14 ms·

EU Commission to staff: Switch to Signal messaging app

495 points by maxbaines 7y ago

teekert 7y ago
But what should I use if I am a politician and fundamentally believe that the government should be able to read my communications?
- pilif 7y ago
  Does such a person exist? And if so, then just do all your communication using existing means like email and blogs.
  - abraae 7y ago
    As long as the people you are emailing with agree with that position as well.
  - tyfon 7y ago
    Personally I believe that if you become an elected representative of the public you should become a public person where all your in-person meetings and all your phone calls and messages are public for the period you are elected. If you meet someone without disclosing it, it should be a criminal offence. I know this will never happen in real life but I think this is the only way to solve the problem of corrupt officials and revolving doors / lobbyist problems. Edit: the book "Haze" by L.E. Modesitt Jr. has a good take on this.
    - teekert 7y ago
      Also: The Circle by Dave Eggers.
      - tyfon 7y ago
        Thank you, I haven't read that one. It's going to be read within the next few weeks :)
- qznc 7y ago
  Depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, probably Facebook Messenger.
- Angostura 7y ago
  Then post your communications to your official web page.
- nico_h 7y ago
  Just use email. Or whatsapp. Or iMessage with backups turned on.
- dTal 7y ago
  Wordpress. Nothing stops you from explicitly publishing your communications. And whether you do it explicitly, or implicitly by using an insecure communication method, it's always a choice which you can revoke at any time.
  - aguyfromnb 7y ago
    >it's always a choice which you can revoke at any time. It looks like the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. It's not about one person choosing to make their communication public, but that there should be a record of government communication period. Have we not seen enough examples of our elected officials corruption in media that isn't encrypted? Now we want them to be able to communicate in all manner with no accountability?
    - dTal 7y ago
      > Now we want them to be able to communicate in all manner with no accountability? I think you misunderstood my point, which was that they can always do that. You can't stop them from using Signal, if they want to do something nefarious. Hell, they can just meet in a dark alley if they want. Sure, you can make it against the rules, but we are already presupposing rule-breaking (or else we would not need oversight). So, if there's going to be some kind of disclosure system, let's make it structured and explicit. Just requesting that they use unencrypted communications, and then having some sort of unaccountable gray-hat institution (i.e. intelligence services) snoop on those communications, is a bad system.
- bouke 7y ago
  Yes! Can somebody please think of children?!
- Zenst 7y ago
  Well, given how one political remit uses Twitter, I'd counter that not everything should be written down in the first place, let alone read.
- netcan 7y ago
  Then make them public or submit them to whoever "the government" is, in that context.
- thu2111 7y ago
  SMS and phone calls. The infrastructure is all there already. Interestingly, the EU's position on this looks really confused. SMS messages should (in theory) only transit their own local telcos. The USA doesn't get a look-in unless it hacks the telcos themselves. What the EU is doing here is routing all Commission traffic through US based server farms and roots of trust. The phones are controlled from the USA, the comms services are too. So their own local firms can no longer see the traffic but US firms can (Signal claim this isn't the case but people are wising up to the fact that this can't be true until more infrastructure is in place). What actual threat are they trying to block here?
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    > What actual threat are they trying to block here? A large powerful country ruled by a megalomaniac who has proved he isn't afraid to ruin his country's reputation by abusing his power.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      Assuming you mean the USA, best way to solve that is for the data to never cross into US controlled facilities or equipment at all. Using apps made in California on operating systems also made in California to send messages to servers controlled from California and then trusting that the encryption works the way they say it works makes much less sense than just sending messages through EU carriers. Consider, the Signal threat model assumes that you can't trust telcos. That's usually based on the assumption that you're some ordinary grassroots citizen who might be spied on by the government. But the EU Commission is the government. It seems a bit odd for them to implicitly assert the national European telecoms companies are untrustworthy.
- WinonaRyder 7y ago
  Dumb question: is your comment meant to be sarcastic? I initially read it as such but now I'm not sure, given all the other replies.
  - teekert 7y ago
    It was sarcastic, but I just wondered what such politicians think when they get this advice... Like: Hell no! What if I'm a criminal some day!
- Dahoon 7y ago
  WhatsApp.
Beltiras 7y ago
Looks like it wasn't the transport method that was vulnerable. Doesn't matter if you use Signal if the "vault" where you keep the messages can be broken into.
akie 7y ago
As an EU citizen I think that's a great decision.
- Angostura 7y ago
  I think it is a great decision, but it wil hopefully persuade other people in public bodies to follow suit - such as my friends who work in senior positions in a hospital and use Whatsapp - a practice that started when ransomware took down the NHS e-mail.
- qznc 7y ago
  I hope nobody tells them that WhatsApp uses the same protocol. The argument for Signal would not be weaker but more complicated.
  - bluecmd 7y ago
    It's in the article
  - pergadad 7y ago
    Main argument is that it's also open source.
- nico_h 7y ago
  Is there no open source or European alternative? Just keep relying on some Californian dude that insist i give him my and my friends phone numbers? And harass me so i give him more info to “personalize my profile” !?
  - bluecmd 7y ago
    Signal is open source
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    wire: https://github.com/wireapp https://github.com/wireapp session (very bleeding-edge p2p signal fork) https://github.com/Loki-project https://github.com/Loki-project / https://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/
Zenst 7y ago
I'm supprised they have not developed their own or at least, bankrolled the development of one via grants. Though it would be good if there was an open source communications platform that would allow the public to engage with politicians in a formal and constructive way. Alas, so much disparity in solutions that it often irks me. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/projects https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/projects Be great if the interface was better for that site, though google didn't find anything of note.
- fmajid 7y ago
  This is for communications to outsiders, who can't be expected to have an EU-internal app installed on their devices. Signal is reasonably widespread, and probably the best such messaging platform out there, although it has serious issues like the requirement for a phone number.
  - heartbeats 7y ago
    So why couldn't the EU fund the development of a Signal fork that doesn't need phone numbers?
    - 317070 7y ago
      We had 14 standards. With glorious government funding we make one standard to replace them all. We will have 15 standards. Forking a piece of software whose market moat is 100% network effects is not easy.
    - cpach 7y ago
