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Inside Story How Signal Became the Private Messaging App for an Age of Distrust

5 points by Multicomp 6y ago

Multicomp 6y ago
Sorry for the butcher title, it was a bit long when submitted. I am curious if signal is going to be able to continue to have no data to turn over to law enforcement once they finish uploading all of your contact graph to SGX enclaves.
- Arnt 6y ago
  Consider two possibilities. 1. Signal says "SGX prevents us from knowing what's in the enclave" and the Man accepts that. SGX provides legal safety, even if its technical safety might be in dispute. Not interesting. So skip to the other branch: 2. Signal says "SGX prevents us from knowing what's in the enclave" and the Man does not accept that. Now what. What can the Man do? Force Intel to break SGX and/or reveal weaknesses that affect Signal's SGX usage? Force Signal to not use SGX? If the Man were to tell Moxie how to break SGX, I personally think that Moxie would make that public at the first opportunity. If the Man were to forbid the use of SGX, what would the ban cover? "CPUs physically located within <name of country> may not use SGX" or some attempt at a worldwide ban? Perhaps a ban on <country>'s citizens against using services located anywhere in the world that involve SGX?
ggm 6y ago
Usually I come to whine about gui features I miss. Signal has done a KISS model which at the limit of "trust" in this context, I do trust: the thing does what it says, and tells me when it drops apparent security modes (fallback to SMS) I don't always love signal, but I do like it better than most of the alternatives. I like that its not become bound to a social media site (which is what I hate about whatsapp). I like that its core architecture seems to be stable. I've only had one moment of astonishment in recent times (the re-auth your PIN thing) I wish it had better options to recruit alternate devices. Its fine for a Mac, you can bind your mac into your SMS enabled device just fine. I have a non-SIM android tablet, I'd like it to be enabled too. Re-syncing e2e keys with people can be fiddly. Its the PGP problem. Some problems are easy to "get" and just hard to fix.

5 points by Multicomp 6y ago

Sorry for the butcher title, it was a bit long when submitted. I am curious if signal is going to be able to continue to have no data to turn over to law enforcement once they finish uploading all of your contact graph to SGX enclaves.

Arnt 6y ago
Consider two possibilities. 1. Signal says "SGX prevents us from knowing what's in the enclave" and the Man accepts that. SGX provides legal safety, even if its technical safety might be in dispute. Not interesting. So skip to the other branch: 2. Signal says "SGX prevents us from knowing what's in the enclave" and the Man does not accept that. Now what. What can the Man do? Force Intel to break SGX and/or reveal weaknesses that affect Signal's SGX usage? Force Signal to not use SGX? If the Man were to tell Moxie how to break SGX, I personally think that Moxie would make that public at the first opportunity. If the Man were to forbid the use of SGX, what would the ban cover? "CPUs physically located within <name of country> may not use SGX" or some attempt at a worldwide ban? Perhaps a ban on <country>'s citizens against using services located anywhere in the world that involve SGX?

ggm 6y ago

Usually I come to whine about gui features I miss. Signal has done a KISS model which at the limit of "trust" in this context, I do trust: the thing does what it says, and tells me when it drops apparent security modes (fallback to SMS) I don't always love signal, but I do like it better than most of the alternatives. I like that its not become bound to a social media site (which is what I hate about whatsapp). I like that its core architecture seems to be stable. I've only had one moment of astonishment in recent times (the re-auth your PIN thing) I wish it had better options to recruit alternate devices. Its fine for a Mac, you can bind your mac into your SMS enabled device just fine. I have a non-SIM android tablet, I'd like it to be enabled too. Re-syncing e2e keys with people can be fiddly. Its the PGP problem. Some problems are easy to "get" and just hard to fix.