6 ms·

My list of favorite secure messaging apps

78 points by Sami_Lehtinen 4y ago

tjmehta 4y ago
What about WhatsApp…?
- boring_twenties 4y ago
  What about it? It's not open source, so shouldn't even be considered.
  - ask_b123 4y ago
    There are non-open source apps listed in the OP.
    - palata 4y ago
      Which ones?
snotrockets 4y ago
Aside from the obvious flaws (Threema isn't secure: https://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://breakingthe3ma.app/), this is LARPing: the author wants to keep his chats secret, but he doesn't discuss why and from whom. This is amateurish, as your efforts should be defined by the threat model, not the other way around. How much effort is your attacker capable of? How much effort are you willing to spend on opsec, a notoriously hard and inhuman task? There's a whole difference if you want to keep your affair secret from your wife, your small-time weed dealing from the police, your spy ring from the FBI, coordinating anti-Russian attacks in Ukraine, or a Chinese resident resisting the regime.
- rgrmrts 4y ago
  The author is simply sharing their preferred messaging apps, and they describe the criteria used. Sure it's not an objective in-depth security analysis or a result of professional audits but it's also not claiming to be those things, right?
  - generalizations 4y ago
    Understanding the threat model isn't an "in-depth security analysis", though. It's just a matter of understanding why you care about secure apps - who you want to be secure from. If you don't know that, then these are just toys, and you're just playing.
    - detrites 4y ago
      Great! Some of us like play.
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    The introduction implies some level of security analysis based on the list of "criteria" (e.g., "does not expose personal information" and "does not leak data") and the "testing setup" link.
    - snotrockets 4y ago
      Does not expose to whom? Leak to whom?
      - __derek__ 4y ago
        That's exactly my point. Ask the author. They implied that they did some analysis beyond trusting claims made my developers, but there aren't sufficient details.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SkyMarshal 4y ago
No mention of Tox? https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/
- eps 4y ago
  The project is 10 years old, still at 0.2 release, which is now 9 months old, and virtually no activity on the repo. Looks as good as dead.
  - Jfreegman 4y ago
    There have been 6 releases in the past year, including a major feature merge. https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/releases https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/releases https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/pull/2269 https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/pull/2269 Tox is developed entirely by unpaid volunteers which means it will have periods of prolonged inactivity, but it's certainly not dead.
dougk16 4y ago
Really great list. Thank you. Some of these I wasn't even aware of. I've been using Session for about a year. A year ago it definitely had some missed messages and I was about to ditch it but I held strong and haven't experienced that issue in a while. Been flawless for about half a year. The Oxen/Loki network overall https://oxen.io/ https://oxen.io/ is a really interesting alternative to Monero and Tor. It's interesting how it can be both!
itake 4y ago
What do you think of Wickr?
- __derek__ 4y ago
  For personal use, it's not long for this world.[1] [1]: https://wickr.com/our-focus-on-end-to-end-encrypted-enterprise-communications/ https://wickr.com/our-focus-on-end-to-end-encrypted-enterpri...
  - itake 4y ago
    sad panda
jckahn 4y ago
Since it's relevant to the topic, I'd like to share an open source communication tool I started working on last year: https://chitchatter.im/ https://chitchatter.im/ Chitchatter does ephemeral P2P messaging, audio and video chat, and file sharing in a serverless manner.
getty 4y ago
One of the cons for Signal, sending unencrypted SMS messages is being removed soon: https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/ https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/
- marssaxman 4y ago
  Bummer. That feature made Signal a really compelling main messenger app.
  - sliken 4y ago
    Indeed, but the man hours involved was quite surprising to me. Some work was per platform, some per cellular provider, some per country, etc. Also it's less confusing for users if they can say "if you use signal, it's encrypted", unless of the confusing and hard to support decision tree, which is made doubly confusing because Signal uses phone numbers are part of your identity.
    - marssaxman 4y ago
      The virtue of it was that you could tell your less-clued-in friends and relatives to "just replace your SMS app with Signal and use it all the time", and they would; the hope being that mass usage would create a virtuous smokescreen of innocuous encrypted communication, so that people who actually had secrets to discuss would not stand out. Perhaps this is less important now that idiosyncratic messenger apps seem to have become well-accepted? I don't know, anymore, how easy it would be for the NSA or some other evil adversary to single out Signal traffic.
fersarr 4y ago
What about Matrix/Element?
- entrepy123 4y ago
