5 ms·

I don't trust Signal

131 points by dijit 3y ago

whelp_24 3y ago
This is certainly a good set of points. The phone number thing always bothered me, I wonder what a good solution is?
- Onavo 3y ago
  Telegram has a Blockchain to sell you.
- codedokode 3y ago
  A good solution is paid registration. Telegram did an experiments for this, but they asked too much (about $10-15 for not requiring a phone number) and you needed to buy their weird cryptocurrency. If Telegram asked about $4 in BTC for anonimity, I would gladly pay for it. It's interesting that this experiment shows how valuable is knowing your phone number and identity.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Federation. Matrix has you.
- up6w6 3y ago
  Usernames is a pending feature[1], something discussed in their "secret" non-indexed forum. [1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157 https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157
- clnq 3y ago
  On the user (and actionable) end, getting a cheap SIM from a country where they are sold OTC. Then, registering with that. You only need to confirm your number once, I think.
  - cuu508 3y ago
    But keep in mind these numbers expire if you do not top them up regularly, and eventually get assigned to someome else.
    - clnq 3y ago
      Yes, but it’s a throwaway SIM, so it doesn’t matter.
      - cuu508 3y ago
        If you don't have access to the original phone number you used for registering, and accidentally lose or break the phone, how do you recover the account?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I don't know if there is a good solution. Mostly it's a trade-off against these problematic options: 1. your contacts to be stored server-side instead of device-side, where they might end up in the hands of an adversary 2. your contacts to be stored in some other, less-ubuquitous-and-less-likely-to-be-complete format on your device. Maybe signal could have write access to your contacts so that it could store its own identifiers in the address book, but I could see a lot of wtf moments coming up when privacy-minded folk see that permission request.
terrorOf 3y ago
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tptacek 3y ago
This is idiotic. Signal didn't take money from the NSA, they took money from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which funded virtually all Internet privacy projects during the time period we're talking about, both American and otherwise; some of those dollars went to development, and still more went to contracting commercial pentests from firms like Matasano, the one I co-ran, and iSEC Partners. This article says it's not rehashing DeVault's arguments, and it isn't; it's making an even dumber set of arguments.
- CyanBird 3y ago
  Let people make their own third party tools/readers and then let these arguments rot The ball is on Signal's control, but they are clearly not caring to improve further, just stagnate so long as they have got control of it
  - tptacek 3y ago
    There are valid reasons to prefer other apps, but this is not really one of them; it is the Signal idiosyncrasy that has most clearly been vindicated, by what happened to Matrix, which has the opposite model and has suffered for it and will continue to. In the unlikely event that a set of vulnerabilities as devastating as those from the Nebuchadnezzar paper were found in Signal, Signal controls the whole platform end-to-end, and can simply publish software updates to fix them. Matrix has to do a coordinated multivendor update of their entire protocol.
    - Vecr 3y ago
      Right, but what prevents them from doing a similar whole-platform "update" to totally screw up privacy/security? The point of software freedom is the freedom to run variations on the software that's reasonably easy to do, because you have the source. If it's supposedly "you can connect to any Signal server you want, as long as it's our Signal server" and "you can use any Signal client you want as long as it's our signal client", there's not much freedom left there.
      - 3y ago
poink 3y ago
My primary issue with Signal is that they’re a USA-based org, and AFAIK a NSL would allow the US government to collect the same metadata they could with SMS or iMessage They might not have the contents of your messages, but they know who you’re talking to, and when
- tptacek 3y ago
  Remember that if you're not USA based, NSA doesn't need an NSL to collect information from you; they can just own you up, and that is literally their chartered purpose. That's not to say you should use US providers! Just that NSLs aren't a good reason to pick a provider. Pick a service that doesn't have information to share about you in the first place as your high order bit.
  - poink 3y ago
    For sure! I’m assuming TAO or whomever can come after me at any point for manufactured reasons, if nothing else. Nothing I can do there… I do think this matters in a general sense, because state actors targeting individual users is a completely different threat from state actors collecting the communication graph of a major hub.
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    No it is not literally their charter. SIGINT is one half their chartered purpose. The other half is SIGSEC. And I had good reason to know directly.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      The IAD mission protects our assets, not those of foreign sovereigns or their citizens.
  - lmm 3y ago
    > Remember that if you're not USA based, NSA doesn't need an NSL to collect information from you; they can just own you up, and that is literally their chartered purpose. "Owning you up" is harder (not impossible, but harder) when they can't simply send a letter and bring the force of the law to bear. NSLs are a very good reason to avoid any system that requires you to use a provider that has a presence in the US (and there are analogous concerns about e.g. AU, and obviously any country where legal and practical protections are weak enough that a strongman can just send a team of thugs round is a nonstarter). But really any specific country is beside the point; it should be table stakes for a serious cryptosystem that one can avoid depending on any single point (and make choices based on one's own trust base vs available resources) whether that's for relay servers, app maintenance, or anything else. > Pick a service that doesn't have information to share about you in the first place as your high order bit. True enough; obviously trusting your security to a system that requires you to use a phone number identity is laughable in the first place.
s5300 3y ago
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AHOHA 3y ago
