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> I genuinely believe there is a lot of commentary on this thread from people who have never designed a secure system. Gosh that's quite the conclusion. I hope

> I genuinely believe there is a lot of commentary on this thread from people who have never designed a secure system. Gosh that's quite the conclusion. I hope my employer never finds out about this discovery of my competency based on some comments on a message board. I think you've very much lost the thread of what I'm saying here, because at no point have I suggested anything about 100% security or 100% privacy. It would actually be pretty weird for me to be advocating for that while also asserting that you're making maximalist arguments. I also never said email is inherently more private than phone. I assert that it's a different privacy tradeoff, and one that I'm more comfortable with for various reasons. I could get into those if you want but I don't think they're relevant. (1) is the more interesting question in the end. (3) is just "it's open source you can fix it yourself!" which is .. not very useful on any level. Yes, I can go make my own signal-based platform and talk to precisely no one over it. No I'm not interested in doing that. I've been to the social network rodeo and have the mental scars to prove it. So ok, assuming we go with email addresses as the alternative mechanism, and the email addresses still require verification same as the phone numbers, and you still have to mutually have each other on our contact lists to communicate through signal: How, specifically, has the threat model been weakened?

dcow 4y ago
That comment wasn't directed at any single individual. There's just been a lot of "I imagine you can just type in a username and that would all work, QED. Duh." type of comments across the board, hence my broad statement. I agree Signal could add email addresses specifically, if verified and it wouldn't affect the threat model outside of introducing the network to more spam-able identifiers. Like I've said, if they figured out how to do that without degrading the quality of the experience today I doubt I'd be up in arms. I'm working on adding more email addresses to my contacts book, slowly. It probably makes more sense today than it did when Signal was born. It's not about what Signal can and can't do, though. Signal needed a readily available offline locally owned and operated contacts book with to make their product vision work. So they used the one everyone has on their phone and it worked. They upgraded the security of everyone sending sms and mms. I think there's a way to celebrate that while asking for email address support without getting into the ream of "zomg Signal sux because they use gross phone numbers what idiots would design a system like that what a fucking mess of a royal debacle attn. whistle blowers and abortion seekers: signal is not for you". That type of response is what I'm railing against by simply reminding people that Signal is a successful product that does indeed work as advertised and that it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
- dcow 4y ago
  I've been reading up on the state of things. So Signal actually is working to remove the phone number requirement: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353114063257600?s=20&t=JuqRHM3yjjnOGvHgoa8dQQ https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353114063257600?s=20&t=... They've been working on it for years. Their solution is that they have to take client-side ownership of your contacts list, keep it associated with your "account" and sync it across your devices so that when you correspond with someone by username, it becomes available to you everywhere. They have to be your contact book. I can find nothing on how they plan to verify usernames, perhaps in the traditional style with email. So yeah, absolutely not some trivial change that they just don't want to do because fuck the few people that don't have a phone number (or don't want to use it). They're working toward supporting usernames and at every turn keep getting reamed by HN because, in their effort to solve a problem that only exists on HN, they have to deploy a solution that means you have to trust them in a teeny tiny way you didn't previously IF you set a weak pin on your account. It's mind boggling. It must be so disheartening to see that type of response. But, that's my point. Signal can't add short names without changing the fundamental trust model which appealed to everybody initially. No amount of hiding a password as a pin, will change that. I really hope they don't kill their product along the way... (Also man WTF they're running Raft on SGX enclaves just so they can rate limit attempts to brute force users' weak pins. While super cool, technically, what an incredible waste of resources just to try and make weak passwords okay. Probably the most backwards thing I've seen a security company attempt like ever. Just tell your users if they want a username they need a strong password. Or just generate the entropy for them and only allow the username option to people who also want to take custody of their new 32-bytes of entropy and have a signal-managed synced contact book.)
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > Just tell your users if they want a username they need a strong password. If their goal is to shift responsbility to the user, that solution works. If their goal is to provide secure communications to the general public, that solution doesn't work. As you probably know, strong passwords are widely recognized as a failed security technology for the general public. Also, what happens when the user forgets their strong password? Dataloss is not an acceptable outcome for general end users whose priority usually is not ultimate security, but usability. Thus (as I understand it) Signal allows weak passwords ('PINs') that stay with the client, and adds 'invisible' entropy which is backed up to server-side SGX (because the user doesn't know the entropy, it must be backed up off-phone in case the phone is lost). It's a great, no-tradeoff solution IMHO: If SGX is compromised, the user is no worse off than if the supplemental entropy didn't exist at all - they have their (weak) password. If you don't want to depend on the 'supplemental entropy', use a strong password and then Signal's entropy and SGX security become irrelevant. > Or just generate the entropy for them and only allow the username option to people who also want to take custody of their new 32-bytes of entropy and have a signal-managed synced contact book. AFAICT, Signal is not interested in implementing features that are valuable only to geeks and that everyone else ignores, and those kinds of features don't seem to fit their mission.

