. No Good.
      - bjoli 8y ago
        Then I ask you: as a non-cryptographer who knows enough to understand RSA, how should I verify cryptographic claims? People i find trustworthy claim signal is good, which is further confirmed by studies and third party suits. I know this is an appeal to authority, but nobody can personally verify every claim made to them. I believe I have done due diligence.