Thank you, I’ve always highlighted most of these points here in HN and I get heavily downvoted and attacked being “paranoid”, how is it paranoid if you don’t even have a way to confirm the physical servers are secure from memory injection attacks/boot attacks/etc.? How would you verify after the audit, something was changed? Phone numbers are inherently have broken security by protocol design (and I personally have a lot of personal work on attacking GSM protocol, and I know how easy it’s for 3 letters agencies with enough funding and access to exploit it), why I don’t have an option to choose? Why it was shilled so hard that time when WhatsApp went dark? There’s a LOT of sketchy things, there’s noway I would trust it, never will.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  The point of an E2E cryptographic design is that you don’t ever need to trust the server — the server can be as malicious as it pleases, so long as you can affirmatively demonstrate that the client never communicates anything that isn’t encrypted with a key the server has no access to.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    That was the original argument. But Signal has now rolled out functionality (sharing of contact lists and other details with the server through Intel SGX) that does force one to trust the server.
    - News-Dog 3y ago
      >being “paranoid” - Ask yourself... Do you have absolute trust in your; - Hardware - Firmware - O/S - app(s) - ISP - internet - Governments (Yours and Others) Did you answer 'No' to any?
      - sshine 3y ago
        From TFA: > E2EE is meaningless if the client and the network are the same Using modern, networked computers does involve a lot of trust. But as long as it's not one company delivering the whole stack, some attacks require a gradually more unlikely scenario where a lot of parties across the world would have to cooperate, and the cost of an exploit that traverses the software stack becomes so expensive that targeting you is out of scope.
rapsey 3y ago
If you're not paying for it you are the product.
- nequo 3y ago
  Do you think that this applies to Wikipedia, GCC, or Neovim too?
  - rapsey 3y ago
    Those are open source projects with people donating their effort into the final product. Signal has employed developers.
    - guraf 3y ago
      Wikipedia also has employed developers.
      - rapsey 3y ago
        The final product comes from volunteers.
        nequo 3y ago
        This description also fits Facebook and Instagram. But I would assume that you mean the saying to apply to them.
- codedokode 3y ago
  As Microsoft has shown, you are the product even if you pay them.
- x86x87 3y ago
  signal is a 501c3 nonprofit and technically this is how the work is founded. you also have the option to donate if you want to "pay" for it.
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
This article makes early on a major factual error, claiming that Signal is on F-Droid. It is not, and the Signal team’s refusal to authorize the app on F-Droid is a well-known and longstanding decision. The author then claims that the team’s development of new functionality behind closed doors (payments) represents some kind of betrayal of Signal being open source. Yet all clients running on people’s phones in the meantime were based on source that was published, with verifiable builds. Finally, Moxie Marlinspike is no longer leading Signal. There are nevertheless legitimate reasons to not trust Signal and to worry about compromise. I am pleased to see that the author mentions one major but usually overlooked one: the (optional, but encouraged) sharing of people’s contact lists with the server through Intel SGX functionality, which has been repeatedly found to be insecure.
- lmm 3y ago
  > Yet all clients running on people’s phones in the meantime were based on source that was published, with verifiable builds. "Based on" meaning they're built from that source but have changes to it? Because given that the published source had known bugs and was not updated for months, either they're not fixing known bugs for months, or they're publishing builds based on unpublished source. (And the article does address the verifiable builds point, pointing out that it doesn't and can't really work).
  - hiq 3y ago
    > the published source had known bugs and was not updated for months That's the server code, not the client code. > the article does address the verifiable builds point, pointing out that it doesn't and can't really work IIRC (the article is now down for me for some reason), the author was again talking about server code.
SeanLuke 3y ago
> CIA gave us Tor I thought NRL gave us Tor.
- tptacek 3y ago
  That's correct.
gkbrk 3y ago
> Of course signal is open source, it’s on f-droid Even with their criticism, the author is giving Signal too much credit. Signal is not on F-Droid. Signal sends their lawyers after open-source app repos for including their app. I think the only claim they have is their trademark name "Signal". I wonder what's a good name for packagers to use for apps like this. Reminds me of Firefox and IceCat, or Rust Lang and Crab Lang.
- jachee 3y ago
  How about something like NoNoise? Or Beacon. Or Flare. Or FOSSE2EEMsgApp.
- Timwi 3y ago
  Trademark doesn't mean you can't say “Signal” at all. You can officially call it Whatever but then always say “Whatever (like Signal)” or “Whatever (Signal-compatible)”.
- seba_dos1 3y ago
  It would merely be annoying if it was just about a trademarked name, but it's worse than that. They actually forbid using their infrastructure from non-official clients.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gjsman-1000 3y ago
I personally think all the major VPNs are honeypots, that’s my conspiracy. Subpoenaing my ISP is far more work legally than just having data being fed to them for free. For those who think that’s too far, Crypto AG. A company that actually wasn’t founded by the CIA, but was slowly bought out by intelligence agencies with shell companies. Also they were Swiss by every appearance! Good thing there isn’t a modern Swiss company many people here use and trust because they are Swiss and not US… Also, paying for VPNs with cash is, in my opinion, overrated when they know your actual IP address. Sure, visit the coffee shop, but if the coffee shop has cameras…
- dijit 3y ago
  Can't fault your reasoning even slightly. VPN services are such easy targets that even if they weren't honeypots they would effectively be so.
ggm 3y ago
"trust" is one of those words which has contextual meaning. I actually do "trust" signal, for low risk things. I don't routinely do high risk things and so I can make a cost/benefit decision facing who might exploit what I am doing and the consequences for me. Other people live in the margins of what either their own, or some aggressor society wants and information from/about them is key. I can understand somebody having a heightened sense of what should be the foundation of "trust" in these circumstances. But that said: simply using signal is probably putting a giant red flag over you in some circumstances. Or, PGP. Any self-installed cryptographic technology you are associated with, puts a marker against you for some problems. I don't "trust" closed source. I prefer that people have review, and that objective groups of people I trust in a personal sense (because I know them, no matter how vaguely, from online lists, and IETF wg and the like) tell me from their position of contextual knowledge, and I admit some authority, where trust can be well placed. Some of them are American. Some of them work for agencies related to the state, like the FCC and in some cases the