      In theory, they could. But IMHO it would not be wise to overestimate the EU’s competence when it comes to purchasing software projects and writing a sane requirement specification. As a citizen within EU I would rather see them donate money to the Signal Technology Foundation instead. OTOH that could be controversial, so perhaps it would be better if citizens and companies would donate directly instead.
      - 7y ago
balladeer 7y ago
I’d say it’s another missed opportunity for decentralised communication apps and services. None of them are in a state to be adopted by mass and for critical use-cases.
jariel 7y ago
The EU budget is 148 Billion Euros. Surely, if they have a requirement for a secure communication app, they have the wherewithal to build one for their needs, that EU citizens and others could then use if they so chose? Essential knowledge is definitely public. This is not about 'Signal' it's about why governments can't/won't deliver on so many issues they themselves deem to be very materially important to them, particularly in the area of IT.
- cpach 7y ago
  As a citizen of a EU member state I would rather see them use Signal than try to come up with their own solution. It is true that they could throw a lot of money on the problem. But that in itself does not guarantee that they outcome would be a world-class communication system. So given that Signal already exists and is the gold standard for secure communications, IMHO it’s better to use that. What the EU can do however is to fund cryptography research. (And it would not surprise me if they already do.)
  - bloopernova 7y ago
    I'd like to see the EU contribute to the Signal (or Keybase!) ecosystem. A rising tide lifts all boats. From various comments in this discussion, I've discovered that Signal is open source and has reproducible builds, and the server is open source too. It would be possible for the EU to create its own "EU-Certified" Signal environment for use by people who wish to see their data remain in the EU.
- Stevvo 7y ago
  EU projects are often a bit of a mess; design by committee taken to the extreme, with each committee member being a nation.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    That is not how the EU works, at least not the parts which I have some insight into. There is indeed a lot of design by committee but the countries have little to no say in the day to day work of the EU agencies.
netcan 7y ago
>>Promoting the app, however, could antagonize the law enforcement community. The margins of law enforcement and intelligence can be blurry, but to the extent that they're antagonistic towards private communication as a whole... "law enforcement" is kind of a euphemism. The article should have said "could antagonize the intelligence community," whether it's police or whatever. Over time this "antagonism" is growing, because intelligence is increasing its reliance on these data sources. "What do you mean we can't analyse IM chats. How are we supposed to do our job?"
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  This probably antagonizes law enforcement more than intelligence. If you are interesting enough to be a target to the CIA's of the world then they will probably find a way to get at you, if not through your phone then through your spouse's or maybe your Echo or whatever. These people would do well to distance themselves from devices in general For the masses who do nothing too wrong yet still engage in WrongThink(TM) (relative to the politics of the time and place) these apps are great because they astronomically increase the effort requires for law enforcement to rifle through your private communication which greatly reduces ability of police to have the power of arbitrary enforcement over the common man. A consequence of this is that tracking down drug dealers and other petty criminals requires "good old fashioned police work" as opposed to hooking their phone up to a black box like police have grown accustomed to. I agree with you that the distinction between law enforcement and intelligence is blurry but it's the folks solidly on the law enforcement side that are hindered by E2E encrypted messaging because it diminishes their power over people who have done nothing wrong and makes their routine work marginally more difficult.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    > If you are interesting enough to be a target to the CIA's of the world then they will probably find a way to get at you The big thing for intelligence is that now they track everybody. It doesn't matter if they think you are relevant or not, if at some time you become, they already have plenty of material to blackmail you.
Tomte 7y ago
Unfortunately, the IT department of the European Parliament has forbidden Signal Desktop and recommends WhatsApp.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  any source or official document on this ?
  - Tomte 7y ago
    https://netzpolitik.org/2019/eu-parlament-verwehrt-abgeordneten-die-installation-des-messengers-signal/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/eu-parlament-verwehrt-abgeordne...
- atticmanatee 7y ago
  So? Decisions and policies change. Just because someone decided something a few months ago doesn't mean they can't make a new decision now.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    Sure they can. And I hope they will. But I think you confuse the Commission and the Parliament. The whole point of my comment is that two European bodies that work together closely have diverged in their IT policies.
hestefisk 7y ago
I know Signal is secure and all — and I use it myself — but I can’t help but think how can we trusted that the central servers aren’t wiretapped? It would be the ultimate proof of security if one could transparently verify that the middle man is running the actual code it claims to be running.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  This is possible with remote attestation. See the "Trust but verify" paragraph in https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ and also https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/.
  - dingaling 7y ago
    > Trust but verify That phrase needs to be deprecated It collapses to 'verify'. Just say that.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Signal uses Intel SGX to give you some assurances about this, at least for parts of their serving stack. You can run the remote attestation tools and get a report back from Intel that says, in effect, "you connected to a genuine CPU and it's running software with this hash". Then you reproduce the build of the open source code and check the hashes match. I'd be surprised if anyone has ever actually done this. It's a very obscure thing. But to their credit, it's possible. SGX can't actually make you have secure end to end encryption though. The Signal protocol is necessary but not sufficient. The operators can always just push a software update that invalidates all the security guarantees. It's been a problem since the start but they never talk about fixing it, even though the issue is a glaringly obvious one. What they could do is allow third parties to audit their software updates, and then cross-sign the binaries. Android allows this but there's no UI for it. It'd benefit from a collaboration with Google to allow multi-vendor apps. After that comes sandboxing. Dalvik/ART doesn't support the Java SecurityManager API. However, for sandboxing software components cheaply it's hard to beat. If a component is sandboxed in a correct manner then the audit costs get much lower. You don't need to re-audit a component that's changed if the sandbox means it can't access keys or message data, for example (and if everything is memory safe: you'd have to do multi-process on iOS which is a lot more expensive).
_pmf_ 7y ago
Ursula von der Leyen knows about the dangers of leaving incriminating information on cell phones.
nottorp 7y ago
How is something that's tied to your phone number "secure"? The communications are encrypted, but my identity is public.
- lorenzhs 7y ago
  Security is not the same thing as anonymity. Maybe Signal's design goals just don't align with your requirements, and that's okay. But that doesn't mean that it can't be the right tool for people with a different set of requirements.
