5 ms·

Is there any reason to believe that Signal’s encryption has been compromised or that metadata harvesting is going on?

by mikece 6y ago

Tajnymag 6y ago
No
lrvick 6y ago
They control the only allowed client binaries and don't let others compile and distribute them. Those binaries have complete control of your keys. If they wanted to (or were forced to) release an update that bulk decrypted all messages or those of specific people and sent them to a random server somewhere... They totally could, and likely not get caught until well after every target was exposed, if at all. Huge SPOF. End to end encryption where only one party controls the software that controls both ends with no accountability is more marketing than security.
- op03 6y ago
  What you are really saying is you dont know how to market an alternate approach. So hopefully grandma or someone else shows up and does the work right? I am fine with Signal. They arent Facebook. And they arent Russians. Anyone who has an alternative go spend some cash and energy on marketing cause thats the hard problem not the technical details.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    > And they arent Russians. Any other ethnicities you don't allow?
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      It's not the ethnicity: - If a company is based in the US, they will be under pressure from the US government. - If a company is based in Russia, they will be under pressure from the Russian government. - If a company is based in China, they will be under pressure from the Chinese government.
      - htyden 6y ago
        I assume that op03 is referring to Telegram, which I believe is founded by Russians. However, the company is head quartered in London and Dubai according to Wikipedia.
        anoncake 6y ago
        It is, by Russians living in exile.
doomrobo 6y ago
No. If they wanted to harvest metadata, they could do it while still making their repo look up to date and totally clean. Wouldn't be hard either.
- sodality2 6y ago
  They could harvest whatever they want and just not push it to the repo, not limited to metadata. This would require updating the apps but you can't decompile GP versions to source code...
  - mfwoods 6y ago
    But you can verify that the source they publish on Github is the same that was used to built the Google Play version with reproducible builds[1]. Also, Android apps are fairly easy to decompile. They are very likely to get caught if they publish an update with a backdoor. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/reproducible-builds https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/repr...
    - sodality2 6y ago
      Wow. That's awesome, I could have sworn they opposed to reproducible builds for some reason.
      - fsflover 6y ago
        Probably because of this: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/12265/5 https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/122....
mfwoods 6y ago
No. The clients are open source, and (at least on Android) you are able to verify that the source on Github is the same that was used to compile the client on Google Play with reproducible builds [1]. And even if the servers turn out to be malicious, the clients are designed to expose as little metadata as possible with things like private contact discovery[2], sealed sender[3] and private groups[4]. It's not perfect, but the data a malicious server could collect is limited. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/reproducible-builds https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/repr... [2] https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ [3] https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ [4] https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/
- fsflover 6y ago
  But you cannot verify the source code and binary of the server or set up your own independent one, so reproducible builds don't help here.
  - mfwoods 6y ago
    That's true, and in that sense it doesn't really matter if they publish the server source or not (although they really should continue to do so). What does matter is that the client was designed with a possible malicious server in mind so you don't have to trust the code the server is running.

Is there any reason to believe that Signal’s encryption has been compromised or that metadata harvesting is going on?

by mikece 6y ago

Is there any reason to believe that Signal’s encryption has been compromised or that metadata harvesting is going on?

Tajnymag 6y ago

lrvick 6y ago

They control the only allowed client binaries and don't let others compile and distribute them. Those binaries have complete control of your keys. If they wanted to (or were forced to) release an update that bulk decrypted all messages or those of specific people and sent them to a random server somewhere... They totally could, and likely not get caught until well after every target was exposed, if at all. Huge SPOF. End to end encryption where only one party controls the software that controls both ends with no accountability is more marketing than security.

op03 6y ago
What you are really saying is you dont know how to market an alternate approach. So hopefully grandma or someone else shows up and does the work right? I am fine with Signal. They arent Facebook. And they arent Russians. Anyone who has an alternative go spend some cash and energy on marketing cause thats the hard problem not the technical details.
- anoncake 6y ago
  > And they arent Russians. Any other ethnicities you don't allow?
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    It's not the ethnicity: - If a company is based in the US, they will be under pressure from the US government. - If a company is based in Russia, they will be under pressure from the Russian government. - If a company is based in China, they will be under pressure from the Chinese government.
    - htyden 6y ago
      I assume that op03 is referring to Telegram, which I believe is founded by Russians. However, the company is head quartered in London and Dubai according to Wikipedia.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        It is, by Russians living in exile.

doomrobo 6y ago

No. If they wanted to harvest metadata, they could do it while still making their repo look up to date and totally clean. Wouldn't be hard either.

sodality2 6y ago
They could harvest whatever they want and just not push it to the repo, not limited to metadata. This would require updating the apps but you can't decompile GP versions to source code...
- mfwoods 6y ago
  But you can verify that the source they publish on Github is the same that was used to built the Google Play version with reproducible builds[1]. Also, Android apps are fairly easy to decompile. They are very likely to get caught if they publish an update with a backdoor. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/reproducible-builds https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/repr...
  - sodality2 6y ago
    Wow. That's awesome, I could have sworn they opposed to reproducible builds for some reason.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Probably because of this: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/12265/5 https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-wickr-on-f-droid-2021/122....

mfwoods 6y ago

No. The clients are open source, and (at least on Android) you are able to verify that the source on Github is the same that was used to compile the client on Google Play with reproducible builds [1]. And even if the servers turn out to be malicious, the clients are designed to expose as little metadata as possible with things like private contact discovery[2], sealed sender[3] and private groups[4]. It's not perfect, but the data a malicious server could collect is limited. [1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/reproducible-builds https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/tree/master/repr... [2] https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/ [3] https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ [4] https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/ https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/

fsflover 6y ago
But you cannot verify the source code and binary of the server or set up your own independent one, so reproducible builds don't help here.
- mfwoods 6y ago
  That's true, and in that sense it doesn't really matter if they publish the server source or not (although they really should continue to do so). What does matter is that the client was designed with a possible malicious server in mind so you don't have to trust the code the server is running.