  Matrix/Element was the best fit when I looked into reasonably private messaging for a small org. - Matrix has E2EE support, the able to be self-hosted, decent if not perfect clients for all platforms, and an easy to spin up hosted solution through their services company. I think who talks to who could leak, but I think the content is reasonably put into an envelope so to speak. The 2019 security issue seems to have been resolved. I just wish there was a built-in option for Matrix (Element.io) instances to enforce "only allow E2EE chats". I mean: allowing instances to disable federation prevents some outflows, and E2EE by default is sane, but I want to NOT allow users to accidentally (e.g., in ignorance) click the toggle switch that turns off E2EE for communication chats that they create. BIGGEST FEEDBACK ON MATRIX/Element: I really think this "only allow E2EE" should be part of the protocol somehow (as an option for instances), and not just a server customization/implementation detail. --> I haven't had the courage to contribute this meek suggestion to "More Instant Messaging Interoperability (MIMI)" [0, 1], but does anyone know if it's being talked about? Does this make sense? It seems sort of obvious to me. [0] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/mimi/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/mimi/ [1] https://turt2live.github.io/ietf-mimi-matrix-message-format/draft-ralston-mimi-matrix-message-format.html https://turt2live.github.io/ietf-mimi-matrix-message-format/...
null0pointer 4y ago
This list was nice to learn about some apps I wasn't yet aware of. One thing the author mentioned as a "con" a couple of times is "No option for automatic deletion of messages". It might be worth noting that no app can provide automatic deletion of messages. Yes there are some apps that have messages disappear after a time but there is nothing stopping those messages from being saved by the other party before that time. If not a data export then a screenshot, and if not a screenshot then a camera pointed at the screen. If the message is to be consumed by a human then it can be recorded.
- vbarrielle 4y ago
  The threat model that's addressed by deletion of message is the seizing of one's device by a hostile party (eg dictatorship). One cannot be incriminated by messages that have been deleted. As you pointed out this will not help if your correspondent cannot be trusted.
- twhb 4y ago
  Right, disappearing messages aren’t a safeguard against a malicious recipient, they’re a blast radius limiter on future device compromise on either end.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  The purpose of automatic message deletion isn't to protect you from someone actively trying to record your messages, it's to limit both parties liability in the event one or both parties are compromised by a third party after the fact.
buster 4y ago
I miss delta chat in that list. :(
fenesiistvan 4y ago
The telecom industry runs around the legacy SIP/WebRTC protocols. What about these? Both of them can be secured (TLS/SRTP/DTLS), but they are usually centralized.
- galleywest200 4y ago
  You could easily spin up some FreePBX server (or similar) and connect SIP devices to talk to each other entirely securely. But calls out to the PSTN are a whole different issue.
- ale42 4y ago
  Why legacy? They're still current, and WebRTC is fairly recent. The SS7 mess behind PSTN networks is perhaps more legacy.
12311231231 4y ago
[dead]
daneel_w 4y ago
I've been waiting for Briar to show up for iOS ever since I came across it many years ago.
imhoguy 4y ago
SimpleX looks too good to be true! It even has terminal client https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/docs/CLI.md https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/doc...
ishche 4y ago
Is telegram so bad?
- palata 4y ago
  Most interesting features of Telegram (everything but secret chats) are not end-to-end encrypted. The server can read them.
m3affan 4y ago
Most of them have not heard of
palata 4y ago
Regarding SimpleX: > It is like a peer to peer messaging app except that there is a server with a messaging queue in the middle acting as a proxy. Isn't that the definition of not peer-to-peer? I mean at this point, Signal is peer-to-peer as well (except that there is a server in the middle).
tomhand 4y ago
what about jami? https://jami.net https://jami.net
jakecopp 4y ago
Why no mentions of Matrix.org, even if just to explain why it's not mentioned/considered? A detailed comparison spreadsheet with ordered scoring: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...
d4a 4y ago
For Session: > Accounts can only be used on a single device, multi-device support is planned for the future Can confirm that this is not true. I have multi device set up and it works just fine. > Files are temporarily stored on a central server (encrypted) until the recipients retrieve them Not just files, but also your messages. However, it's not as "centralized" as you think. The messages are stored across the Loki network, not just on one centralized server. > Still new, bugs exists and features may change Another con I would add is that it is painfully slow. There's often a delay of 10-15 or more seconds between sending a text message and receiving it. Interestingly, media files have about the same "lag". This makes faster conversations difficult, since I would send a message and an older message would backfill in making my message irrelevant. For example, I would receive "I have an idea", send back "what is the idea", but then a few seconds later a message would backfill in and appear before the message I just sent with clarification on the idea. But that being said, I still think Session is one of the best truly-secure messengers out there. It's bug-free enough for daily use, very decentralized, solves the "offline message" issue. The only concern I have left is their weird crypto integration. The nodes in the Loki network are crypto nodes and it requires staking some $LOKI to join the pool. You do get rewarded for participating in some ways, however.
IYasha 4y ago
Strange list. Lots of Conversations forks, but not Conversations itself. WTF? > Quicksy (XMPP) - A fork of Conversations that makes it easy to signup, your phone number is used as your ID. Worth considering? really? Also, Conversations HAS "Key Change Alerts".