  - dependenttypes 7y ago
    Sim-jacking is a thing that could damage security of future messages in the case of signal.
    - tialaramex 7y ago
      If you are concerned about this you can PIN lock Signal. It will prompt you periodically to confirm you still remember your PIN. When you get a new phone (or somebody tries to SIM-jack you) the new phone needs the PIN which you clearly remember because you kept entering it before. If you stop answering the PIN confirmations eventually it expires and somebody with that number can sign up (and if they want, set a new PIN). Regardless of whether you use PIN locks your contacts will be shown that something about the other party in the conversation changed, if they use in-person confirmations of identity they'll be invited to perform that over again.
  - nottorp 7y ago
    Well, besides anonymity, my requirements for a reliable communication method include not being tied to my phone.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      Yes, and the huge majority of people don't have that requirement. Signal's devs have been very clear for years and years that the are optimizing for getting as many people as possible to use functioning e2e encrypted messaging rather than to focus on features that a subset of techies in the west care about.
sschueller 7y ago
This is a mistake. They should at least compile their own version and not something that comes from an US based app store under US law. At any point the US can force a change. This is as secure as purchasing a machine from Crypto AG. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
- cpach 7y ago
  Perhaps a better idea would be to fund an audit of the Signal app. (Or has that been done already?)
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    Doesn't help figure out if the signal update of the day that comes from the store is any good.
    - cpach 7y ago
      That is true. But given how much interest there is to find vulnerabilities in the Signal app, I would be very surprised if anyone would succeed in putting up a compromised Signal app on the App store and also be able to fly under the radar.
      - Dahoon 7y ago
        The "anyone" in this case would be Signal. No need to fake it when Signal is under US law.
        cpach 7y ago
        And if Signal did this you think no-one would notice?
        maqp 7y ago
        Ok lawyer, explain which US law allows compelled speech considering in djb vs US it was decided code was speech, and protected by the first amendment.
Arbalest 7y ago
That's a tad unfortunate. Signal was just low profile enough that my wife and I could use it in China. This raises the profile of it just a bit higher than I'd like. Further, with the likes of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 having a higher profile makes the organisation more vulnerable to harassment from the government.
- pergadad 7y ago
  That's a pretty selfish view. On the other hand such a serious backer means political clout and attention in case there are attempts to compromise it. E.g. Whispers Systems could quickly relocate to Estonia or Germany if US law becomes untenable.
  - throwawaylolx 7y ago
    Not so much selfish as realistic: now intelligence agencies like NSA can justify spending much more resources to exploit potential vulnerabilities in Signal, so—with Wikileaks in mind—it practically makes Signal less safe long-term.
    - asutekku 7y ago
      I believe signal had been on the radar of NSA since it has been the main topic of secure communications for few years already.
    - throwinawaysoon 7y ago
      it is realistically selfish. Also Signal app/server is open-source. Anyone could churn up a server and fly under the radar.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    It's not selfish to want to talk to your s.o. Sure, it's better if the CCP doesn't go around censoring reasonable communications, but given that they are, people are entitled to want whatever reasonable alternatives they can get.
blunte 7y ago
In previous discussion here on HN, Wire was claimed to be more secure than Signal (something related to initial key sharing?) I don't understand why there's so much publicity behind Signal, and Wire is never mentioned. I've been using Wire for years, and it doesn't require a phone number to setup.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  Wire is owned by a US company now: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/messaging-app-wire-confirms-8-2m-raise-responds-to-privacy-concerns-after-moving-holding-company-to-the-us/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/messaging-app-wire-confirm...
  - O1111OOO 7y ago
    From the linked techcrunch article: "new CEO, who joined late 2017, didn’t really care about the free users ... : ‘If Wire works for you, fine, but we don’t really care about what you think about our ownership or funding structure as our corporate clients care about security, not about privacy.'” I honestly don't see how privacy and security do not go hand-in-hand. From Wikipedia[0]: "Wire stores unencrypted meta data for every user" ... "Wire changed its privacy policy from "sharing user data when required by law" to "sharing user data when necessary"." ... "Wire did not inform its users about this policy change, which makes it even more suspicious, considering that it is about a tool that promises privacy to its users." I use to speak highly of Wire a few years ago but have not used their programs in a while. It's pretty clear that non-corporate users and their expectations of privacy are of little importance to them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software)#Critcism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software)#Critcism
- divanvisagie 7y ago
  Personally, I'm suspicious of Signal because of its publicity, smells like a pot of honey.
  - groovybits 7y ago
    The code is open, if you'd like to decide for yourself: https://github.com/signalapp https://github.com/signalapp
newscracker 7y ago
Now the staff who use iOS are going to be pissed when they find out chats cannot be backed up or transferred to another device and that rejoining groups on a new device is going to be painful. That’s assuming message delivery works fine and that inadvertent “device changed” notifications don’t pop up when nothing has changed. I’d bet that these people will soon find different ways to communicate just to avoid some pains and probably put up a pretense of using Signal. Anecdote: Personally, I’ve been using Signal for some years with a few different group chats. The number of times people in those groups talk about how bad Signal is and want to avoid it hasn’t changed much (these people use a mix of iOS and Android). All those groups are quite silent because people don’t want to use it. Edit: Security without ergonomics doesn’t help. And Signal is still behind on that front. As someone else here pointed out, they could’ve chosen Wire, which has a better UX and has E2E chats syncing across devices.
FirstLvR 7y ago
well, at least Signal is getting free publicity
throway1n 7y ago
why is there no european company the size of whatsapp, facebook, apple and so on?
- throwaway1590 7y ago
  good luck competing with 0% tax state-sponsored companies without venture capital. The same reason there is no european huawei. There are some medium sized companies, but they don't have the same advantages as those in the US or China
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    I thought all the competitors to Huawei were European. They keep telling us that's the problem. (Apparently we need to be more closely aligned to America than Europe.)
hkt 7y ago
Interesting, I sort of wish they'd decided on Delta Chat instead. No US infrastructure at all seems like a beneficial thing for the EU and EC. Maybe in time?
scumbert 7y ago
Yes, European Commission, continuing to sell yourselves and democracy out to China is something you'd better take great care in keeping private.
bambataa 7y ago
