8 ms·

The answer from Moxie to these people: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy/pull/15#issuecomment-774982590 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Prox

by hiq 6y ago

The answer from Moxie to these people: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy/pull/15#issuecomment-774982590 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-TLS-Proxy/pull/15#issuec... I think that says it all. I'm also a bit concerned that "security researchers" don't seem to understand the threat model. Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. The TLS proxy is only meant to help circumvent censorship, not obfuscate its protocol. And indeed, as a temporary solution, it's not ideal even to circumvent censorship. But they're apparently working on something better, and all this distraction is not helping.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jrochkind1 6y ago
> Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. The TLS proxy is only meant to help circumvent censorship, not obfuscate its protocol. I don't understand. How would you circumvent censorship of the protocol without obfuscating the protocol? It seems to me that signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used... until now? But thanks for posting the thing from Moxie, it does sound quite reasonable. What would be useful to me and presumably other HN readers is a clear summary of the tech involved, readable by an audience who is technical but not security/circumention experts. Like, the people complaining could be spending time on that, to educate users and developers, instead of doing... whatever they are doing. That seems to have turned into a much less interesting argument about etiquette or something.
- smokey_circles 6y ago
  Reading the config in the TLS repo, it seems to me that the censorship is at the domain level. So I guess they're trying to pop up as many endpoints as possible to circumvent that. I don't know the details about the network block though, so I might be mistaken. But the nginx config in that repo is purely a TLS proxy. Nothing magical happening there at all, just an entrance node to the main signal network
lovelearning 6y ago
> Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. From their blog post some days ago, I thought it did just that: > Unlike a standard HTTP proxy, connections to the Signal TLS Proxy look just like regular encrypted web traffic. There’s no CONNECT method in a plaintext request to reveal to censors that a proxy is being used. Valid TLS certificates are provisioned for every proxy server, making it more difficult for censors to fingerprint the traffic than it would be if static self-signed certificates were used instead. In short, everything is designed to blend into the background as much as possible. They should probably make that post less reassuring and list the exact risks. https://signal.org/blog/help-iran-reconnect/ https://signal.org/blog/help-iran-reconnect/
- dmix 6y ago
  Ignoring the rest of the noise this seems to be the critical question here.
- quasirandom 6y ago
  My read on that statement was "the censors can't just /dev/null anything with a plaintext CONNECT". Given its broad user base, it wouldn't hurt for Signal to clearly state "we can't keep the fact of the communication private, only the contents". That would short-circuit attempts to gain notoriety by pointing out obvious facts and calling them vulnerabilities. It's also common sense for anyone who knows their way around a puter, but that's not Signal's median user. "Privacy" products are a market for lemons, and Signal's public messaging should strive to insulate its users from FUD.
  - csydas 6y ago
    I currently live in a country without such strong protections for individuals, and discussing this with a friend, I feel this is a disconnect between many of the HN posters who don't live in countries where such concerns are very common. This is not a judgement of "who has it worse", but more that from my observation, there are many important elements missing from the discussion that those who haven't had to consider that their posts/comments might land them or their family (or both and more) in jail. Everyone in my country of residence uses Telegram; not because it's secure, but because for non-serious chats, it's convenient. This is a statement/truth that I think a LOT of people don't quite get; Pavel Durov and his team might push that Telegram is secure, but no one uses Telgram for security because nothing about its security ensures a circle of trust. This is true for any messaging app. The general consensus I've encountered is that any application you can readily pull from the AppStore/GooglePlay, so can adversarial persons. If they really want to target you for some reason, it's as simple as getting your friend and unlocking their phone, knowing the the same protections that people in the United States have don't apply world wide. Signal et.al., can have the world's most amazing crypto, but it means nothing if the person behind the unlocked phone is an adversary, and I think a threat-vector that is missed in the 200+ post discussion here is that in many parts of the world, __this is a real threat vector__. A password/second screen/whatever is not a guarantee of protection! It's a speed bump, and how resilient you are to the person driving over the speed bump is how effective that bump is. So, for the article when I read persons concerned about the statements made by Signal and not outlining the threat factor for countries where the Circle of Trust might literally be a matter of life or death, yeah, I side with the concerned persons. Signal has impressive tech, but again, that tech means __nothing__ if the person behind the unlocked device is adversarial.
api 6y ago
A lot of people get confused about this with p2p type stuff. At ZeroTier we constantly have to explain to people that it is not Tor, and we get bug reports about how "people can see my IP!" Of course they can see your IP. You are communicating directly with them. End-to-end encryption means content privacy but not necessarily meta-data privacy or anonymity.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Jkvngt 6y ago
Why does it need your phone number? Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program. And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters? Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? Maybe the goal isn’t really security or privacy after all...
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  It seems like the phone number is used mainly for matching you up to your contacts, and secondarily used for a first level of authentication. Signal has always encouraged independent verification of folks' public keys for sensitive communication. Whether or not AWS is risky, I don't think signal has any increased risk hosting their infrastructure on it vs. any other service. The whole point is that comms are end-to-end encrypted from handset to handset, and so any data in Amazon's hands is encrypted.
  - Jkvngt 6y ago
    Seems like using a phone number as an account identifier is a huge risk to privacy. Has Rosenfeld admitted this? It’s just weird to require a phone number unless you’re talking about some big tech botnet like Facebook or Google.
    - irscott 6y ago
      The Rosenfeld stuff is weird, man.
      - Jkvngt 6y ago
        Yeah I had to actually look up his name. Kinda shady.
- Kalium 6y ago
  > Why does it need your phone number? Great question! It's a good way to make it easy for general-purpose users with limited technical expertise to adopt, use, and find one another. > Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program. You're right! It's definitely weird, but it's also understandable as a tradeoff in favor of less technically adept users. It's not one I'm in love with, but I think it makes sense. > And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters? The risk from NSLs depends a lot on what is hosted. If it's opaquely encrypted blobs, there's minimal risk. And where could things be hosted that wouldn't be subject to privacy risks from a government of some sort? > Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? That's such a good idea that Signal is already a Free and open source solution! That said, nothing is ever actually infrastructure-less, just like no data store is actually schema-less. There's just explicit infrastructure and implicit infrastructure. Implicit p2p infrastructure is not immune to governments or NSLs, and is often subject to more by virtue of being in more countries.
mcguire 6y ago
"You were blocked because you know that we don't use GH for discussion, but came here anyway and started opening fake PRs so that you could post and harass other people on GH." That is a very odd statement.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Reading through the PR in the link, I can see where Moxie is coming from. There's very little actual discussion happening, mostly just flamewar-lite. Maybe the other PR's/issues/forum posts are better.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  What’s odd about it? I do wonder how Moxie knew this guy knew that GH is not used for discussion. Maybe the only way to tell is to see that there are no other active discussions?
  - mcguire 6y ago
    How do they harass people if they don't use GitHub for discussion? What is a "fake pull request"? Why is the project on GitHub if they don't use it?