78 points by Sami_Lehtinen 4y ago

tjmehta 4y ago

What about WhatsApp…?

boring_twenties 4y ago
What about it? It's not open source, so shouldn't even be considered.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  There are non-open source apps listed in the OP.
  - palata 4y ago
    Which ones?

snotrockets 4y ago

Aside from the obvious flaws (Threema isn't secure: https://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://breakingthe3ma.app/), this is LARPing: the author wants to keep his chats secret, but he doesn't discuss why and from whom. This is amateurish, as your efforts should be defined by the threat model, not the other way around. How much effort is your attacker capable of? How much effort are you willing to spend on opsec, a notoriously hard and inhuman task? There's a whole difference if you want to keep your affair secret from your wife, your small-time weed dealing from the police, your spy ring from the FBI, coordinating anti-Russian attacks in Ukraine, or a Chinese resident resisting the regime.

rgrmrts 4y ago
The author is simply sharing their preferred messaging apps, and they describe the criteria used. Sure it's not an objective in-depth security analysis or a result of professional audits but it's also not claiming to be those things, right?
- generalizations 4y ago
  Understanding the threat model isn't an "in-depth security analysis", though. It's just a matter of understanding why you care about secure apps - who you want to be secure from. If you don't know that, then these are just toys, and you're just playing.
  - detrites 4y ago
    Great! Some of us like play.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  The introduction implies some level of security analysis based on the list of "criteria" (e.g., "does not expose personal information" and "does not leak data") and the "testing setup" link.
  - snotrockets 4y ago
    Does not expose to whom? Leak to whom?
    - __derek__ 4y ago
      That's exactly my point. Ask the author. They implied that they did some analysis beyond trusting claims made my developers, but there aren't sufficient details.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

SkyMarshal 4y ago

No mention of Tox? https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/

eps 4y ago
The project is 10 years old, still at 0.2 release, which is now 9 months old, and virtually no activity on the repo. Looks as good as dead.
- Jfreegman 4y ago
  There have been 6 releases in the past year, including a major feature merge. https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/releases https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/releases https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/pull/2269 https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore/pull/2269 Tox is developed entirely by unpaid volunteers which means it will have periods of prolonged inactivity, but it's certainly not dead.

dougk16 4y ago

Really great list. Thank you. Some of these I wasn't even aware of. I've been using Session for about a year. A year ago it definitely had some missed messages and I was about to ditch it but I held strong and haven't experienced that issue in a while. Been flawless for about half a year. The Oxen/Loki network overall https://oxen.io/ https://oxen.io/ is a really interesting alternative to Monero and Tor. It's interesting how it can be both!

itake 4y ago

What do you think of Wickr?

__derek__ 4y ago
For personal use, it's not long for this world.[1] [1]: https://wickr.com/our-focus-on-end-to-end-encrypted-enterprise-communications/ https://wickr.com/our-focus-on-end-to-end-encrypted-enterpri...
- itake 4y ago
  sad panda

jckahn 4y ago

Since it's relevant to the topic, I'd like to share an open source communication tool I started working on last year: https://chitchatter.im/ https://chitchatter.im/ Chitchatter does ephemeral P2P messaging, audio and video chat, and file sharing in a serverless manner.

getty 4y ago

One of the cons for Signal, sending unencrypted SMS messages is being removed soon: https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/ https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/

marssaxman 4y ago
Bummer. That feature made Signal a really compelling main messenger app.
- sliken 4y ago
  Indeed, but the man hours involved was quite surprising to me. Some work was per platform, some per cellular provider, some per country, etc. Also it's less confusing for users if they can say "if you use signal, it's encrypted", unless of the confusing and hard to support decision tree, which is made doubly confusing because Signal uses phone numbers are part of your identity.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    The virtue of it was that you could tell your less-clued-in friends and relatives to "just replace your SMS app with Signal and use it all the time", and they would; the hope being that mass usage would create a virtuous smokescreen of innocuous encrypted communication, so that people who actually had secrets to discuss would not stand out. Perhaps this is less important now that idiosyncratic messenger apps seem to have become well-accepted? I don't know, anymore, how easy it would be for the NSA or some other evil adversary to single out Signal traffic.

fersarr 4y ago

What about Matrix/Element?