I once worked in the Commission, briefly. Technical security seemed to be non-existent as far as I could tell (in an admittedly very junior role). Once all of the interns got invited to the U.S. embassy to meet the Ambassador (some guy who literally said he got the job because he was friends with Obama). On the way out the nice embassy staff gave us goodie-bags, complete with handy pen drives... Basically everyone was giving away free pen drives in Brussels then. I would be surprised to find that the U.S. didn't already have access to a large number of EU institution computers.
- throwaway47748 7y ago
  And I work at a European cybersecurity company and we are routinely tasked to inspect USB drives and devices EU politicians receive at conferences, so I guess we've come full circle. I'm sure the NSA has implants in the EU systems but they're not dumb enough to just hand them out on USB drives that can be traced back to them.
  - blub 7y ago
    What kind of tools do you use for that? Would they catch BadUSB-like malware?
    - throwaway47748 7y ago
      Lasers, electron microscopes and x-ray scanners used for testing and verification in the semiconductor manufacturing industry plus loads of custom and open source tools.
      - pletsch 7y ago
        Can it really be economically viable to have these scanned rather than just toss them out? I would imagine that anyone high enough in the EU to be a target is only using drives provided to them
        7y ago
cannabis_sam 7y ago
Because LEOs are oversteping their mark by a billion each and every fucking day, but the populace is too fucking computer illiterate to understand that ”data reading” (the norwegian euphemism for hacking into citizens computers) is extremly damaging to the fundamental concept of democracy. ACAB
- jsjddbbwj 7y ago
  You could've put the ACAB at the beginning so we know we shouldn't not mind the things you say.
  - cannabis_sam 7y ago
    I did it on purpose, since you obviously thought the rest was interesting :)
Aaronmacaron 7y ago
They should use Threema [1] which is based in Switzerland. Even though Switzerland is not in the EU it's not as bad as the US (from an EU standpoint) and since Switzerland is heavily dependent on the EU the likelihood of them spying on the EU is pretty small. Apart from that Threema publishes a transparency report [2] where they list all requests from governmental authorities. [1]: https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en [2]: https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport Edit: Formatting
- fvdessen 7y ago
  Have you heard of Crypto AG ? It's a Swiss Company setup by the CIA that provided intentionally flawed crypto to a long list of European governments.
- sschueller 7y ago
  Threema is not safe either and its audit is years old. The BÜPF law in Switzerland requires any company that has more than 100 request per year to retain data. Threema reached this in 2019. "Der Dienst ÜPF erklärt eine Anbieterin abgeleiteter Kommunikationsdienste als eine mit weitergehenden Auskunftspflichten (Art. 22 Abs. 4 BÜPF), wenn sie eine der nachstehenden Grössen erreicht hat: a. 100 Auskunftsgesuche in den letzten 12 Monaten (Stichtag: 30. Juni); b. Jahresumsatz in der Schweiz von 100 Millionen Franken in zwei aufeinander folgenden Geschäftsjahren, wobei ein grosser Teil ihrer Geschäftstätigkeit im Anbieten abgeleiteter Kommunikationsdienste besteht, und 5000 Teilnehmende, die die Dienste der Anbieterin in Anspruch nehmen." [1] [1] https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/20172173/index.html# https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/20172173/...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- maqp 7y ago
  1. The last time people bought non-transparent crypto from Switzerland it turned out decades later the company was secretly owned by the CIA. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci... 2. Threema is proprietary around open source library. It's trivial to add a backoor after any audit, and it's trivial to lie in your transparency report. Open source stuff is _obvious_ choice. There's no reason to open entire source for Threema (no ~one's making a profit copying other messengers) unless they're hiding something.
tarkin2 7y ago
The staff will be using Whatsapp. Signal has its issues but it's more secure than Whatsapp.
- maqp 7y ago
  The benefit is, once you've got to have Signal installed, you'll probably want to talk to your friends over it as well to save time switching between the apps.
hackerbeat 7y ago
It seems like nothing is secure anymore these days. Not even Signal. Let‘s go back to sending ravens.
- berkes 7y ago
  RFC1149, IP over Avians[1] is not in any way protected against e.g. MITM. Nor is sending the verbatim message by Avians. Sending a micro-SD by raven does not solve it either. All you need is a bow-and-arrow, a practiced hand, and your own raven to MITM the message. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149
Funes- 7y ago
They should use Briar [0], if they want something actually secure: no servers involved whatsoever, tor-enabled, adding contacts works by exchanging private keys, etc. [0] https://briar.app https://briar.app.
- nextstep 7y ago
  Does Briar have an iOS app?
  - Funes- 7y ago
    Not yet. More info: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/wikis/FAQ#will-there-be-an-ios-version-of-briar https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/wikis/FAQ#will-the....
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
laktak 7y ago
One thing I found quite surprising about Signal is that you lose your messages if you move to a new phone - there is no backup on iOS. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages#ios_restore https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
- snarf21 7y ago
  This is the tradeoff. Being backed up somewhere is more convenient but less secure. If it is only on that one device, it requires physical control of the hardware. If it is in iCloud or somewhere else, it is an attack vector and one that can be exploited remotely and at scale.
  - laktak 7y ago
    That does not make much sense since you can backup all your data on an Android phone.
    - maqp 7y ago
      It's all going to change over time. What matters here is the direction the app is going towards. Are we going to get more features? Yes. Are we confident the devs can deliver those features actually secure? Yes, these guys are the ones leading the industry at the moment. Do we need to worry about long term future of the app being sold? No, the project is a non-profit, it's backed by a foundation, and it's an ideological app, not a for-profit app or con (startup)
Proven 7y ago
That won't help them. The EU is going nowhere, fast.
dillondoyle 7y ago
Our top political campaigns use Wickr (it's pushed down from on high) but I have a hard time believing it adds any more security than simply mandating 2fa security keys w/ google advanced protection. Given the problems ive experiences with the wickr app and lack of basic phone security ive seen this feels LESS secure to me. Google put out research saying they had 0 successful phishing after mandated fobs. I guess there's a concern about forwards and that Wickr shows when someone screenshots but that doesnt stop anything... I have seen lots of campaign staff that dont have passwords on their phone, or weak 4 digit ones. I use a password manager to store a long wickr pass but I think most just use a simple pass or re-use a password... Wickr on my phone has render problems all the time and it has shown messages without me logging in at least twice. It's also super inconvenient. if they really care about E2E - which doesnt even feel like the actual problem they are trying to fix (phishing/ability to read past messages when an account is compromised) - I'd rather have some enthusiastic outsiders develop an open source basic PGP chrome extension to sit on top of gmail or something (maybe that already exists)
- maqp 7y ago
  Wickr is proprietary. That alone is a reason to abandon it ASAP.