dcow 4y ago

That comment wasn't directed at any single individual. There's just been a lot of "I imagine you can just type in a username and that would all work, QED. Duh." type of comments across the board, hence my broad statement. I agree Signal could add email addresses specifically, if verified and it wouldn't affect the threat model outside of introducing the network to more spam-able identifiers. Like I've said, if they figured out how to do that without degrading the quality of the experience today I doubt I'd be up in arms. I'm working on adding more email addresses to my contacts book, slowly. It probably makes more sense today than it did when Signal was born. It's not about what Signal can and can't do, though. Signal needed a readily available offline locally owned and operated contacts book with to make their product vision work. So they used the one everyone has on their phone and it worked. They upgraded the security of everyone sending sms and mms. I think there's a way to celebrate that while asking for email address support without getting into the ream of "zomg Signal sux because they use gross phone numbers what idiots would design a system like that what a fucking mess of a royal debacle attn. whistle blowers and abortion seekers: signal is not for you". That type of response is what I'm railing against by simply reminding people that Signal is a successful product that does indeed work as advertised and that it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

dcow 4y ago
I've been reading up on the state of things. So Signal actually is working to remove the phone number requirement: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353114063257600?s=20&t=JuqRHM3yjjnOGvHgoa8dQQ https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353114063257600?s=20&t=... They've been working on it for years. Their solution is that they have to take client-side ownership of your contacts list, keep it associated with your "account" and sync it across your devices so that when you correspond with someone by username, it becomes available to you everywhere. They have to be your contact book. I can find nothing on how they plan to verify usernames, perhaps in the traditional style with email. So yeah, absolutely not some trivial change that they just don't want to do because fuck the few people that don't have a phone number (or don't want to use it). They're working toward supporting usernames and at every turn keep getting reamed by HN because, in their effort to solve a problem that only exists on HN, they have to deploy a solution that means you have to trust them in a teeny tiny way you didn't previously IF you set a weak pin on your account. It's mind boggling. It must be so disheartening to see that type of response. But, that's my point. Signal can't add short names without changing the fundamental trust model which appealed to everybody initially. No amount of hiding a password as a pin, will change that. I really hope they don't kill their product along the way... (Also man WTF they're running Raft on SGX enclaves just so they can rate limit attempts to brute force users' weak pins. While super cool, technically, what an incredible waste of resources just to try and make weak passwords okay. Probably the most backwards thing I've seen a security company attempt like ever. Just tell your users if they want a username they need a strong password. Or just generate the entropy for them and only allow the username option to people who also want to take custody of their new 32-bytes of entropy and have a signal-managed synced contact book.)
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > Just tell your users if they want a username they need a strong password. If their goal is to shift responsbility to the user, that solution works. If their goal is to provide secure communications to the general public, that solution doesn't work. As you probably know, strong passwords are widely recognized as a failed security technology for the general public. Also, what happens when the user forgets their strong password? Dataloss is not an acceptable outcome for general end users whose priority usually is not ultimate security, but usability. Thus (as I understand it) Signal allows weak passwords ('PINs') that stay with the client, and adds 'invisible' entropy which is backed up to server-side SGX (because the user doesn't know the entropy, it must be backed up off-phone in case the phone is lost). It's a great, no-tradeoff solution IMHO: If SGX is compromised, the user is no worse off than if the supplemental entropy didn't exist at all - they have their (weak) password. If you don't want to depend on the 'supplemental entropy', use a strong password and then Signal's entropy and SGX security become irrelevant. > Or just generate the entropy for them and only allow the username option to people who also want to take custody of their new 32-bytes of entropy and have a signal-managed synced contact book. AFAICT, Signal is not interested in implementing features that are valuable only to geeks and that everyone else ignores, and those kinds of features don't seem to fit their mission.