5 ms·

The point is that not everybody needs to check. - It take one person to notice that builds don't match or that something fishy is happening for the trust on Si

by jraph 5y ago

The point is that not everybody needs to check. - It take one person to notice that builds don't match or that something fishy is happening for the trust on Signal to be lost forever. - Someone for whom the integrity is critical can do the check / compile themself - I don't know if this has happened yet, but the way Signal is built and distributed allows a community of "checkers" to exist. What can Signal do to improve this aspect?

mike_hearn 5y ago
I outlined a proposal for what they can do in the article. In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference. Networks are very sticky. When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. One day there was privacy. The next there was less, because having made its fortune on the back of viral sharing in social networks Facebook decided that maybe there was a little bit too much social going on and not enough hierarchy. And there's no possible fix, beyond "convince everyone not to use WhatsApp" which isn't going to happen anytime soon. That's why I suggested a globally distributed group of auditors creating threshold signatures. It should be backwards compatible with the app stores because the resulting signatures are/can be indistinguishable from a regular signature. I have a Shoup RSA implementation lying around in my mail archive somewhere. Anyway, encryption is about meeting social goals, not merely doing maths for the sake of it. There's no way to meet the underlying social goals here without decentralization - the fact that this is hard is irrelevant (even though I fully agree with Moxie on the problems around iteration speed etc).
- arepublicadoceu 5y ago
  > When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. Well, you’re giving a not so great example there. I don’t know anyone that uses WhatsApp because of their encryption system or privacy claims. Whereas I also don’t know anyone who would keep using signal if not for their encryption and privacy claims. In every metric I can perceive signal is just playing catch-up with WhatsApp or telegram features. The only winning feature is privacy and encryption. So, your argument that: > In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference Makes no sense, if one person could break the trust on signal, it would be absolutely dead. No one would keep using a poor substitute with barely any user compared to the mainstream chat services if not for privacy and trust.
- rswail 5y ago
  The primary reason Whatsapp had to change the forwarding was because of the social impact of forwarding in some nations that lead to social unrest and deaths. So while there was a loss of privacy, the alternative was to remove the offer of the application itself in its entirety.
  - jancsika 5y ago
    > So while there was a loss of privacy, the alternative was to remove the offer of the application itself in its entirety. OP's point is that the change in forwarding was practically equivalent to (partially) defeating the encryption. I think the argument is that, previous to this Whatsapp forward counter rollout, one would assume significant hits to credibility would block a company/org rolling out such a thing in a client. And that hit apparently didn't happen.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  > In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference. Networks are very sticky. When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. One day there was privacy. The next there was less, because having made its fortune on the back of viral sharing in social networks Facebook decided that maybe there was a little bit too much social going on and not enough hierarchy. And there's no possible fix, beyond "convince everyone not to use WhatsApp" which isn't going to happen anytime soon. This seems to miss two things. First, "networks are very sticky" is the reason Signal uses telephone numbers as identifiers. Your network is not tied to Signal, or even to your contacts having smartphones that can run apps of any kind. Second, the target markets for Signal and WhatsApp are quite different. WhatsApp users more often than not don't care about privacy. They care that everyone they want to talk to, including possibly critical government services in many countries, requires them to use WhatsApp. So if WhatsApp stops encrypting entirely, I'm not sure very many users care. Signal is much more likely to be used by people who actually care about privacy and security and is much more likely to be abandoned if it breaks the promise of maintaining those things. It's even designed to be easy to abandon, whereas WhatsApp very much is not. Leave WhatsApp and there are a whole lot of people and services you just can't talk to any more.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Signal (with Google / Apple cooperation) can potentially ship modified backdoored versions to specific targeted users, while that one geek that verifies every Signal build still gets a clean version. This is not a game you can win with centralised app stores and app architecture that relies on push notifications.
- mjg59 5y ago
  This is true even in a decentralised world - even if the protocol can be guaranteed to be secure, you could still push a modified binary to an individual.
  - cft 5y ago
    Not if you buy a raspberry pi like device "server" and plug it into your modems' Ethernet port
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Not if you build the binary yourself. It is perfectly doable in PC world, where you can run background processes and such, but much harder to do in current mobile world, where both iOS and Android restrict background processes (Android to the lesser degree, but it is going to the same place as iOS), and force apps to rely on push notifications.
    - gizmo385 5y ago
      But you can already build the signal binary yourself, right? Or are you suggesting that should be the default and everybody should rebuild the binary?
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        You can, but you won't be able to receive push notifications with it - to send push notifications to your app Signal will need your developer keys, or relay push notifications via your server. And I don't think Signal can relay push notifications. Telegram, actually, can send push notifications to third-party clients, but requires uploading developer keys to them.
Ruphin 5y ago
The exact same argument can be made for the centralized services that Ethereum relies on. If Infura would serve incorrect or censored data, it only takes _one_ person to find out and the trust we have in them is also lost forever. There is no fundamental difference between the trust placed in relaying services like Infura, and the trust placed in software supplier like Signal. Both companies/services are able to cheat or betray that trust in a way that regular users will not easily notice, but both of them are fully auditable by technical users. Since their whole business model relies on being a trustworthy service provider, it makes no sense for either of them to attempt to cheat, because they risk their entire reputation.