495 points by maxbaines 7y ago

But what should I use if I am a politician and fundamentally believe that the government should be able to read my communications?

pilif 7y ago
Does such a person exist? And if so, then just do all your communication using existing means like email and blogs.
- abraae 7y ago
  As long as the people you are emailing with agree with that position as well.
- tyfon 7y ago
  Personally I believe that if you become an elected representative of the public you should become a public person where all your in-person meetings and all your phone calls and messages are public for the period you are elected. If you meet someone without disclosing it, it should be a criminal offence. I know this will never happen in real life but I think this is the only way to solve the problem of corrupt officials and revolving doors / lobbyist problems. Edit: the book "Haze" by L.E. Modesitt Jr. has a good take on this.
  - teekert 7y ago
    Also: The Circle by Dave Eggers.
    - tyfon 7y ago
      Thank you, I haven't read that one. It's going to be read within the next few weeks :)
qznc 7y ago
Depends on your jurisdiction. In the US, probably Facebook Messenger.
Angostura 7y ago
Then post your communications to your official web page.
nico_h 7y ago
Just use email. Or whatsapp. Or iMessage with backups turned on.
dTal 7y ago
Wordpress. Nothing stops you from explicitly publishing your communications. And whether you do it explicitly, or implicitly by using an insecure communication method, it's always a choice which you can revoke at any time.
- aguyfromnb 7y ago
  >it's always a choice which you can revoke at any time. It looks like the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. It's not about one person choosing to make their communication public, but that there should be a record of government communication period. Have we not seen enough examples of our elected officials corruption in media that isn't encrypted? Now we want them to be able to communicate in all manner with no accountability?
  - dTal 7y ago
    > Now we want them to be able to communicate in all manner with no accountability? I think you misunderstood my point, which was that they can always do that. You can't stop them from using Signal, if they want to do something nefarious. Hell, they can just meet in a dark alley if they want. Sure, you can make it against the rules, but we are already presupposing rule-breaking (or else we would not need oversight). So, if there's going to be some kind of disclosure system, let's make it structured and explicit. Just requesting that they use unencrypted communications, and then having some sort of unaccountable gray-hat institution (i.e. intelligence services) snoop on those communications, is a bad system.
bouke 7y ago
Yes! Can somebody please think of children?!
Zenst 7y ago
Well, given how one political remit uses Twitter, I'd counter that not everything should be written down in the first place, let alone read.
netcan 7y ago
Then make them public or submit them to whoever "the government" is, in that context.
thu2111 7y ago
SMS and phone calls. The infrastructure is all there already. Interestingly, the EU's position on this looks really confused. SMS messages should (in theory) only transit their own local telcos. The USA doesn't get a look-in unless it hacks the telcos themselves. What the EU is doing here is routing all Commission traffic through US based server farms and roots of trust. The phones are controlled from the USA, the comms services are too. So their own local firms can no longer see the traffic but US firms can (Signal claim this isn't the case but people are wising up to the fact that this can't be true until more infrastructure is in place). What actual threat are they trying to block here?
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  > What actual threat are they trying to block here? A large powerful country ruled by a megalomaniac who has proved he isn't afraid to ruin his country's reputation by abusing his power.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    Assuming you mean the USA, best way to solve that is for the data to never cross into US controlled facilities or equipment at all. Using apps made in California on operating systems also made in California to send messages to servers controlled from California and then trusting that the encryption works the way they say it works makes much less sense than just sending messages through EU carriers. Consider, the Signal threat model assumes that you can't trust telcos. That's usually based on the assumption that you're some ordinary grassroots citizen who might be spied on by the government. But the EU Commission is the government. It seems a bit odd for them to implicitly assert the national European telecoms companies are untrustworthy.
WinonaRyder 7y ago
Dumb question: is your comment meant to be sarcastic? I initially read it as such but now I'm not sure, given all the other replies.
- teekert 7y ago
  It was sarcastic, but I just wondered what such politicians think when they get this advice... Like: Hell no! What if I'm a criminal some day!
Dahoon 7y ago
WhatsApp.

Beltiras 7y ago

Looks like it wasn't the transport method that was vulnerable. Doesn't matter if you use Signal if the "vault" where you keep the messages can be broken into.

akie 7y ago

As an EU citizen I think that's a great decision.

Angostura 7y ago
I think it is a great decision, but it wil hopefully persuade other people in public bodies to follow suit - such as my friends who work in senior positions in a hospital and use Whatsapp - a practice that started when ransomware took down the NHS e-mail.
qznc 7y ago
I hope nobody tells them that WhatsApp uses the same protocol. The argument for Signal would not be weaker but more complicated.
- bluecmd 7y ago
  It's in the article
- pergadad 7y ago
  Main argument is that it's also open source.
nico_h 7y ago
Is there no open source or European alternative? Just keep relying on some Californian dude that insist i give him my and my friends phone numbers? And harass me so i give him more info to “personalize my profile” !?
- bluecmd 7y ago
  Signal is open source
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  wire: https://github.com/wireapp https://github.com/wireapp session (very bleeding-edge p2p signal fork) https://github.com/Loki-project https://github.com/Loki-project / https://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/

Zenst 7y ago

I'm supprised they have not developed their own or at least, bankrolled the development of one via grants. Though it would be good if there was an open source communications platform that would allow the public to engage with politicians in a formal and constructive way. Alas, so much disparity in solutions that it often irks me. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/projects https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/projects Be great if the interface was better for that site, though google didn't find anything of note.

fmajid 7y ago
This is for communications to outsiders, who can't be expected to have an EU-internal app installed on their devices. Signal is reasonably widespread, and probably the best such messaging platform out there, although it has serious issues like the requirement for a phone number.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  So why couldn't the EU fund the development of a Signal fork that doesn't need phone numbers?
  - 317070 7y ago
    We had 14 standards. With glorious government funding we make one standard to replace them all. We will have 15 standards. Forking a piece of software whose market moat is 100% network effects is not easy.
  - cpach 7y ago
    In theory, they could. But IMHO it would not be wise to overestimate the EU’s competence when it comes to purchasing software projects and writing a sane requirement specification. As a citizen within EU I would rather see them donate money to the Signal Technology Foundation instead. OTOH that could be controversial, so perhaps it would be better if citizens and companies would donate directly instead.
    - 7y ago

balladeer 7y ago

I’d say it’s another missed opportunity for decentralised communication apps and services. None of them are in a state to be adopted by mass and for critical use-cases.

