4 ms·

I was pitching the following idea to a friend of mine yesterday: - the UI should hide e2e/“reallyprivate” conversations by default - as in "not visible anywher

I was pitching the following idea to a friend of mine yesterday: - the UI should hide e2e/“reallyprivate” conversations by default - as in "not visible anywhere" (edit: unless the app is in the foreground and you are chatting of course) Unless you: - do the “add a new user/conversation" - then instead of adding mail/GUID/phone you add a whatevercanberemembered number/emoji/sentence that unlocks the private conversation you initiated long before There should be no trace in the UI that private conversations are going on. What does HN think ? Why hasn't it been done before ? Edit: there could even be notifications disguised as another app (news subscriptions, medical reminders, battery low, etc.)

indigo945 6y ago
This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as they can see that the file size of the encrypted message logs doesn't match the visible content. If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all. Security by obscurity is never a win.
- godelski 6y ago
  Wouldn't the solution here just be to allocate a larger disk space and encrypt that? Then when the space is filled up you expand again? I've seen this done before. Rather I'd change the GP's solution to having a secret vault in an already encrypted chat system (so you can do the above), essentially making it two layers. Just the second layer isn't a button that says "look at me, I'm where all the real secret shit is." I agree that security through obscurity isn't a winning solution, but it is part of the toolkit. It would just be dumb to rely on your security solely being obscurity. Encrypted steganography is still a powerful tool, hackers obscure code, and real spies use obscurity all the time. It just isn't the dominant factor.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  > This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as they can see that the file size of the encrypted message logs doesn't match the visible content. Hmmm. What about from the get-go saying that the app allocates 100Mbytes of space and fills it randomly at regular time until some encrypted content is generated. That'd put a 100Mbytes log/message limit to conversations but that'd be by design and nobody could be sure those bytes are random or genuine messages. > If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all. Why would the key get leaked if it's never stored ?

indigo945 6y ago

This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as they can see that the file size of the encrypted message logs doesn't match the visible content. If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all. Security by obscurity is never a win.

godelski 6y ago
Wouldn't the solution here just be to allocate a larger disk space and encrypt that? Then when the space is filled up you expand again? I've seen this done before. Rather I'd change the GP's solution to having a secret vault in an already encrypted chat system (so you can do the above), essentially making it two layers. Just the second layer isn't a button that says "look at me, I'm where all the real secret shit is." I agree that security through obscurity isn't a winning solution, but it is part of the toolkit. It would just be dumb to rely on your security solely being obscurity. Encrypted steganography is still a powerful tool, hackers obscure code, and real spies use obscurity all the time. It just isn't the dominant factor.
johnchristopher 6y ago
> This doesn't give you plausible deniability if law enforcement gets their hands on your unlocked phone, as they can see that the file size of the encrypted message logs doesn't match the visible content. Hmmm. What about from the get-go saying that the app allocates 100Mbytes of space and fills it randomly at regular time until some encrypted content is generated. That'd put a 100Mbytes log/message limit to conversations but that'd be by design and nobody could be sure those bytes are random or genuine messages. > If the phone is jailbroken and the key for the message logs is leaked, it doesn't help at all. Why would the key get leaked if it's never stored ?