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My server is federated and seems to work that way, but... mostly, I talk to people on the server, or via my bridges. As far as Signal goes, my main concern the

by Syonyk 4y ago

My server is federated and seems to work that way, but... mostly, I talk to people on the server, or via my bridges. As far as Signal goes, my main concern there is just how centralized it is. I would assume "anyone with the interest and ability" is monitoring messages going to and from Signal, which would be at least somewhat easier than monitoring stuff to all the random homeservers out there. ... fundamentally, I'm not sure the internet is trustworthy at all, anymore. :(

palata 4y ago
> As far as Signal goes, my main concern there is just how centralized it is. That's the whole point of end-to-end encryption: you don't have to trust the server if e2ee is done right. Matrix is decentralized, but as this disclosure shows, they have issues with e2ee. Signal is centralized, but I have never, ever heard of a security issue with the Signal protocol. So yeah... you may have concerns about Signal being centralized (e.g. they have the power to shut it down, and I guess they could ban users), but end-to-end encryption is not one. Actually Signal probably has one of the best e2ee out there.
- Arathorn 4y ago
  Signal has security bugs line the best of them. The most famous is probably https://thehackerblog.com/i-too-like-to-live-dangerously-accidentally-finding-rce-in-signal-desktop-via-html-injection-in-quoted-replies/ https://thehackerblog.com/i-too-like-to-live-dangerously-acc... - which gave full RCE, letting the attacker steal all your messages or worse. The two critical bugs in question here were similarly implementation bugs in matrix-js-sdk and its derivatives. Separately, there’s a question over the fact Matrix by design controls group membership on the server… and warns users if malicious devices get added, rather than explicitly forbidding them. We’re fixing that anyway, but it’s questionable if this counts as “issues with e2ee” - it’s similar to deriding Signal for pushing all the users in your addressbook when you join the app(!)
  - palata 4y ago
    > Signal has security bugs line the best of them. I was talking about the Signal protocol. > it’s questionable if this counts as “issues with e2ee” Fair point. It's not a problem in the encryption protocol, but it is a design problem on the group membership control. Now I think it's not completely fair to compare that to the Signal private contact discovery, which relies on SGX enclaves. First, because it's private (if you trust the SGX enclave technology), and second because even if it was not, I believe it is a pretty different level of "design problem": "if the secure enclave does not work, then the server can access a hash of your addressbook" vs "if the whole system works as expected, AND you don't constantly keep an eye on the group members, it could be that a malicious actor reads the content of your messages". Or am I misunderstanding something?

by Syonyk 4y ago

palata 4y ago

> As far as Signal goes, my main concern there is just how centralized it is. That's the whole point of end-to-end encryption: you don't have to trust the server if e2ee is done right. Matrix is decentralized, but as this disclosure shows, they have issues with e2ee. Signal is centralized, but I have never, ever heard of a security issue with the Signal protocol. So yeah... you may have concerns about Signal being centralized (e.g. they have the power to shut it down, and I guess they could ban users), but end-to-end encryption is not one. Actually Signal probably has one of the best e2ee out there.

Arathorn 4y ago
Signal has security bugs line the best of them. The most famous is probably https://thehackerblog.com/i-too-like-to-live-dangerously-accidentally-finding-rce-in-signal-desktop-via-html-injection-in-quoted-replies/ https://thehackerblog.com/i-too-like-to-live-dangerously-acc... - which gave full RCE, letting the attacker steal all your messages or worse. The two critical bugs in question here were similarly implementation bugs in matrix-js-sdk and its derivatives. Separately, there’s a question over the fact Matrix by design controls group membership on the server… and warns users if malicious devices get added, rather than explicitly forbidding them. We’re fixing that anyway, but it’s questionable if this counts as “issues with e2ee” - it’s similar to deriding Signal for pushing all the users in your addressbook when you join the app(!)
- palata 4y ago
  > Signal has security bugs line the best of them. I was talking about the Signal protocol. > it’s questionable if this counts as “issues with e2ee” Fair point. It's not a problem in the encryption protocol, but it is a design problem on the group membership control. Now I think it's not completely fair to compare that to the Signal private contact discovery, which relies on SGX enclaves. First, because it's private (if you trust the SGX enclave technology), and second because even if it was not, I believe it is a pretty different level of "design problem": "if the secure enclave does not work, then the server can access a hash of your addressbook" vs "if the whole system works as expected, AND you don't constantly keep an eye on the group members, it could be that a malicious actor reads the content of your messages". Or am I misunderstanding something?