jariel 7y ago

The EU budget is 148 Billion Euros. Surely, if they have a requirement for a secure communication app, they have the wherewithal to build one for their needs, that EU citizens and others could then use if they so chose? Essential knowledge is definitely public. This is not about 'Signal' it's about why governments can't/won't deliver on so many issues they themselves deem to be very materially important to them, particularly in the area of IT.

cpach 7y ago
As a citizen of a EU member state I would rather see them use Signal than try to come up with their own solution. It is true that they could throw a lot of money on the problem. But that in itself does not guarantee that they outcome would be a world-class communication system. So given that Signal already exists and is the gold standard for secure communications, IMHO it’s better to use that. What the EU can do however is to fund cryptography research. (And it would not surprise me if they already do.)
- bloopernova 7y ago
  I'd like to see the EU contribute to the Signal (or Keybase!) ecosystem. A rising tide lifts all boats. From various comments in this discussion, I've discovered that Signal is open source and has reproducible builds, and the server is open source too. It would be possible for the EU to create its own "EU-Certified" Signal environment for use by people who wish to see their data remain in the EU.
Stevvo 7y ago
EU projects are often a bit of a mess; design by committee taken to the extreme, with each committee member being a nation.
- jeltz 7y ago
  That is not how the EU works, at least not the parts which I have some insight into. There is indeed a lot of design by committee but the countries have little to no say in the day to day work of the EU agencies.

netcan 7y ago

>>Promoting the app, however, could antagonize the law enforcement community. The margins of law enforcement and intelligence can be blurry, but to the extent that they're antagonistic towards private communication as a whole... "law enforcement" is kind of a euphemism. The article should have said "could antagonize the intelligence community," whether it's police or whatever. Over time this "antagonism" is growing, because intelligence is increasing its reliance on these data sources. "What do you mean we can't analyse IM chats. How are we supposed to do our job?"

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
This probably antagonizes law enforcement more than intelligence. If you are interesting enough to be a target to the CIA's of the world then they will probably find a way to get at you, if not through your phone then through your spouse's or maybe your Echo or whatever. These people would do well to distance themselves from devices in general For the masses who do nothing too wrong yet still engage in WrongThink(TM) (relative to the politics of the time and place) these apps are great because they astronomically increase the effort requires for law enforcement to rifle through your private communication which greatly reduces ability of police to have the power of arbitrary enforcement over the common man. A consequence of this is that tracking down drug dealers and other petty criminals requires "good old fashioned police work" as opposed to hooking their phone up to a black box like police have grown accustomed to. I agree with you that the distinction between law enforcement and intelligence is blurry but it's the folks solidly on the law enforcement side that are hindered by E2E encrypted messaging because it diminishes their power over people who have done nothing wrong and makes their routine work marginally more difficult.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > If you are interesting enough to be a target to the CIA's of the world then they will probably find a way to get at you The big thing for intelligence is that now they track everybody. It doesn't matter if they think you are relevant or not, if at some time you become, they already have plenty of material to blackmail you.

Tomte 7y ago

Unfortunately, the IT department of the European Parliament has forbidden Signal Desktop and recommends WhatsApp.

lucasverra 7y ago
any source or official document on this ?
- Tomte 7y ago
  https://netzpolitik.org/2019/eu-parlament-verwehrt-abgeordneten-die-installation-des-messengers-signal/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/eu-parlament-verwehrt-abgeordne...
atticmanatee 7y ago
So? Decisions and policies change. Just because someone decided something a few months ago doesn't mean they can't make a new decision now.
- Tomte 7y ago
  Sure they can. And I hope they will. But I think you confuse the Commission and the Parliament. The whole point of my comment is that two European bodies that work together closely have diverged in their IT policies.

hestefisk 7y ago

I know Signal is secure and all — and I use it myself — but I can’t help but think how can we trusted that the central servers aren’t wiretapped? It would be the ultimate proof of security if one could transparently verify that the middle man is running the actual code it claims to be running.

lorenzhs 7y ago
This is possible with remote attestation. See the "Trust but verify" paragraph in https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ and also https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/.
- dingaling 7y ago
  > Trust but verify That phrase needs to be deprecated It collapses to 'verify'. Just say that.
thu2111 7y ago
Signal uses Intel SGX to give you some assurances about this, at least for parts of their serving stack. You can run the remote attestation tools and get a report back from Intel that says, in effect, "you connected to a genuine CPU and it's running software with this hash". Then you reproduce the build of the open source code and check the hashes match. I'd be surprised if anyone has ever actually done this. It's a very obscure thing. But to their credit, it's possible. SGX can't actually make you have secure end to end encryption though. The Signal protocol is necessary but not sufficient. The operators can always just push a software update that invalidates all the security guarantees. It's been a problem since the start but they never talk about fixing it, even though the issue is a glaringly obvious one. What they could do is allow third parties to audit their software updates, and then cross-sign the binaries. Android allows this but there's no UI for it. It'd benefit from a collaboration with Google to allow multi-vendor apps. After that comes sandboxing. Dalvik/ART doesn't support the Java SecurityManager API. However, for sandboxing software components cheaply it's hard to beat. If a component is sandboxed in a correct manner then the audit costs get much lower. You don't need to re-audit a component that's changed if the sandbox means it can't access keys or message data, for example (and if everything is memory safe: you'd have to do multi-process on iOS which is a lot more expensive).