NSA. I again have to re-frame "trust" into the sense of what it means when somebody who works for an agency like those tell you something. (others of them are not american, do not work for these agencies, or sister agencies in five eyes or other economies. But I observe, if you are competent to speak about cryptography you almost certainly DO engage with people who work for state enterprises like NIST and the NSA, even if in other economies. Its just the way the world IS: academics who work on cryptography have a circuit of relationships which includes the mathematicians inside these agencies) I don't "trust" Moxie quite as much as I did, because some of the actions around Signal confused and worried me. And, I saw little to no desire to engage. Well, he doesn't owe me anything, financial or moral. I have no direct relationship, and in the end if he decided trying to assuage a million edge users like me (edge user not edge lord) was a loosing game, I can't fault his logic but the other side of that logic is I don't "trust" him as much as I used to. I do trust Meredith. I have met her (once or twice) and she seems to me to behave in an open, direct manner, and when she says things I see them reflected in what she does. And, I trust the kinds of statements she has made about signal and the kinds of things I see emerging around governance of something like signal. In due course I do hope she and the board can say something about source code, and future development, and how we can re-build or build from scratch some reasoned trust in the code, and its cryptography and the trust in systems behind the code.
- 3y ago
thevagrant 3y ago
Does Signal still try to access the address book and alert all your contacts you have installed the app? That was a big reason from me to avoid it.
- kylec 3y ago
  Same. As trustworthy as Signal might be, the most trustworthy chat service is one I don't have to trust at all. Being required to give them access to my contacts was a dealbreaker for me.
- PlunderBunny 3y ago
  On the macOS client (and iOS client too, I think), Signal keeps periodically prompting me to import my contacts, and the only options offered are 'Yes' and 'Not Now'. I have an intense dislike for any software that offers a 'not now' option without also offering a 'not ever' option, particularly when it's about exporting PIIs. It feels like it's just saying "ok, but one day we know you're going to slip up and accidentally click the 'Yes' button, and then... bam!"
bighoki2885000 3y ago
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paxys 3y ago
They keep bringing up the point that for an E2E encrypted app to be secure the client and network must be fully independent from each other, but I am not able to understand why. If I trust Signal the client, why does it matter what backend it is talking to? Being able to communicate over an untrustworthy network is in fact a core selling point of such apps. So why does it matter that Signal runs both?
- dijit 3y ago
  Because functionally it's not any different than just trusting the network. If telegram says "trust me, we can't read anything" and signal says the same: the only way you know it to be true is if they have never given you any software that has access to the unencrypted content. OR you only use another network to communicate (and, obviously, you ensure that your clients aren't sending any messages out to anywhere that's not that network). If you play around with the EFF's lovely Tor diagram you can get an idea of what I mean: https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https
up6w6 3y ago
They also don't have any publicly defined approach to combat criminal activity on their network, like they can't give the IP address of personal information, but they can still delete the groups and related accounts[1] - just create an account from these free temporary phone numbers from the internet, you will be able to see the past groups accessed (and non exited) by the account. To give a contrast, Matrix has a clear approach to moderation[2]. * they have a forum[3] that is not even indexed by search engines[4], which is not community friendly at all. [1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/could-signal-become-the-new-criminal-network/19283 https://community.signalusers.org/t/could-signal-become-the-... [2] https://matrix.org/docs/communities/moderation/ https://matrix.org/docs/communities/moderation/ [3] https://community.signalusers.org https://community.signalusers.org [4] https://community.signalusers.org/t/google-site-search-doesnt-work-on-the-forum/12396/16 https://community.signalusers.org/t/google-site-search-doesn...
lohnjemon 3y ago
Don't trust Signal for what? For communicating about illegal dealings, that intelligence agencies are interested in cracking down? Ok, sure, but then don't "trust" anything digital over the wire. What about having E2EE traffic for your day-to-day communications? Why not, it seems reasonably protected and no government agency or third party would reasonably put the effort into looking into that.
- flangola7 3y ago
  "day to day" and "illegal dealings" are not mutually exclusive for an ever growing proportion of the population.
nomilk 3y ago
> This throws into question what (Signal) consider “open source”, they are clearly deploying non-public software. [1] Even if Signal did deploy the publicly available code, there's no way they nor a user can prove it. We should never assume an open source version of anything is what's actually running on a server - edits could have been made to the code; in fact it could be entirely different software designed to appear similar. [1] Minor edits for brevity's sake
opportune 3y ago
This is an excellent post, but I want to point out that what really matters here is your threat model. If you are trying to hide from the NSA or other nation states, you have a LOT of work cut out for you. There are basically two sub threat models: are you trying to hide from the dragnet (in which case, just using any obscure and relatively obfuscated communications mechanism will work) or the scenario in which you’re being actively targeted (in which case you need rock solid security from end to end). Keep in mind that the Security version of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole means the security of your networked device is just as important as your messaging protocol, and… good luck with that on mobile. If you are just a small fish trying to avoid something with a court-admissible record (and don’t care about parallel construction) you’re probably fine with Signal, provided you understand that your counterparty can just give you up. I hate to bring out the “nothing to hide” argument because I disagree with its premise from a moral standpoint, but from a practical standpoint, I recommend avoiding having “directly targeted by the NSA and needing to avoid it” as your threat model to begin with.
- News-Dog 3y ago
  I am reminded of basic concepts; Zero Trust Security Model - Trust no One (Internet Security) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_trust_security_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_trust_security_model