by jraph 5y ago

mike_hearn 5y ago

I outlined a proposal for what they can do in the article. In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference. Networks are very sticky. When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. One day there was privacy. The next there was less, because having made its fortune on the back of viral sharing in social networks Facebook decided that maybe there was a little bit too much social going on and not enough hierarchy. And there's no possible fix, beyond "convince everyone not to use WhatsApp" which isn't going to happen anytime soon. That's why I suggested a globally distributed group of auditors creating threshold signatures. It should be backwards compatible with the app stores because the resulting signatures are/can be indistinguishable from a regular signature. I have a Shoup RSA implementation lying around in my mail archive somewhere. Anyway, encryption is about meeting social goals, not merely doing maths for the sake of it. There's no way to meet the underlying social goals here without decentralization - the fact that this is hard is irrelevant (even though I fully agree with Moxie on the problems around iteration speed etc).

arepublicadoceu 5y ago
> When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. Well, you’re giving a not so great example there. I don’t know anyone that uses WhatsApp because of their encryption system or privacy claims. Whereas I also don’t know anyone who would keep using signal if not for their encryption and privacy claims. In every metric I can perceive signal is just playing catch-up with WhatsApp or telegram features. The only winning feature is privacy and encryption. So, your argument that: > In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference Makes no sense, if one person could break the trust on signal, it would be absolutely dead. No one would keep using a poor substitute with barely any user compared to the mainstream chat services if not for privacy and trust.
rswail 5y ago
The primary reason Whatsapp had to change the forwarding was because of the social impact of forwarding in some nations that lead to social unrest and deaths. So while there was a loss of privacy, the alternative was to remove the offer of the application itself in its entirety.
- jancsika 5y ago
  > So while there was a loss of privacy, the alternative was to remove the offer of the application itself in its entirety. OP's point is that the change in forwarding was practically equivalent to (partially) defeating the encryption. I think the argument is that, previous to this Whatsapp forward counter rollout, one would assume significant hits to credibility would block a company/org rolling out such a thing in a client. And that hit apparently didn't happen.
nonameiguess 5y ago
> In reality even if some people checked it'd make no difference. Networks are very sticky. When WhatsApp broke the encryption by allowing Facebook to detect forwarded messages, there was no uproar or sudden loss of trust. There was no mass migration away from WhatsApp. One day there was privacy. The next there was less, because having made its fortune on the back of viral sharing in social networks Facebook decided that maybe there was a little bit too much social going on and not enough hierarchy. And there's no possible fix, beyond "convince everyone not to use WhatsApp" which isn't going to happen anytime soon. This seems to miss two things. First, "networks are very sticky" is the reason Signal uses telephone numbers as identifiers. Your network is not tied to Signal, or even to your contacts having smartphones that can run apps of any kind. Second, the target markets for Signal and WhatsApp are quite different. WhatsApp users more often than not don't care about privacy. They care that everyone they want to talk to, including possibly critical government services in many countries, requires them to use WhatsApp. So if WhatsApp stops encrypting entirely, I'm not sure very many users care. Signal is much more likely to be used by people who actually care about privacy and security and is much more likely to be abandoned if it breaks the promise of maintaining those things. It's even designed to be easy to abandon, whereas WhatsApp very much is not. Leave WhatsApp and there are a whole lot of people and services you just can't talk to any more.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Signal (with Google / Apple cooperation) can potentially ship modified backdoored versions to specific targeted users, while that one geek that verifies every Signal build still gets a clean version. This is not a game you can win with centralised app stores and app architecture that relies on push notifications.

mjg59 5y ago
This is true even in a decentralised world - even if the protocol can be guaranteed to be secure, you could still push a modified binary to an individual.
- cft 5y ago
  Not if you buy a raspberry pi like device "server" and plug it into your modems' Ethernet port
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Not if you build the binary yourself. It is perfectly doable in PC world, where you can run background processes and such, but much harder to do in current mobile world, where both iOS and Android restrict background processes (Android to the lesser degree, but it is going to the same place as iOS), and force apps to rely on push notifications.
  - gizmo385 5y ago
    But you can already build the signal binary yourself, right? Or are you suggesting that should be the default and everybody should rebuild the binary?
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      You can, but you won't be able to receive push notifications with it - to send push notifications to your app Signal will need your developer keys, or relay push notifications via your server. And I don't think Signal can relay push notifications. Telegram, actually, can send push notifications to third-party clients, but requires uploading developer keys to them.

Ruphin 5y ago

The exact same argument can be made for the centralized services that Ethereum relies on. If Infura would serve incorrect or censored data, it only takes _one_ person to find out and the trust we have in them is also lost forever. There is no fundamental difference between the trust placed in relaying services like Infura, and the trust placed in software supplier like Signal. Both companies/services are able to cheat or betray that trust in a way that regular users will not easily notice, but both of them are fully auditable by technical users. Since their whole business model relies on being a trustworthy service provider, it makes no sense for either of them to attempt to cheat, because they risk their entire reputation.