by hiq 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jrochkind1 6y ago

> Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. The TLS proxy is only meant to help circumvent censorship, not obfuscate its protocol. I don't understand. How would you circumvent censorship of the protocol without obfuscating the protocol? It seems to me that signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used... until now? But thanks for posting the thing from Moxie, it does sound quite reasonable. What would be useful to me and presumably other HN readers is a clear summary of the tech involved, readable by an audience who is technical but not security/circumention experts. Like, the people complaining could be spending time on that, to educate users and developers, instead of doing... whatever they are doing. That seems to have turned into a much less interesting argument about etiquette or something.

smokey_circles 6y ago
Reading the config in the TLS repo, it seems to me that the censorship is at the domain level. So I guess they're trying to pop up as many endpoints as possible to circumvent that. I don't know the details about the network block though, so I might be mistaken. But the nginx config in that repo is purely a TLS proxy. Nothing magical happening there at all, just an entrance node to the main signal network

lovelearning 6y ago

> Signal has never claimed to be able to hide that it was being used. From their blog post some days ago, I thought it did just that: > Unlike a standard HTTP proxy, connections to the Signal TLS Proxy look just like regular encrypted web traffic. There’s no CONNECT method in a plaintext request to reveal to censors that a proxy is being used. Valid TLS certificates are provisioned for every proxy server, making it more difficult for censors to fingerprint the traffic than it would be if static self-signed certificates were used instead. In short, everything is designed to blend into the background as much as possible. They should probably make that post less reassuring and list the exact risks. https://signal.org/blog/help-iran-reconnect/ https://signal.org/blog/help-iran-reconnect/

