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This is an unexpected move, perhaps Briar, Matrix and other distributed platforms are putting more pressure on Signal to show forward progress on the serious me

This is an unexpected move, perhaps Briar, Matrix and other distributed platforms are putting more pressure on Signal to show forward progress on the serious metadata issue with Signal and most other centralized platforms? Its been a rallying cry/common complaint by those who are technically inclined and privacy conscious for years now, surprised OWS would choose to give credit to the problem.

tptacek 8y ago
No mainstream messenger has ever done a better job with metadata than Signal. It took Signal several years after launch just to get user profiles with names and stuff, purely because of privacy concerns. Read the blog post they wrote about GIF sharing to get a sense of how seriously they take this, then compare how their features work to other mainstream messengers. There is one privacy issue people put pressure on Signal about, and that's the use of phone numbers. Apart from that, Signal has always led the field on privacy issues.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Briar is leading the field on privacy issues today, unlike Signal. There is no metadata leaking who you are sending messages to or from, just a connection to the Tor Network. This problem is still unsolved in Signal, with only partial protection of some messages looking to be added in the future, while mitigation tactics like running your own server are unsupported & discouraged by Open Whisper Systems. The post about Giphy integration was a great piece of writing about an interesting technical challenge, and Signal's solution to the problem (a TLS proxy run by them, with a client that only accepts Giphy's TLS certificate, making queries quasi-anonymous) is not a bad way to go about solving things.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    I am willing to stipulate "short of running everything over Tor" for the sake of argument.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      I'm not looking to argue with you, just pointing out the current state of affairs wrt why so many privacy minded, tech aware folks either won't use Signal or choose to move conversations off it as quickly as possible. The reasons for avoiding Signal (metadata leakage, mandatory phone number usage, questionable 3rd party dependencies, etc) are valid, despite how I often argue to the contrary in favor of getting as many people on Signal as possible and using it for daily communication. Talking common sense to this demographic is hard though, in the context of basic security concerns persisting year after year. On the flipside, the phone number as identifier issue has caused apps like Kik (super popular among the gay community, despite shit security), Wickr and Wire to become popular among the non-tech demographics, which is extremely disheartening.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Of those issues, I believe only mandatory phone numbers are valid, for what it's worth. And I'm fine with mandatory phone numbers; there are other options for people who have a problem with that.
        StudentStuff 8y ago
        You obviously have a different opinion on what a standard threat model is then...
        trash_panda 8y ago
        There is no such thing as a "standard threat model". That's why the threat modeling concept exists in the first place, so you can adapt different solution to different requirements. It is totally OK if you are extremely worried about hypothetical scenarios where the phone number you used to register to the Signal network can be correlated to your physical location and then a gas station camera filmed you and then all is lost; but I want to believe that really at risk people are smarter than that, and just get a burner phone and even pay a homeless person a few bucks to buy it for them. There are also ways to get a phone number through the Internet, so you don't even have to go to a physical location to buy it. I think that's why Signal isn't prioritizing this right now, phone numbers can be a problem? yes. Is it hard to get a fake phone number that is not traceable to you? not really. Next problem please. I think Signal is achieving the goal of being the default go-to secure messenger. I'm sure, even technical people who like to nerd out on alternatives, faced with a real world risky situation when they have to communicate with a non-technical person, would recommend Signal without a second thought.
  - bjoli 8y ago
    I have been trying to understand some things about briar. Their threat model document states that an attacker on the same network can actually see the to/from metadata. How does this work in relationship to tor? I want to use it, but I haven't been able to get it to work reliably, so I haven't started trying to convert people.
- dbrgn 8y ago
  Threema had decentralized, user-controllable (yep/whitelist/nope) avatars for longer than Signal had their server-stored avatars :) And without the requirement of linking your identity to a phone number.
  - bjoli 8y ago
    But they still claim that TLS provides proper forward secrecy, which is of course is true for a passive attacker, but not for a malicious server.

tptacek 8y ago

No mainstream messenger has ever done a better job with metadata than Signal. It took Signal several years after launch just to get user profiles with names and stuff, purely because of privacy concerns. Read the blog post they wrote about GIF sharing to get a sense of how seriously they take this, then compare how their features work to other mainstream messengers. There is one privacy issue people put pressure on Signal about, and that's the use of phone numbers. Apart from that, Signal has always led the field on privacy issues.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Briar is leading the field on privacy issues today, unlike Signal. There is no metadata leaking who you are sending messages to or from, just a connection to the Tor Network. This problem is still unsolved in Signal, with only partial protection of some messages looking to be added in the future, while mitigation tactics like running your own server are unsupported & discouraged by Open Whisper Systems. The post about Giphy integration was a great piece of writing about an interesting technical challenge, and Signal's solution to the problem (a TLS proxy run by them, with a client that only accepts Giphy's TLS certificate, making queries quasi-anonymous) is not a bad way to go about solving things.
- tptacek 8y ago
  I am willing to stipulate "short of running everything over Tor" for the sake of argument.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    I'm not looking to argue with you, just pointing out the current state of affairs wrt why so many privacy minded, tech aware folks either won't use Signal or choose to move conversations off it as quickly as possible. The reasons for avoiding Signal (metadata leakage, mandatory phone number usage, questionable 3rd party dependencies, etc) are valid, despite how I often argue to the contrary in favor of getting as many people on Signal as possible and using it for daily communication. Talking common sense to this demographic is hard though, in the context of basic security concerns persisting year after year. On the flipside, the phone number as identifier issue has caused apps like Kik (super popular among the gay community, despite shit security), Wickr and Wire to become popular among the non-tech demographics, which is extremely disheartening.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Of those issues, I believe only mandatory phone numbers are valid, for what it's worth. And I'm fine with mandatory phone numbers; there are other options for people who have a problem with that.
      - StudentStuff 8y ago
        You obviously have a different opinion on what a standard threat model is then...
        trash_panda 8y ago
        There is no such thing as a "standard threat model". That's why the threat modeling concept exists in the first place, so you can adapt different solution to different requirements. It is totally OK if you are extremely worried about hypothetical scenarios where the phone number you used to register to the Signal network can be correlated to your physical location and then a gas station camera filmed you and then all is lost; but I want to believe that really at risk people are smarter than that, and just get a burner phone and even pay a homeless person a few bucks to buy it for them. There are also ways to get a phone number through the Internet, so you don't even have to go to a physical location to buy it. I think that's why Signal isn't prioritizing this right now, phone numbers can be a problem? yes. Is it hard to get a fake phone number that is not traceable to you? not really. Next problem please. I think Signal is achieving the goal of being the default go-to secure messenger. I'm sure, even technical people who like to nerd out on alternatives, faced with a real world risky situation when they have to communicate with a non-technical person, would recommend Signal without a second thought.
- bjoli 8y ago
  I have been trying to understand some things about briar. Their threat model document states that an attacker on the same network can actually see the to/from metadata. How does this work in relationship to tor? I want to use it, but I haven't been able to get it to work reliably, so I haven't started trying to convert people.
dbrgn 8y ago
Threema had decentralized, user-controllable (yep/whitelist/nope) avatars for longer than Signal had their server-stored avatars :) And without the requirement of linking your identity to a phone number.
- bjoli 8y ago
  But they still claim that TLS provides proper forward secrecy, which is of course is true for a passive attacker, but not for a malicious server.