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    Unless you are also building your entire hardware from scratch, including the CPU, and writing or auditing all firmware and device drivers, "zero trust" is a fantasy. Zero trust means verifying everything. Not only has no living person verified the entire technology stack they are using, it is literally impossible to do so for any modern consumer device, since they all contain closed hardware and software that affects the trust model yet cannot be verified in any meaningful sense.
    - opportune 3y ago
      Maybe that commenter didn’t know what zero-trust means. Zero-trust in practice just means continuing to authenticate from within your “perimeter”, ie, assume an employee or machine is already compromised. If you need unbreakable encryption and security that even the NSA (or the various vendors it works with to find zero day exploits) can’t hack you need to get off the fucking internet
yuuta 3y ago
I never trusted Signal due to https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/60 https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/60
eduction 3y ago
Not one but several “close the tab” level dumb claims: -that you cannot be open source if you do not instantly share every change -that the nsa funded signal -that you can bribe the New Yorker magazine to write a profile about you -that Facebook Messenger is as secure as Signal I don’t trust dijit.
- dijit 3y ago
  Ironically I tell people all the time not to trust me. I run an IRC network (and have for 15 years), and I tell people often to use OTR in DMS primarily because I shouldn't be trusted. I definitely do not tell people to install my client and forsake all other networks. > -that you can bribe the New Yorker magazine to write a profile about you Oh that's definitely true; though I wasn't saying bribe; Did you know those "30 under 30" lists, you have to apply to be on those. It helps if you're rich, but you don't technically have to pay. It's like this with a lot of media. I have been in the room when discussing paying for PR pieces on our senior staff, especially the CEO in top magazines. Truthfully you hire a PR agency and "things happen". > -that Facebook Messenger is as secure as Signal Why are they not? > -that you cannot be open source if you do not instantly share every change You are not, since nobody can bloody run the software themselves anyway, and the entire point is transparency.
  - md_ 3y ago
    > Oh that's definitely true; though I wasn't saying bribe; Did you know those "30 under 30" lists, you have to apply to be on those. It helps if you're rich, but you don't technically have to pay. It's like this with a lot of media. I mean, you wrote, "From everything I personally know about the media, articles like that are usually paid for, though almost never directly by the person being profiled." This is, frankly, a stupid claim, though I think from your profile you are probably German or Austrian and thus might not really know which news outlets are reliable. As a perhaps helpful analogy, the New Yorker is roughly like Der Spiegel or Die Zeit, only more respected. (That's not to say they don't have misses; Ken Auletta's profile of Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind.) The prospect that you can pay for coverage--and as an aside, I don't think The New Yorker has ever run "30 under 30" lists--is rather laughable. > You are not, since nobody can bloody run the software themselves anyway, and the entire point is transparency. Er, what are you talking about? https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ I don't know how to say this nicely, but your post doesn't have a strong connection to facts.
poopsmithe 3y ago
A big red flag for me was when Moxie left the company. If Moxie believed in the project, would he leave? I don't think so.
amanzi 3y ago
The open-source aspect is interesting with hosted services. Even if Signal open-sourced their entire stack (front-end & back-end), you still couldn't be sure that the code they are hosting for you is exactly the same as the published open-source code.
p-e-w 3y ago
> I do not believe that end-to-end encryption means anything at all when the network and the client are the same entity. That's textbook black-and-white thinking, and it's bullshit. I agree that network and client being controlled by the same entity raises questions, but that doesn't imply that E2EE "doesn't mean anything". A very basic argument that shows why you are wrong: It's much easier for the government to compel a company to hand over data from their servers than it is to compel the company to write and publish a backdoored client. The two scenarios are not equivalent in practice, and this is what matters. Threat models that ignore how the real world operates are useless. Please read up on the concept of "defense in depth", central to modern information security, which is built around the insight that security mechanisms can be valuable even if they don't work perfectly in all circumstances.
- sshine 3y ago
  > It's much easier for the government to compel a company to hand over data from their servers than it is to compel the company to write and publish a backdoored client. The two scenarios are not equivalent in practice, and this is what matters. Threat models that ignore how the real world operates are useless. There is a very real threat when - Signal servers operate in the US and clients on app stores run by large US companies - Signal can becompelled to not release government-imposed backdoors - Signal stops releasing their open-source version, but patches it arbitrarily in production I've read an interview that there is code related to anti-spam you can't share if you're a large network, because it's an arms race. But because Signal does not make their operations transparent beyond what's absolutely necessary to keep secret wrt. anti-spam, this creates distrust: It leaves a sense that they care more about uptime than trust, because they got big. So it's not the messenger of choice for political dissidents, where your threat model does involve the government to some degree (passive or active).
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
This article is a grab bag of complaints, conspiracy theories and one or two valid points. Yes, it needs your phone number. Yes, it shares contacts, protected in a (somewhat) secure enclave. Yes, Signal could theoretically distribute a compromised client that would undermine the end to end encryption (which if ever discovered would end their organisation). If you are afraid of spy agencies or hostile governments, don't use it. If you just want reasonable protection for your chats with friends and family, it's perfectly fine. I trust it more than WhatsApp.
DueDilligence 3y ago
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bighoki2885000 3y ago
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bighoki2885000 3y ago
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h0ek 3y ago
iOS vs android, Windows vs Linux and now Signal vs Telegram... never-ending story. Always something wrong https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ https://www.securemessagingapps.com/