dmix 6y ago
Ignoring the rest of the noise this seems to be the critical question here.
quasirandom 6y ago
My read on that statement was "the censors can't just /dev/null anything with a plaintext CONNECT". Given its broad user base, it wouldn't hurt for Signal to clearly state "we can't keep the fact of the communication private, only the contents". That would short-circuit attempts to gain notoriety by pointing out obvious facts and calling them vulnerabilities. It's also common sense for anyone who knows their way around a puter, but that's not Signal's median user. "Privacy" products are a market for lemons, and Signal's public messaging should strive to insulate its users from FUD.
- csydas 6y ago
  I currently live in a country without such strong protections for individuals, and discussing this with a friend, I feel this is a disconnect between many of the HN posters who don't live in countries where such concerns are very common. This is not a judgement of "who has it worse", but more that from my observation, there are many important elements missing from the discussion that those who haven't had to consider that their posts/comments might land them or their family (or both and more) in jail. Everyone in my country of residence uses Telegram; not because it's secure, but because for non-serious chats, it's convenient. This is a statement/truth that I think a LOT of people don't quite get; Pavel Durov and his team might push that Telegram is secure, but no one uses Telgram for security because nothing about its security ensures a circle of trust. This is true for any messaging app. The general consensus I've encountered is that any application you can readily pull from the AppStore/GooglePlay, so can adversarial persons. If they really want to target you for some reason, it's as simple as getting your friend and unlocking their phone, knowing the the same protections that people in the United States have don't apply world wide. Signal et.al., can have the world's most amazing crypto, but it means nothing if the person behind the unlocked phone is an adversary, and I think a threat-vector that is missed in the 200+ post discussion here is that in many parts of the world, __this is a real threat vector__. A password/second screen/whatever is not a guarantee of protection! It's a speed bump, and how resilient you are to the person driving over the speed bump is how effective that bump is. So, for the article when I read persons concerned about the statements made by Signal and not outlining the threat factor for countries where the Circle of Trust might literally be a matter of life or death, yeah, I side with the concerned persons. Signal has impressive tech, but again, that tech means __nothing__ if the person behind the unlocked device is adversarial.

api 6y ago

A lot of people get confused about this with p2p type stuff. At ZeroTier we constantly have to explain to people that it is not Tor, and we get bug reports about how "people can see my IP!" Of course they can see your IP. You are communicating directly with them. End-to-end encryption means content privacy but not necessarily meta-data privacy or anonymity.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Jkvngt 6y ago

Why does it need your phone number? Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program. And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters? Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? Maybe the goal isn’t really security or privacy after all...

sgtnoodle 6y ago
It seems like the phone number is used mainly for matching you up to your contacts, and secondarily used for a first level of authentication. Signal has always encouraged independent verification of folks' public keys for sensitive communication. Whether or not AWS is risky, I don't think signal has any increased risk hosting their infrastructure on it vs. any other service. The whole point is that comms are end-to-end encrypted from handset to handset, and so any data in Amazon's hands is encrypted.
- Jkvngt 6y ago
  Seems like using a phone number as an account identifier is a huge risk to privacy. Has Rosenfeld admitted this? It’s just weird to require a phone number unless you’re talking about some big tech botnet like Facebook or Google.
  - irscott 6y ago
    The Rosenfeld stuff is weird, man.
    - Jkvngt 6y ago
      Yeah I had to actually look up his name. Kinda shady.
Kalium 6y ago
> Why does it need your phone number? Great question! It's a good way to make it easy for general-purpose users with limited technical expertise to adopt, use, and find one another. > Seems pretty weird for a “secure” program. You're right! It's definitely weird, but it's also understandable as a tradeoff in favor of less technically adept users. It's not one I'm in love with, but I think it makes sense. > And why does it use AWS? Isn’t that subject to all kinds of privacy risks including National Security Letters? The risk from NSLs depends a lot on what is hosted. If it's opaquely encrypted blobs, there's minimal risk. And where could things be hosted that wouldn't be subject to privacy risks from a government of some sort? > Why isn’t Signal just a Free and open source, infrastructure-less p2p solution? That's such a good idea that Signal is already a Free and open source solution! That said, nothing is ever actually infrastructure-less, just like no data store is actually schema-less. There's just explicit infrastructure and implicit infrastructure. Implicit p2p infrastructure is not immune to governments or NSLs, and is often subject to more by virtue of being in more countries.

mcguire 6y ago

"You were blocked because you know that we don't use GH for discussion, but came here anyway and started opening fake PRs so that you could post and harass other people on GH." That is a very odd statement.

munchbunny 6y ago
Reading through the PR in the link, I can see where Moxie is coming from. There's very little actual discussion happening, mostly just flamewar-lite. Maybe the other PR's/issues/forum posts are better.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
What’s odd about it? I do wonder how Moxie knew this guy knew that GH is not used for discussion. Maybe the only way to tell is to see that there are no other active discussions?
- mcguire 6y ago
  How do they harass people if they don't use GitHub for discussion? What is a "fake pull request"? Why is the project on GitHub if they don't use it?