_pmf_ 7y ago

Ursula von der Leyen knows about the dangers of leaving incriminating information on cell phones.

nottorp 7y ago

How is something that's tied to your phone number "secure"? The communications are encrypted, but my identity is public.

lorenzhs 7y ago
Security is not the same thing as anonymity. Maybe Signal's design goals just don't align with your requirements, and that's okay. But that doesn't mean that it can't be the right tool for people with a different set of requirements.
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  Sim-jacking is a thing that could damage security of future messages in the case of signal.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    If you are concerned about this you can PIN lock Signal. It will prompt you periodically to confirm you still remember your PIN. When you get a new phone (or somebody tries to SIM-jack you) the new phone needs the PIN which you clearly remember because you kept entering it before. If you stop answering the PIN confirmations eventually it expires and somebody with that number can sign up (and if they want, set a new PIN). Regardless of whether you use PIN locks your contacts will be shown that something about the other party in the conversation changed, if they use in-person confirmations of identity they'll be invited to perform that over again.
- nottorp 7y ago
  Well, besides anonymity, my requirements for a reliable communication method include not being tied to my phone.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    Yes, and the huge majority of people don't have that requirement. Signal's devs have been very clear for years and years that the are optimizing for getting as many people as possible to use functioning e2e encrypted messaging rather than to focus on features that a subset of techies in the west care about.

sschueller 7y ago

This is a mistake. They should at least compile their own version and not something that comes from an US based app store under US law. At any point the US can force a change. This is as secure as purchasing a machine from Crypto AG. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

cpach 7y ago
Perhaps a better idea would be to fund an audit of the Signal app. (Or has that been done already?)
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  Doesn't help figure out if the signal update of the day that comes from the store is any good.
  - cpach 7y ago
    That is true. But given how much interest there is to find vulnerabilities in the Signal app, I would be very surprised if anyone would succeed in putting up a compromised Signal app on the App store and also be able to fly under the radar.
    - Dahoon 7y ago
      The "anyone" in this case would be Signal. No need to fake it when Signal is under US law.
      - cpach 7y ago
        And if Signal did this you think no-one would notice?
      - maqp 7y ago
        Ok lawyer, explain which US law allows compelled speech considering in djb vs US it was decided code was speech, and protected by the first amendment.

Arbalest 7y ago

That's a tad unfortunate. Signal was just low profile enough that my wife and I could use it in China. This raises the profile of it just a bit higher than I'd like. Further, with the likes of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202110 having a higher profile makes the organisation more vulnerable to harassment from the government.

pergadad 7y ago
That's a pretty selfish view. On the other hand such a serious backer means political clout and attention in case there are attempts to compromise it. E.g. Whispers Systems could quickly relocate to Estonia or Germany if US law becomes untenable.
- throwawaylolx 7y ago
  Not so much selfish as realistic: now intelligence agencies like NSA can justify spending much more resources to exploit potential vulnerabilities in Signal, so—with Wikileaks in mind—it practically makes Signal less safe long-term.
  - asutekku 7y ago
    I believe signal had been on the radar of NSA since it has been the main topic of secure communications for few years already.
  - throwinawaysoon 7y ago
    it is realistically selfish. Also Signal app/server is open-source. Anyone could churn up a server and fly under the radar.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  It's not selfish to want to talk to your s.o. Sure, it's better if the CCP doesn't go around censoring reasonable communications, but given that they are, people are entitled to want whatever reasonable alternatives they can get.

blunte 7y ago

In previous discussion here on HN, Wire was claimed to be more secure than Signal (something related to initial key sharing?) I don't understand why there's so much publicity behind Signal, and Wire is never mentioned. I've been using Wire for years, and it doesn't require a phone number to setup.

literallycancer 7y ago
Wire is owned by a US company now: https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/messaging-app-wire-confirms-8-2m-raise-responds-to-privacy-concerns-after-moving-holding-company-to-the-us/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/13/messaging-app-wire-confirm...
- O1111OOO 7y ago
  From the linked techcrunch article: "new CEO, who joined late 2017, didn’t really care about the free users ... : ‘If Wire works for you, fine, but we don’t really care about what you think about our ownership or funding structure as our corporate clients care about security, not about privacy.'” I honestly don't see how privacy and security do not go hand-in-hand. From Wikipedia[0]: "Wire stores unencrypted meta data for every user" ... "Wire changed its privacy policy from "sharing user data when required by law" to "sharing user data when necessary"." ... "Wire did not inform its users about this policy change, which makes it even more suspicious, considering that it is about a tool that promises privacy to its users." I use to speak highly of Wire a few years ago but have not used their programs in a while. It's pretty clear that non-corporate users and their expectations of privacy are of little importance to them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software)#Critcism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software)#Critcism
divanvisagie 7y ago
Personally, I'm suspicious of Signal because of its publicity, smells like a pot of honey.
- groovybits 7y ago
  The code is open, if you'd like to decide for yourself: https://github.com/signalapp https://github.com/signalapp

newscracker 7y ago

Now the staff who use iOS are going to be pissed when they find out chats cannot be backed up or transferred to another device and that rejoining groups on a new device is going to be painful. That’s assuming message delivery works fine and that inadvertent “device changed” notifications don’t pop up when nothing has changed. I’d bet that these people will soon find different ways to communicate just to avoid some pains and probably put up a pretense of using Signal. Anecdote: Personally, I’ve been using Signal for some years with a few different group chats. The number of times people in those groups talk about how bad Signal is and want to avoid it hasn’t changed much (these people use a mix of iOS and Android). All those groups are quite silent because people don’t want to use it. Edit: Security without ergonomics doesn’t help. And Signal is still behind on that front. As someone else here pointed out, they could’ve chosen Wire, which has a better UX and has E2E chats syncing across devices.

FirstLvR 7y ago

well, at least Signal is getting free publicity

throway1n 7y ago

why is there no european company the size of whatsapp, facebook, apple and so on?

throwaway1590 7y ago
good luck competing with 0% tax state-sponsored companies without venture capital. The same reason there is no european huawei. There are some medium sized companies, but they don't have the same advantages as those in the US or China
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  I thought all the competitors to Huawei were European. They keep telling us that's the problem. (Apparently we need to be more closely aligned to America than Europe.)

hkt 7y ago

Interesting, I sort of wish they'd decided on Delta Chat instead. No US infrastructure at all seems like a beneficial thing for the EU and EC. Maybe in time?

scumbert 7y ago

Yes, European Commission, continuing to sell yourselves and democracy out to China is something you'd better take great care in keeping private.

bambataa 7y ago

I once worked in the Commission, briefly. Technical security seemed to be non-existent as far as I could tell (in an admittedly very junior role). Once all of the interns got invited to the U.S. embassy to meet the Ambassador (some guy who literally said he got the job because he was friends with Obama). On the way out the nice embassy staff gave us goodie-bags, complete with handy pen drives... Basically everyone was giving away free pen drives in Brussels then. I would be surprised to find that the U.S. didn't already have access to a large number of EU institution computers.