131 points by dijit 3y ago

whelp_24 3y ago

This is certainly a good set of points. The phone number thing always bothered me, I wonder what a good solution is?

Onavo 3y ago
Telegram has a Blockchain to sell you.
codedokode 3y ago
A good solution is paid registration. Telegram did an experiments for this, but they asked too much (about $10-15 for not requiring a phone number) and you needed to buy their weird cryptocurrency. If Telegram asked about $4 in BTC for anonimity, I would gladly pay for it. It's interesting that this experiment shows how valuable is knowing your phone number and identity.
jojobas 3y ago
Federation. Matrix has you.
up6w6 3y ago
Usernames is a pending feature[1], something discussed in their "secret" non-indexed forum. [1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157 https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157
clnq 3y ago
On the user (and actionable) end, getting a cheap SIM from a country where they are sold OTC. Then, registering with that. You only need to confirm your number once, I think.
- cuu508 3y ago
  But keep in mind these numbers expire if you do not top them up regularly, and eventually get assigned to someome else.
  - clnq 3y ago
    Yes, but it’s a throwaway SIM, so it doesn’t matter.
    - cuu508 3y ago
      If you don't have access to the original phone number you used for registering, and accidentally lose or break the phone, how do you recover the account?
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I don't know if there is a good solution. Mostly it's a trade-off against these problematic options: 1. your contacts to be stored server-side instead of device-side, where they might end up in the hands of an adversary 2. your contacts to be stored in some other, less-ubuquitous-and-less-likely-to-be-complete format on your device. Maybe signal could have write access to your contacts so that it could store its own identifiers in the address book, but I could see a lot of wtf moments coming up when privacy-minded folk see that permission request.

terrorOf 3y ago

[dead]

tptacek 3y ago

This is idiotic. Signal didn't take money from the NSA, they took money from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which funded virtually all Internet privacy projects during the time period we're talking about, both American and otherwise; some of those dollars went to development, and still more went to contracting commercial pentests from firms like Matasano, the one I co-ran, and iSEC Partners. This article says it's not rehashing DeVault's arguments, and it isn't; it's making an even dumber set of arguments.

CyanBird 3y ago
Let people make their own third party tools/readers and then let these arguments rot The ball is on Signal's control, but they are clearly not caring to improve further, just stagnate so long as they have got control of it
- tptacek 3y ago
  There are valid reasons to prefer other apps, but this is not really one of them; it is the Signal idiosyncrasy that has most clearly been vindicated, by what happened to Matrix, which has the opposite model and has suffered for it and will continue to. In the unlikely event that a set of vulnerabilities as devastating as those from the Nebuchadnezzar paper were found in Signal, Signal controls the whole platform end-to-end, and can simply publish software updates to fix them. Matrix has to do a coordinated multivendor update of their entire protocol.
  - Vecr 3y ago
    Right, but what prevents them from doing a similar whole-platform "update" to totally screw up privacy/security? The point of software freedom is the freedom to run variations on the software that's reasonably easy to do, because you have the source. If it's supposedly "you can connect to any Signal server you want, as long as it's our Signal server" and "you can use any Signal client you want as long as it's our signal client", there's not much freedom left there.
    - 3y ago

poink 3y ago

My primary issue with Signal is that they’re a USA-based org, and AFAIK a NSL would allow the US government to collect the same metadata they could with SMS or iMessage They might not have the contents of your messages, but they know who you’re talking to, and when

tptacek 3y ago
Remember that if you're not USA based, NSA doesn't need an NSL to collect information from you; they can just own you up, and that is literally their chartered purpose. That's not to say you should use US providers! Just that NSLs aren't a good reason to pick a provider. Pick a service that doesn't have information to share about you in the first place as your high order bit.
- poink 3y ago
  For sure! I’m assuming TAO or whomever can come after me at any point for manufactured reasons, if nothing else. Nothing I can do there… I do think this matters in a general sense, because state actors targeting individual users is a completely different threat from state actors collecting the communication graph of a major hub.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  No it is not literally their charter. SIGINT is one half their chartered purpose. The other half is SIGSEC. And I had good reason to know directly.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    The IAD mission protects our assets, not those of foreign sovereigns or their citizens.
- lmm 3y ago
  > Remember that if you're not USA based, NSA doesn't need an NSL to collect information from you; they can just own you up, and that is literally their chartered purpose. "Owning you up" is harder (not impossible, but harder) when they can't simply send a letter and bring the force of the law to bear. NSLs are a very good reason to avoid any system that requires you to use a provider that has a presence in the US (and there are analogous concerns about e.g. AU, and obviously any country where legal and practical protections are weak enough that a strongman can just send a team of thugs round is a nonstarter). But really any specific country is beside the point; it should be table stakes for a serious cryptosystem that one can avoid depending on any single point (and make choices based on one's own trust base vs available resources) whether that's for relay servers, app maintenance, or anything else. > Pick a service that doesn't have information to share about you in the first place as your high order bit. True enough; obviously trusting your security to a system that requires you to use a phone number identity is laughable in the first place.

s5300 3y ago

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AHOHA 3y ago

Thank you, I’ve always highlighted most of these points here in HN and I get heavily downvoted and attacked being “paranoid”, how is it paranoid if you don’t even have a way to confirm the physical servers are secure from memory injection attacks/boot attacks/etc.? How would you verify after the audit, something was changed? Phone numbers are inherently have broken security by protocol design (and I personally have a lot of personal work on attacking GSM protocol, and I know how easy it’s for 3 letters agencies with enough funding and access to exploit it), why I don’t have an option to choose? Why it was shilled so hard that time when WhatsApp went dark? There’s a LOT of sketchy things, there’s noway I would trust it, never will.

