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I really hate articles like this. What is the actual vulnerability? It sounds like this guy was using a mobile device on his bare physical Internet connection,

I really hate articles like this. What is the actual vulnerability? It sounds like this guy was using a mobile device on his bare physical Internet connection, and then relying on this "encrypted Swiss messaging app" to keep him safe from the FBI. So it sounds like this is either a simple vulnerability in "Telegard", or at least a vulnerability in how this guy thought Telegard was supposed to work. And you might be thinking that people shouldn't have to worry about all these details, so they're unnecessary in a news article for general consumption. Except focusing on details is exactly what the article is encouraging with its target of "push notifications", but its description of the mechanism isn't specific or actionable. Cue endless folk security advice to "disable push notifications" with no recognition of their specific info leaking properties. Personally if I was going to maintain a persistent online nym actively posting evidence of things against most everyone's morals and generally antagonistic to law enforcement, I would use TOR and an operating system that wasn't designed by a surveillance company rather than thinking that some commercial off the shelf app made me invincible. Then again how is this really different than back in the day when people would ignore that IP addresses could identify them. It was great fun to go into pedophile IRC channels, paste a bunch of real names pulled off of poorly configured terminal servers, and watch the panicked disconnects.

tetromino_ 3y ago
I think the actual vulnerability is a way to connect a pseudonymous account on a third-party messaging service with the real-name account associated with a person's phone OS. FBI orders an "anonymous" messaging service to give them the Google and Apple push tokens that the service created and stored on its backend for some pseudonymous user when that user first registered through a smartphone app. Then the FBI goes to Google and Apple and orders them to hand over the gmail or iCloud ID associated with that push token. Which implies there are only 2 workarounds: * for a user - use a burner phone with a burner Gmail/iCloud ID and all forms of sync and cloud backups disabled * for privacy-focused messaging services - do not generate push tokens without an explicit user request. Tell the users about the privacy risk. And if a user opts into push notifications, frequently delete existing tokens, purge them from all logs and backups, and generate new ones.
- mindslight 3y ago
  It feels like that is very similar to ordering a messaging service to give up a user's IP address usage, and then asking Google/Apple for user IDs associated with that IP address at the appropriate times. The apparent differences being removing the shred of plausible deniability from shared IPs, and not having to correlate times. Still if you're leaving Google-account-sized breadcrumbs while trying to remain anonymous, I'd say you've already lost. The third (or really first) workaround is to use a personal computer with libre operating system rather than one designed by a surveillance company. Then you can skip this dynamic where entire OS subsystems have been designed around users being plainly identified.

tetromino_ 3y ago

I think the actual vulnerability is a way to connect a pseudonymous account on a third-party messaging service with the real-name account associated with a person's phone OS. FBI orders an "anonymous" messaging service to give them the Google and Apple push tokens that the service created and stored on its backend for some pseudonymous user when that user first registered through a smartphone app. Then the FBI goes to Google and Apple and orders them to hand over the gmail or iCloud ID associated with that push token. Which implies there are only 2 workarounds: * for a user - use a burner phone with a burner Gmail/iCloud ID and all forms of sync and cloud backups disabled * for privacy-focused messaging services - do not generate push tokens without an explicit user request. Tell the users about the privacy risk. And if a user opts into push notifications, frequently delete existing tokens, purge them from all logs and backups, and generate new ones.

mindslight 3y ago
It feels like that is very similar to ordering a messaging service to give up a user's IP address usage, and then asking Google/Apple for user IDs associated with that IP address at the appropriate times. The apparent differences being removing the shred of plausible deniability from shared IPs, and not having to correlate times. Still if you're leaving Google-account-sized breadcrumbs while trying to remain anonymous, I'd say you've already lost. The third (or really first) workaround is to use a personal computer with libre operating system rather than one designed by a surveillance company. Then you can skip this dynamic where entire OS subsystems have been designed around users being plainly identified.