throwaway47748 7y ago
And I work at a European cybersecurity company and we are routinely tasked to inspect USB drives and devices EU politicians receive at conferences, so I guess we've come full circle. I'm sure the NSA has implants in the EU systems but they're not dumb enough to just hand them out on USB drives that can be traced back to them.
- blub 7y ago
  What kind of tools do you use for that? Would they catch BadUSB-like malware?
  - throwaway47748 7y ago
    Lasers, electron microscopes and x-ray scanners used for testing and verification in the semiconductor manufacturing industry plus loads of custom and open source tools.
    - pletsch 7y ago
      Can it really be economically viable to have these scanned rather than just toss them out? I would imagine that anyone high enough in the EU to be a target is only using drives provided to them
      - 7y ago

cannabis_sam 7y ago

Because LEOs are oversteping their mark by a billion each and every fucking day, but the populace is too fucking computer illiterate to understand that ”data reading” (the norwegian euphemism for hacking into citizens computers) is extremly damaging to the fundamental concept of democracy. ACAB

jsjddbbwj 7y ago
You could've put the ACAB at the beginning so we know we shouldn't not mind the things you say.
- cannabis_sam 7y ago
  I did it on purpose, since you obviously thought the rest was interesting :)

Aaronmacaron 7y ago

They should use Threema [1] which is based in Switzerland. Even though Switzerland is not in the EU it's not as bad as the US (from an EU standpoint) and since Switzerland is heavily dependent on the EU the likelihood of them spying on the EU is pretty small. Apart from that Threema publishes a transparency report [2] where they list all requests from governmental authorities. [1]: https://threema.ch/en https://threema.ch/en [2]: https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport Edit: Formatting

fvdessen 7y ago
Have you heard of Crypto AG ? It's a Swiss Company setup by the CIA that provided intentionally flawed crypto to a long list of European governments.
sschueller 7y ago
Threema is not safe either and its audit is years old. The BÜPF law in Switzerland requires any company that has more than 100 request per year to retain data. Threema reached this in 2019. "Der Dienst ÜPF erklärt eine Anbieterin abgeleiteter Kommunikationsdienste als eine mit weitergehenden Auskunftspflichten (Art. 22 Abs. 4 BÜPF), wenn sie eine der nachstehenden Grössen erreicht hat: a. 100 Auskunftsgesuche in den letzten 12 Monaten (Stichtag: 30. Juni); b. Jahresumsatz in der Schweiz von 100 Millionen Franken in zwei aufeinander folgenden Geschäftsjahren, wobei ein grosser Teil ihrer Geschäftstätigkeit im Anbieten abgeleiteter Kommunikationsdienste besteht, und 5000 Teilnehmende, die die Dienste der Anbieterin in Anspruch nehmen." [1] [1] https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/20172173/index.html# https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/20172173/...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
maqp 7y ago
1. The last time people bought non-transparent crypto from Switzerland it turned out decades later the company was secretly owned by the CIA. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci... 2. Threema is proprietary around open source library. It's trivial to add a backoor after any audit, and it's trivial to lie in your transparency report. Open source stuff is _obvious_ choice. There's no reason to open entire source for Threema (no ~one's making a profit copying other messengers) unless they're hiding something.

tarkin2 7y ago

The staff will be using Whatsapp. Signal has its issues but it's more secure than Whatsapp.

maqp 7y ago
The benefit is, once you've got to have Signal installed, you'll probably want to talk to your friends over it as well to save time switching between the apps.

hackerbeat 7y ago

It seems like nothing is secure anymore these days. Not even Signal. Let‘s go back to sending ravens.

berkes 7y ago
RFC1149, IP over Avians[1] is not in any way protected against e.g. MITM. Nor is sending the verbatim message by Avians. Sending a micro-SD by raven does not solve it either. All you need is a bow-and-arrow, a practiced hand, and your own raven to MITM the message. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149

Funes- 7y ago

They should use Briar [0], if they want something actually secure: no servers involved whatsoever, tor-enabled, adding contacts works by exchanging private keys, etc. [0] https://briar.app https://briar.app.

nextstep 7y ago
Does Briar have an iOS app?
- Funes- 7y ago
  Not yet. More info: https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/wikis/FAQ#will-there-be-an-ios-version-of-briar https://code.briarproject.org/briar/briar/wikis/FAQ#will-the....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

laktak 7y ago

One thing I found quite surprising about Signal is that you lose your messages if you move to a new phone - there is no backup on iOS. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages#ios_restore https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

snarf21 7y ago
This is the tradeoff. Being backed up somewhere is more convenient but less secure. If it is only on that one device, it requires physical control of the hardware. If it is in iCloud or somewhere else, it is an attack vector and one that can be exploited remotely and at scale.
- laktak 7y ago
  That does not make much sense since you can backup all your data on an Android phone.
  - maqp 7y ago
    It's all going to change over time. What matters here is the direction the app is going towards. Are we going to get more features? Yes. Are we confident the devs can deliver those features actually secure? Yes, these guys are the ones leading the industry at the moment. Do we need to worry about long term future of the app being sold? No, the project is a non-profit, it's backed by a foundation, and it's an ideological app, not a for-profit app or con (startup)

Proven 7y ago

That won't help them. The EU is going nowhere, fast.

dillondoyle 7y ago

Our top political campaigns use Wickr (it's pushed down from on high) but I have a hard time believing it adds any more security than simply mandating 2fa security keys w/ google advanced protection. Given the problems ive experiences with the wickr app and lack of basic phone security ive seen this feels LESS secure to me. Google put out research saying they had 0 successful phishing after mandated fobs. I guess there's a concern about forwards and that Wickr shows when someone screenshots but that doesnt stop anything... I have seen lots of campaign staff that dont have passwords on their phone, or weak 4 digit ones. I use a password manager to store a long wickr pass but I think most just use a simple pass or re-use a password... Wickr on my phone has render problems all the time and it has shown messages without me logging in at least twice. It's also super inconvenient. if they really care about E2E - which doesnt even feel like the actual problem they are trying to fix (phishing/ability to read past messages when an account is compromised) - I'd rather have some enthusiastic outsiders develop an open source basic PGP chrome extension to sit on top of gmail or something (maybe that already exists)

maqp 7y ago
Wickr is proprietary. That alone is a reason to abandon it ASAP.