woodruffw 3y ago
The point of an E2E cryptographic design is that you don’t ever need to trust the server — the server can be as malicious as it pleases, so long as you can affirmatively demonstrate that the client never communicates anything that isn’t encrypted with a key the server has no access to.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  That was the original argument. But Signal has now rolled out functionality (sharing of contact lists and other details with the server through Intel SGX) that does force one to trust the server.
  - News-Dog 3y ago
    >being “paranoid” - Ask yourself... Do you have absolute trust in your; - Hardware - Firmware - O/S - app(s) - ISP - internet - Governments (Yours and Others) Did you answer 'No' to any?
    - sshine 3y ago
      From TFA: > E2EE is meaningless if the client and the network are the same Using modern, networked computers does involve a lot of trust. But as long as it's not one company delivering the whole stack, some attacks require a gradually more unlikely scenario where a lot of parties across the world would have to cooperate, and the cost of an exploit that traverses the software stack becomes so expensive that targeting you is out of scope.

rapsey 3y ago

If you're not paying for it you are the product.

nequo 3y ago
Do you think that this applies to Wikipedia, GCC, or Neovim too?
- rapsey 3y ago
  Those are open source projects with people donating their effort into the final product. Signal has employed developers.
  - guraf 3y ago
    Wikipedia also has employed developers.
    - rapsey 3y ago
      The final product comes from volunteers.
      - nequo 3y ago
        This description also fits Facebook and Instagram. But I would assume that you mean the saying to apply to them.
codedokode 3y ago
As Microsoft has shown, you are the product even if you pay them.
x86x87 3y ago
signal is a 501c3 nonprofit and technically this is how the work is founded. you also have the option to donate if you want to "pay" for it.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

This article makes early on a major factual error, claiming that Signal is on F-Droid. It is not, and the Signal team’s refusal to authorize the app on F-Droid is a well-known and longstanding decision. The author then claims that the team’s development of new functionality behind closed doors (payments) represents some kind of betrayal of Signal being open source. Yet all clients running on people’s phones in the meantime were based on source that was published, with verifiable builds. Finally, Moxie Marlinspike is no longer leading Signal. There are nevertheless legitimate reasons to not trust Signal and to worry about compromise. I am pleased to see that the author mentions one major but usually overlooked one: the (optional, but encouraged) sharing of people’s contact lists with the server through Intel SGX functionality, which has been repeatedly found to be insecure.

lmm 3y ago
> Yet all clients running on people’s phones in the meantime were based on source that was published, with verifiable builds. "Based on" meaning they're built from that source but have changes to it? Because given that the published source had known bugs and was not updated for months, either they're not fixing known bugs for months, or they're publishing builds based on unpublished source. (And the article does address the verifiable builds point, pointing out that it doesn't and can't really work).
- hiq 3y ago
  > the published source had known bugs and was not updated for months That's the server code, not the client code. > the article does address the verifiable builds point, pointing out that it doesn't and can't really work IIRC (the article is now down for me for some reason), the author was again talking about server code.

SeanLuke 3y ago

> CIA gave us Tor I thought NRL gave us Tor.

tptacek 3y ago
That's correct.

gkbrk 3y ago

> Of course signal is open source, it’s on f-droid Even with their criticism, the author is giving Signal too much credit. Signal is not on F-Droid. Signal sends their lawyers after open-source app repos for including their app. I think the only claim they have is their trademark name "Signal". I wonder what's a good name for packagers to use for apps like this. Reminds me of Firefox and IceCat, or Rust Lang and Crab Lang.

jachee 3y ago
How about something like NoNoise? Or Beacon. Or Flare. Or FOSSE2EEMsgApp.
Timwi 3y ago
Trademark doesn't mean you can't say “Signal” at all. You can officially call it Whatever but then always say “Whatever (like Signal)” or “Whatever (Signal-compatible)”.
seba_dos1 3y ago
It would merely be annoying if it was just about a trademarked name, but it's worse than that. They actually forbid using their infrastructure from non-official clients.

deleted 3y ago

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gjsman-1000 3y ago

I personally think all the major VPNs are honeypots, that’s my conspiracy. Subpoenaing my ISP is far more work legally than just having data being fed to them for free. For those who think that’s too far, Crypto AG. A company that actually wasn’t founded by the CIA, but was slowly bought out by intelligence agencies with shell companies. Also they were Swiss by every appearance! Good thing there isn’t a modern Swiss company many people here use and trust because they are Swiss and not US… Also, paying for VPNs with cash is, in my opinion, overrated when they know your actual IP address. Sure, visit the coffee shop, but if the coffee shop has cameras…

dijit 3y ago
Can't fault your reasoning even slightly. VPN services are such easy targets that even if they weren't honeypots they would effectively be so.

