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“In 2015, a subsidiary of Amdocs was created, named "Vector Creations Limited", and the Matrix staff was moved there.[11] In July 2017, the funding by Amdocs w

“In 2015, a subsidiary of Amdocs was created, named "Vector Creations Limited", and the Matrix staff was moved there.[11] In July 2017, the funding by Amdocs was announced to be cut and in the following weeks the core team created their own UK-based company, "New Vector Limited",[12] which was mainly built to support the development of Matrix and Riot, which was later renamed to Element.” Its still the same people wether they are technically under the Amdocs umbrella or not.

Arathorn 3y ago
The Matrix team has been together in various incarnations since around 2003; we came from two companies (one UK, one French) who happened to get acquired by Amdocs in 2010. I ended up running their unified communications division as an independent unit, and after a few years of building SIP+XMPP based comms apps, we came up with Matrix in 2014, pitched the idea to Amdocs, who then funded it for a few years, and then we span out to set up Element (aka New Vector) in 2017. Paranoia about Amdocs having funded Matrix from 2014-2017 is utterly unwarranted, and often seems to be rooted in some pretty unpleasant prejudices. Plus both the spec and implementations are all liberally licensed open source - it should be painfully obvious to anyone who actually bothers to look at the protocol that there is no cloak and dagger, however much some folks might wish there to be :|
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  Believe me. I do not ‘wish’ Israel to have a thriving grey market for surveillance hacking tools like Pegasus that are used by oppressive regimes around the world. I also do not ‘wish’ for the Israeli government to fund companies like Amdocs who have been accused multiple times of improperly handing over customer data to that government. But those are the facts and so when I am accused of some kind of vague ‘prejudice’ for having my fair suspicions about a telecom company funded in turn by Amdocs i can’t help but feel like I’m taking flak for being over the right target. “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” Are you contradicting the wikipedia article? I have no inside knowledge so if there are inaccuracies on wikipedia it would be great if you could correct them. As an insider, what do you think was Amdoc’s reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Why would they pay big money for decentralization? Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough?
  - WastingMyTime89 3y ago
    You are taking flak for disparaging an open source protocol and set of softwares on allegations which are easy to disprove because the code is open and on the basis of prejudices which are themselves very close to being antisemitism. I remember Matrix being heavily used by the French government anyway. I’m pretty sure you they did check that it’s not spyware.
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    > “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” This is true; I created it. With a team, including myself, who had been acquired into Amdocs and operated as an independent unit. As I already said. > As an insider, what do you think was Amdocs’ reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Our pitch to Amdocs was that RCS was not fit for purpose, and XMPP was building on top of outdated primitives which didn’t reflect the synced multi-device group-chat experience of comms app which were becoming standard at the time in 2014. To be clear: the idea of Matrix was our idea; Amdocs deserves significant credit for going along with it and funding it in the early days. > Why would they pay big money for decentralization? They didn’t pay big money - they funded a ~15 person team for a few years. They supported decentralisation because if you’re building something which could replace the phone network, it needs to be an open protocol which anyone can independently implement, run, and verify. Including conspiracy theorists on HN. > Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough? Because Slack is an unencrypted proprietary centralised chat vendor, not a communication protocol. SIP+XMPP was a horrifically flimsy approach, which duplicated functionality and risk of bugs, while limited by both protocols (eg lack of e2ee and group calling in SIP; lack of synced conversation history in XMPP at the time).
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      Wow thats awesome dude. Matrix is great software. Building something which could replace the phone network sounds exactly like something Amdocs would be interested in. I get that you cant be throwing shade on your investors, but a LOT of people at FBI think Amdocs was handing over call records on Americans to people in Israel. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 Furthermore, 6 Israelis working for Amdocs were deported in 2002 for spying on the US. That’s not just a conspiracy theory. Its a seriously concerning fact.
arp242 3y ago
What is your point even? That these people are somehow sabotaging the Matrix protocol ... how? and ... to do ... what exactly? Either state your accusations plainly or stop it with these odd accusation by association.
- goodSteveramos 3y ago
  Good detective work is done by looking for associations as the starting point. I do not rule out any of those as possibilities, and given that there have been major issues with the security of both the protocol and the official implementation the opportunity exists for those issues to have been deliberate or simply deliberately disclosed to favored parties with priority. That’s obviously far from proof of wrongdoing but combined with the provenience of the project within Amdocs that makes me suspicious. If it doesn’t make you suspicious that’s ok too. “The vulnerabilities we exploit differ in their nature (insecure by design, protocol confusion, lack of domain separation, implementation bugs) and are distributed broadly across the different subprotocols and libraries that make up the cryptographic core of Matrix.” https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/ https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/
  - Arathorn 3y ago
    All software has bugs, and the ones linked there were found in the first gen Matrix clients and had already been fixed in subsequent ones - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/09/28/upgrade-now-to-address-encryption-vulns-in-matrix-sdks-and-clients https://matrix.org/blog/2022/09/28/upgrade-now-to-address-en... has the details. Of course, you are welcome to pick up any and all CVEs and claim they are evidence of a grand conspiracy if you wish. :|
    - goodSteveramos 3y ago
      Thats fair. I find it unlikely those issues were deliberately inserted. Part of espionage is developing contacts and sources. Putting people on the inside of organizations from their inception so as to keep tabs, and supporting organizations that you have the most influence in. China for example requires foreign startups hiring Chinese engineering talent to include a Chinese citizen as a founder so they have institutional visibility and influence in case later on that company makes decisions affecting China, such as participating in boycott or honoring Chinese data access requests. Its just smart politics. And yes it happens all the time and is a kind of ‘conspiracy’ if you chose to frame it that way. My concern that something like that happened with your organization is warranted. And just to be clear, I was super excited when I first got on Matrix. It really has the correct vision for how decentralized communications should work and I hope that vision wins, which is why I was so bummed when I heard about the connection to Amdocs.

