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Well that means that, Signal (and other instant encrypted messengers) bundle the risk up into one huge footgun. Very few people know how to verify their identit

Well that means that, Signal (and other instant encrypted messengers) bundle the risk up into one huge footgun. Very few people know how to verify their identities with the "safety numbers" and then keep them verified. As a result, you end up trusting the provider not to MITM your messages. This is particularly trivial to do in, say, some sort of non-federated system where one entity controls the entire infrastructure. That is not necessarily a bad thing but it would be good if the user was made to understand exactly who they are trusting. Signal deemphasizes this sort of information these days and has made the warnings about changed safety numbers easier to ignore. This is a depressingly common progression. At least with encrypted email you are less likely to kid yourself. If you do figure it out then the existence of identities you treat as objects ("public keys") makes it intuitively obvious that you have to get the right one.

hiq 5y ago
I think you're saying that Signal is not perfect, and I agree, but there's just nothing better at the moment. Email encryption is a bad reference because it has negligible usage (in comparison with modern messengers) and has proved over the years that it cannot cater to the needs of Signal's current users. But even then, I don't think we can claim that getting the email encryption setup right is any easier than ensuring one hasn't been MITMed during the initial key exchange on Signal.
- upofadown 5y ago
  In terms of usability, Signal is not that great. In a usability study involving Signal[1], 21 out of 28 computer science students failed to establish and maintain a secure end to end encrypted connection. I am old enough to be pretty cynical about this stuff. People keep on coming up with purely technical solutions to the encrypted messaging problem. They all eventually fall down on the human side. This isn't working. We have to do something else. [1] https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/09-when-signal-hits-the-fan-on-the-usability-and-security-of-state-of-the-art-secure-mobile-messaging.pdf https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/09...

hiq 5y ago

I think you're saying that Signal is not perfect, and I agree, but there's just nothing better at the moment. Email encryption is a bad reference because it has negligible usage (in comparison with modern messengers) and has proved over the years that it cannot cater to the needs of Signal's current users. But even then, I don't think we can claim that getting the email encryption setup right is any easier than ensuring one hasn't been MITMed during the initial key exchange on Signal.

upofadown 5y ago
In terms of usability, Signal is not that great. In a usability study involving Signal[1], 21 out of 28 computer science students failed to establish and maintain a secure end to end encrypted connection. I am old enough to be pretty cynical about this stuff. People keep on coming up with purely technical solutions to the encrypted messaging problem. They all eventually fall down on the human side. This isn't working. We have to do something else. [1] https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/09-when-signal-hits-the-fan-on-the-usability-and-security-of-state-of-the-art-secure-mobile-messaging.pdf https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/09...