ggm 3y ago

"trust" is one of those words which has contextual meaning. I actually do "trust" signal, for low risk things. I don't routinely do high risk things and so I can make a cost/benefit decision facing who might exploit what I am doing and the consequences for me. Other people live in the margins of what either their own, or some aggressor society wants and information from/about them is key. I can understand somebody having a heightened sense of what should be the foundation of "trust" in these circumstances. But that said: simply using signal is probably putting a giant red flag over you in some circumstances. Or, PGP. Any self-installed cryptographic technology you are associated with, puts a marker against you for some problems. I don't "trust" closed source. I prefer that people have review, and that objective groups of people I trust in a personal sense (because I know them, no matter how vaguely, from online lists, and IETF wg and the like) tell me from their position of contextual knowledge, and I admit some authority, where trust can be well placed. Some of them are American. Some of them work for agencies related to the state, like the FCC and in some cases the NSA. I again have to re-frame "trust" into the sense of what it means when somebody who works for an agency like those tell you something. (others of them are not american, do not work for these agencies, or sister agencies in five eyes or other economies. But I observe, if you are competent to speak about cryptography you almost certainly DO engage with people who work for state enterprises like NIST and the NSA, even if in other economies. Its just the way the world IS: academics who work on cryptography have a circuit of relationships which includes the mathematicians inside these agencies) I don't "trust" Moxie quite as much as I did, because some of the actions around Signal confused and worried me. And, I saw little to no desire to engage. Well, he doesn't owe me anything, financial or moral. I have no direct relationship, and in the end if he decided trying to assuage a million edge users like me (edge user not edge lord) was a loosing game, I can't fault his logic but the other side of that logic is I don't "trust" him as much as I used to. I do trust Meredith. I have met her (once or twice) and she seems to me to behave in an open, direct manner, and when she says things I see them reflected in what she does. And, I trust the kinds of statements she has made about signal and the kinds of things I see emerging around governance of something like signal. In due course I do hope she and the board can say something about source code, and future development, and how we can re-build or build from scratch some reasoned trust in the code, and its cryptography and the trust in systems behind the code.

3y ago

thevagrant 3y ago

Does Signal still try to access the address book and alert all your contacts you have installed the app? That was a big reason from me to avoid it.

kylec 3y ago
Same. As trustworthy as Signal might be, the most trustworthy chat service is one I don't have to trust at all. Being required to give them access to my contacts was a dealbreaker for me.
PlunderBunny 3y ago
On the macOS client (and iOS client too, I think), Signal keeps periodically prompting me to import my contacts, and the only options offered are 'Yes' and 'Not Now'. I have an intense dislike for any software that offers a 'not now' option without also offering a 'not ever' option, particularly when it's about exporting PIIs. It feels like it's just saying "ok, but one day we know you're going to slip up and accidentally click the 'Yes' button, and then... bam!"

bighoki2885000 3y ago

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paxys 3y ago

They keep bringing up the point that for an E2E encrypted app to be secure the client and network must be fully independent from each other, but I am not able to understand why. If I trust Signal the client, why does it matter what backend it is talking to? Being able to communicate over an untrustworthy network is in fact a core selling point of such apps. So why does it matter that Signal runs both?

dijit 3y ago
Because functionally it's not any different than just trusting the network. If telegram says "trust me, we can't read anything" and signal says the same: the only way you know it to be true is if they have never given you any software that has access to the unencrypted content. OR you only use another network to communicate (and, obviously, you ensure that your clients aren't sending any messages out to anywhere that's not that network). If you play around with the EFF's lovely Tor diagram you can get an idea of what I mean: https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https https://www.eff.org/pages/tor-and-https

up6w6 3y ago

They also don't have any publicly defined approach to combat criminal activity on their network, like they can't give the IP address of personal information, but they can still delete the groups and related accounts[1] - just create an account from these free temporary phone numbers from the internet, you will be able to see the past groups accessed (and non exited) by the account. To give a contrast, Matrix has a clear approach to moderation[2]. * they have a forum[3] that is not even indexed by search engines[4], which is not community friendly at all. [1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/could-signal-become-the-new-criminal-network/19283 https://community.signalusers.org/t/could-signal-become-the-... [2] https://matrix.org/docs/communities/moderation/ https://matrix.org/docs/communities/moderation/ [3] https://community.signalusers.org https://community.signalusers.org [4] https://community.signalusers.org/t/google-site-search-doesnt-work-on-the-forum/12396/16 https://community.signalusers.org/t/google-site-search-doesn...

lohnjemon 3y ago

Don't trust Signal for what? For communicating about illegal dealings, that intelligence agencies are interested in cracking down? Ok, sure, but then don't "trust" anything digital over the wire. What about having E2EE traffic for your day-to-day communications? Why not, it seems reasonably protected and no government agency or third party would reasonably put the effort into looking into that.

flangola7 3y ago
"day to day" and "illegal dealings" are not mutually exclusive for an ever growing proportion of the population.

nomilk 3y ago

> This throws into question what (Signal) consider “open source”, they are clearly deploying non-public software. [1] Even if Signal did deploy the publicly available code, there's no way they nor a user can prove it. We should never assume an open source version of anything is what's actually running on a server - edits could have been made to the code; in fact it could be entirely different software designed to appear similar. [1] Minor edits for brevity's sake

opportune 3y ago

This is an excellent post, but I want to point out that what really matters here is your threat model. If you are trying to hide from the NSA or other nation states, you have a LOT of work cut out for you. There are basically two sub threat models: are you trying to hide from the dragnet (in which case, just using any obscure and relatively obfuscated communications mechanism will work) or the scenario in which you’re being actively targeted (in which case you need rock solid security from end to end). Keep in mind that the Security version of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole means the security of your networked device is just as important as your messaging protocol, and… good luck with that on mobile. If you are just a small fish trying to avoid something with a court-admissible record (and don’t care about parallel construction) you’re probably fine with Signal, provided you understand that your counterparty can just give you up. I hate to bring out the “nothing to hide” argument because I disagree with its premise from a moral standpoint, but from a practical standpoint, I recommend avoiding having “directly targeted by the NSA and needing to avoid it” as your threat model to begin with.