Arathorn 3y ago

The Matrix team has been together in various incarnations since around 2003; we came from two companies (one UK, one French) who happened to get acquired by Amdocs in 2010. I ended up running their unified communications division as an independent unit, and after a few years of building SIP+XMPP based comms apps, we came up with Matrix in 2014, pitched the idea to Amdocs, who then funded it for a few years, and then we span out to set up Element (aka New Vector) in 2017. Paranoia about Amdocs having funded Matrix from 2014-2017 is utterly unwarranted, and often seems to be rooted in some pretty unpleasant prejudices. Plus both the spec and implementations are all liberally licensed open source - it should be painfully obvious to anyone who actually bothers to look at the protocol that there is no cloak and dagger, however much some folks might wish there to be :|

goodSteveramos 3y ago
Believe me. I do not ‘wish’ Israel to have a thriving grey market for surveillance hacking tools like Pegasus that are used by oppressive regimes around the world. I also do not ‘wish’ for the Israeli government to fund companies like Amdocs who have been accused multiple times of improperly handing over customer data to that government. But those are the facts and so when I am accused of some kind of vague ‘prejudice’ for having my fair suspicions about a telecom company funded in turn by Amdocs i can’t help but feel like I’m taking flak for being over the right target. “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” Are you contradicting the wikipedia article? I have no inside knowledge so if there are inaccuracies on wikipedia it would be great if you could correct them. As an insider, what do you think was Amdoc’s reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Why would they pay big money for decentralization? Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough?
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  You are taking flak for disparaging an open source protocol and set of softwares on allegations which are easy to disprove because the code is open and on the basis of prejudices which are themselves very close to being antisemitism. I remember Matrix being heavily used by the French government anyway. I’m pretty sure you they did check that it’s not spyware.
- Arathorn 3y ago
  > “The initial project was created inside Amdocs, while building a chat tool called "Amdocs Unified Communications” This is true; I created it. With a team, including myself, who had been acquired into Amdocs and operated as an independent unit. As I already said. > As an insider, what do you think was Amdocs’ reason for building a whole new chat protocol? Our pitch to Amdocs was that RCS was not fit for purpose, and XMPP was building on top of outdated primitives which didn’t reflect the synced multi-device group-chat experience of comms app which were becoming standard at the time in 2014. To be clear: the idea of Matrix was our idea; Amdocs deserves significant credit for going along with it and funding it in the early days. > Why would they pay big money for decentralization? They didn’t pay big money - they funded a ~15 person team for a few years. They supported decentralisation because if you’re building something which could replace the phone network, it needs to be an open protocol which anyone can independently implement, run, and verify. Including conspiracy theorists on HN. > Why wasn’t Slack or SIP+XMPP good enough? Because Slack is an unencrypted proprietary centralised chat vendor, not a communication protocol. SIP+XMPP was a horrifically flimsy approach, which duplicated functionality and risk of bugs, while limited by both protocols (eg lack of e2ee and group calling in SIP; lack of synced conversation history in XMPP at the time).
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    Wow thats awesome dude. Matrix is great software. Building something which could replace the phone network sounds exactly like something Amdocs would be interested in. I get that you cant be throwing shade on your investors, but a LOT of people at FBI think Amdocs was handing over call records on Americans to people in Israel. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ataHCdCS_N0 Furthermore, 6 Israelis working for Amdocs were deported in 2002 for spying on the US. That’s not just a conspiracy theory. Its a seriously concerning fact.

arp242 3y ago

What is your point even? That these people are somehow sabotaging the Matrix protocol ... how? and ... to do ... what exactly? Either state your accusations plainly or stop it with these odd accusation by association.

goodSteveramos 3y ago
Good detective work is done by looking for associations as the starting point. I do not rule out any of those as possibilities, and given that there have been major issues with the security of both the protocol and the official implementation the opportunity exists for those issues to have been deliberate or simply deliberately disclosed to favored parties with priority. That’s obviously far from proof of wrongdoing but combined with the provenience of the project within Amdocs that makes me suspicious. If it doesn’t make you suspicious that’s ok too. “The vulnerabilities we exploit differ in their nature (insecure by design, protocol confusion, lack of domain separation, implementation bugs) and are distributed broadly across the different subprotocols and libraries that make up the cryptographic core of Matrix.” https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/ https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/
- Arathorn 3y ago
  All software has bugs, and the ones linked there were found in the first gen Matrix clients and had already been fixed in subsequent ones - https://matrix.org/blog/2022/09/28/upgrade-now-to-address-encryption-vulns-in-matrix-sdks-and-clients https://matrix.org/blog/2022/09/28/upgrade-now-to-address-en... has the details. Of course, you are welcome to pick up any and all CVEs and claim they are evidence of a grand conspiracy if you wish. :|
  - goodSteveramos 3y ago
    Thats fair. I find it unlikely those issues were deliberately inserted. Part of espionage is developing contacts and sources. Putting people on the inside of organizations from their inception so as to keep tabs, and supporting organizations that you have the most influence in. China for example requires foreign startups hiring Chinese engineering talent to include a Chinese citizen as a founder so they have institutional visibility and influence in case later on that company makes decisions affecting China, such as participating in boycott or honoring Chinese data access requests. Its just smart politics. And yes it happens all the time and is a kind of ‘conspiracy’ if you chose to frame it that way. My concern that something like that happened with your organization is warranted. And just to be clear, I was super excited when I first got on Matrix. It really has the correct vision for how decentralized communications should work and I hope that vision wins, which is why I was so bummed when I heard about the connection to Amdocs.