entrepy123 4y ago
Matrix/Element was the best fit when I looked into reasonably private messaging for a small org. - Matrix has E2EE support, the able to be self-hosted, decent if not perfect clients for all platforms, and an easy to spin up hosted solution through their services company. I think who talks to who could leak, but I think the content is reasonably put into an envelope so to speak. The 2019 security issue seems to have been resolved. I just wish there was a built-in option for Matrix (Element.io) instances to enforce "only allow E2EE chats". I mean: allowing instances to disable federation prevents some outflows, and E2EE by default is sane, but I want to NOT allow users to accidentally (e.g., in ignorance) click the toggle switch that turns off E2EE for communication chats that they create. BIGGEST FEEDBACK ON MATRIX/Element: I really think this "only allow E2EE" should be part of the protocol somehow (as an option for instances), and not just a server customization/implementation detail. --> I haven't had the courage to contribute this meek suggestion to "More Instant Messaging Interoperability (MIMI)" [0, 1], but does anyone know if it's being talked about? Does this make sense? It seems sort of obvious to me. [0] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/mimi/ https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/mimi/ [1] https://turt2live.github.io/ietf-mimi-matrix-message-format/draft-ralston-mimi-matrix-message-format.html https://turt2live.github.io/ietf-mimi-matrix-message-format/...

null0pointer 4y ago

This list was nice to learn about some apps I wasn't yet aware of. One thing the author mentioned as a "con" a couple of times is "No option for automatic deletion of messages". It might be worth noting that no app can provide automatic deletion of messages. Yes there are some apps that have messages disappear after a time but there is nothing stopping those messages from being saved by the other party before that time. If not a data export then a screenshot, and if not a screenshot then a camera pointed at the screen. If the message is to be consumed by a human then it can be recorded.

vbarrielle 4y ago
The threat model that's addressed by deletion of message is the seizing of one's device by a hostile party (eg dictatorship). One cannot be incriminated by messages that have been deleted. As you pointed out this will not help if your correspondent cannot be trusted.
twhb 4y ago
Right, disappearing messages aren’t a safeguard against a malicious recipient, they’re a blast radius limiter on future device compromise on either end.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
snapplebobapple 4y ago
The purpose of automatic message deletion isn't to protect you from someone actively trying to record your messages, it's to limit both parties liability in the event one or both parties are compromised by a third party after the fact.

buster 4y ago

I miss delta chat in that list. :(

fenesiistvan 4y ago

The telecom industry runs around the legacy SIP/WebRTC protocols. What about these? Both of them can be secured (TLS/SRTP/DTLS), but they are usually centralized.

galleywest200 4y ago
You could easily spin up some FreePBX server (or similar) and connect SIP devices to talk to each other entirely securely. But calls out to the PSTN are a whole different issue.
ale42 4y ago
Why legacy? They're still current, and WebRTC is fairly recent. The SS7 mess behind PSTN networks is perhaps more legacy.

12311231231 4y ago

[dead]

daneel_w 4y ago

I've been waiting for Briar to show up for iOS ever since I came across it many years ago.

imhoguy 4y ago

SimpleX looks too good to be true! It even has terminal client https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/docs/CLI.md https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/doc...

ishche 4y ago

Is telegram so bad?

palata 4y ago
Most interesting features of Telegram (everything but secret chats) are not end-to-end encrypted. The server can read them.

m3affan 4y ago

Most of them have not heard of

palata 4y ago

Regarding SimpleX: > It is like a peer to peer messaging app except that there is a server with a messaging queue in the middle acting as a proxy. Isn't that the definition of not peer-to-peer? I mean at this point, Signal is peer-to-peer as well (except that there is a server in the middle).

tomhand 4y ago

what about jami? https://jami.net https://jami.net

jakecopp 4y ago

Why no mentions of Matrix.org, even if just to explain why it's not mentioned/considered? A detailed comparison spreadsheet with ordered scoring: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHalWVztqZo7uxlCeKPQ-8uoFOU/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9IqHal...

d4a 4y ago

For Session: > Accounts can only be used on a single device, multi-device support is planned for the future Can confirm that this is not true. I have multi device set up and it works just fine. > Files are temporarily stored on a central server (encrypted) until the recipients retrieve them Not just files, but also your messages. However, it's not as "centralized" as you think. The messages are stored across the Loki network, not just on one centralized server. > Still new, bugs exists and features may change Another con I would add is that it is painfully slow. There's often a delay of 10-15 or more seconds between sending a text message and receiving it. Interestingly, media files have about the same "lag". This makes faster conversations difficult, since I would send a message and an older message would backfill in making my message irrelevant. For example, I would receive "I have an idea", send back "what is the idea", but then a few seconds later a message would backfill in and appear before the message I just sent with clarification on the idea. But that being said, I still think Session is one of the best truly-secure messengers out there. It's bug-free enough for daily use, very decentralized, solves the "offline message" issue. The only concern I have left is their weird crypto integration. The nodes in the Loki network are crypto nodes and it requires staking some $LOKI to join the pool. You do get rewarded for participating in some ways, however.

IYasha 4y ago

Strange list. Lots of Conversations forks, but not Conversations itself. WTF? > Quicksy (XMPP) - A fork of Conversations that makes it easy to signup, your phone number is used as your ID. Worth considering? really? Also, Conversations HAS "Key Change Alerts".