News-Dog 3y ago
I am reminded of basic concepts; Zero Trust Security Model - Trust no One (Internet Security) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_trust_security_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_trust_security_model
- p-e-w 3y ago
  Unless you are also building your entire hardware from scratch, including the CPU, and writing or auditing all firmware and device drivers, "zero trust" is a fantasy. Zero trust means verifying everything. Not only has no living person verified the entire technology stack they are using, it is literally impossible to do so for any modern consumer device, since they all contain closed hardware and software that affects the trust model yet cannot be verified in any meaningful sense.
  - opportune 3y ago
    Maybe that commenter didn’t know what zero-trust means. Zero-trust in practice just means continuing to authenticate from within your “perimeter”, ie, assume an employee or machine is already compromised. If you need unbreakable encryption and security that even the NSA (or the various vendors it works with to find zero day exploits) can’t hack you need to get off the fucking internet

yuuta 3y ago

I never trusted Signal due to https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/60 https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/60

eduction 3y ago

Not one but several “close the tab” level dumb claims: -that you cannot be open source if you do not instantly share every change -that the nsa funded signal -that you can bribe the New Yorker magazine to write a profile about you -that Facebook Messenger is as secure as Signal I don’t trust dijit.

dijit 3y ago
Ironically I tell people all the time not to trust me. I run an IRC network (and have for 15 years), and I tell people often to use OTR in DMS primarily because I shouldn't be trusted. I definitely do not tell people to install my client and forsake all other networks. > -that you can bribe the New Yorker magazine to write a profile about you Oh that's definitely true; though I wasn't saying bribe; Did you know those "30 under 30" lists, you have to apply to be on those. It helps if you're rich, but you don't technically have to pay. It's like this with a lot of media. I have been in the room when discussing paying for PR pieces on our senior staff, especially the CEO in top magazines. Truthfully you hire a PR agency and "things happen". > -that Facebook Messenger is as secure as Signal Why are they not? > -that you cannot be open source if you do not instantly share every change You are not, since nobody can bloody run the software themselves anyway, and the entire point is transparency.
- md_ 3y ago
  > Oh that's definitely true; though I wasn't saying bribe; Did you know those "30 under 30" lists, you have to apply to be on those. It helps if you're rich, but you don't technically have to pay. It's like this with a lot of media. I mean, you wrote, "From everything I personally know about the media, articles like that are usually paid for, though almost never directly by the person being profiled." This is, frankly, a stupid claim, though I think from your profile you are probably German or Austrian and thus might not really know which news outlets are reliable. As a perhaps helpful analogy, the New Yorker is roughly like Der Spiegel or Die Zeit, only more respected. (That's not to say they don't have misses; Ken Auletta's profile of Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind.) The prospect that you can pay for coverage--and as an aside, I don't think The New Yorker has ever run "30 under 30" lists--is rather laughable. > You are not, since nobody can bloody run the software themselves anyway, and the entire point is transparency. Er, what are you talking about? https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/ I don't know how to say this nicely, but your post doesn't have a strong connection to facts.

poopsmithe 3y ago

A big red flag for me was when Moxie left the company. If Moxie believed in the project, would he leave? I don't think so.

amanzi 3y ago

The open-source aspect is interesting with hosted services. Even if Signal open-sourced their entire stack (front-end & back-end), you still couldn't be sure that the code they are hosting for you is exactly the same as the published open-source code.

p-e-w 3y ago

> I do not believe that end-to-end encryption means anything at all when the network and the client are the same entity. That's textbook black-and-white thinking, and it's bullshit. I agree that network and client being controlled by the same entity raises questions, but that doesn't imply that E2EE "doesn't mean anything". A very basic argument that shows why you are wrong: It's much easier for the government to compel a company to hand over data from their servers than it is to compel the company to write and publish a backdoored client. The two scenarios are not equivalent in practice, and this is what matters. Threat models that ignore how the real world operates are useless. Please read up on the concept of "defense in depth", central to modern information security, which is built around the insight that security mechanisms can be valuable even if they don't work perfectly in all circumstances.

sshine 3y ago
> It's much easier for the government to compel a company to hand over data from their servers than it is to compel the company to write and publish a backdoored client. The two scenarios are not equivalent in practice, and this is what matters. Threat models that ignore how the real world operates are useless. There is a very real threat when - Signal servers operate in the US and clients on app stores run by large US companies - Signal can becompelled to not release government-imposed backdoors - Signal stops releasing their open-source version, but patches it arbitrarily in production I've read an interview that there is code related to anti-spam you can't share if you're a large network, because it's an arms race. But because Signal does not make their operations transparent beyond what's absolutely necessary to keep secret wrt. anti-spam, this creates distrust: It leaves a sense that they care more about uptime than trust, because they got big. So it's not the messenger of choice for political dissidents, where your threat model does involve the government to some degree (passive or active).

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

This article is a grab bag of complaints, conspiracy theories and one or two valid points. Yes, it needs your phone number. Yes, it shares contacts, protected in a (somewhat) secure enclave. Yes, Signal could theoretically distribute a compromised client that would undermine the end to end encryption (which if ever discovered would end their organisation). If you are afraid of spy agencies or hostile governments, don't use it. If you just want reasonable protection for your chats with friends and family, it's perfectly fine. I trust it more than WhatsApp.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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bighoki2885000 3y ago

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bighoki2885000 3y ago

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h0ek 3y ago

iOS vs android, Windows vs Linux and now Signal vs Telegram... never-ending story. Always something wrong https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ https://www.securemessagingapps.com/