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Wasn’t it a couple years ago the intelligence community was arguing for backdoor mandates, and now the FBI recommends Signal for safe chats? Such a farce. Hopef
by monero-xmr 2y ago
Wasn’t it a couple years ago the intelligence community was arguing for backdoor mandates, and now the FBI recommends Signal for safe chats? Such a farce. Hopefully the new admin goes through their emails and text messages over the last 4 years. Privacy for me, not for thee, I suppose…
- snypher 2y agoIt doesn't take much to read between the lines on those two statements. Feds have access to Signal if they want it, but are using it as filter paper against most attacks against the public etc.
- tptacek 2y agoThe "feds" do not have access to Signal, except by CNE attacks against individual phones. Signal's security does not rely on you trusting the Signal organization.
- snypher 2y agoIt's ok for someone to believe that, but I don't believe that. Unfortunately there is no practical way to verify it either.
- cosmojg 2y agoWhat are you talking about? Signal is open source, and its cryptographic security is trivially verifiable. If you don't trust the nonprofit behind it for whatever reason, you can simply compile it yourself.
- warkdarrior 2y agoIf you compile it yourself, can you still connect to the Signal servers?
- greyface- 2y agoAnd, even if you can connect with your own client, can you trust the server is running the code they claim it is? They were caught running proprietary server code for a time in 2020-2021. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11101#issuecomment-798900367 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/11101#iss... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715223
- tapoxi 2y agoBut the client is designed to not trust the server, that's why encryption is end-to-end. So does it matter?
- greyface- 2y agoIn some sense, no - the protocol protects the contents of your messages. In another sense, yes - a compromised server is much easier to collect metadata from.
- tptacek 2y agoMetadata, yes. Of course, the protocols, and thus all the inconveniences of the Signal app people constantly complain about, are designed to minimize that metadata. But: yes. Contents of messages, though? No.
- greyface- 2y agoIf Signal, the service, was designed to minimize metadata collection, then why is it so insistent on verifying each user's connection to an E.164 telephone number at registration? Even now, when we have usernames, they require us to prove a phone number which they pinky-swear they won't tell anyone. Necessary privacy tradeoff for spam prevention, they say. This isn't metadata minimization, and telephone number is a uniquely compromising piece of metadata for all but the most paranoid of users who use unique burner numbers for everything.
- viraptor 2y ago> and its cryptographic security is trivially verifiable That's going quite far. Even with all the details of it documented and open, there's a relatively small number of people who can actually verify that both the implementation is correct and the design is safe. Even though I can understand how it works, I wouldn't claim I can verify it in any meaningful way.
- tptacek 2y agoMultiple teams have done formal verification of the Signal Protocol, which won the Levchin Prize at Real World Crypto in 2017.
- viraptor 2y agoSure, there are teams who have done it. But it's not trivial. The fact there's a price for it shows it's not trivial. If I choose a random developer, it's close to guaranteed they wouldn't be able to reproduce that. The chances go to 0 for a random Signal user. Alternatively: it's trivial for people sufficiently experienced with cryptography. And that's a tiny pool of people overall.
- tptacek 2y agoThe idea isn't that you do formal verification of the protocol every time you run it. It suffices for the protocol to be formally verified once, and then just to run that one protocol. If you thought otherwise, you might as well stop trusting AES and ChaCha20.
- greyface- 2y agoIt is possible for the core protocol to be tightly secure, while a bug in a peripheral area of the software leads to total compromise. Weakest link, etc. One-time formal verification is only sufficient in a very narrow sense.
- 2y ago
- ghostpepper 2y agoIt’s not practically open source though - how many people actually build it themselves and sideload onto their Android/iphone? How much effort would it be for the US government to force Google to ship a different APK from everyone else to a single individual?
- tptacek 2y agoI don't know, a lot? They could with the same amount of effort just get Google to ship a backdoored operating system. Or the chipset manufacturer to embed a hardware vulnerability.
- gertop 2y ago"Here's a court order, you must serve this tainted APK we built to the user at this email" VS "You must backdoor the operating system used on billions of devices. Nobody can know about it but we somehow made it a law that you must obey." Come on, that's not the same amount of efforts at all.
- devops99 2y agoThe cryptography is not where Signal is vulnerable. What Signal is running on, as in operating system and/or hardware that runs other embedded software on "hidden cores", is how the private keys can be taken. Anything you can buy retail will for sure fuck you the user over.
- tptacek 2y agoOh, so none of this has anything to do with Signal. Ok!
- devops99 2y agoIn theory, "none of this has anything to do with Signal", and you are correct ; but back over here in reality: Signal runs on these systems. Hence the security afforded by Signal is very weak in-practice and questionable at best.
- Intermernet 2y agoRetail hardware actually has a better track record at the moment than bespoke, closed market devices. ANOM was a trap and most closed encryption schemes are hideously buggy. You're actually better off with Android and signal. If we had open baseband it would be better, but we don't, so it's not. Perfect security isn't possible. See "reflections on trusting trust".
- devops99 2y agoBespoke but-not-really-bespoke closed-market devices made by the right people are very secure, but they are not sold to the profane (you). > ANOM was a trap Yes, ANOM was intended to be a trap. > and most closed encryption schemes are hideously buggy Yes they are. Hence some of us use open encryption schemes on our closed-market devices. > You're actually better off with Android and signal. I am better off with closed-market devices than I am with any retail device. > If we had open baseband it would be better And the ability to audit what is loaded on the handset, and the ability to reflash, etc. In the real-world all we have so far is punting this problem over to another compute board. > Perfect security isn't possible. Perhaps, but I was not after "perfect security", I was just after "security" and no retail device will ever give me that, but a closed-market device already has. > See "reflections on trusting trust". Already saw it. You're welcome to see: - https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/reproducible-computations-with-guix/ - https://reproducible-builds.org - https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-building-from-source-all-the-way-down/
- bryant 2y agoWell, if you're in a position where you can only put faith in someone else's word as to whether it's good for your needs (this is the vast majority of people), there's this: https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243 https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-...
- fragmede 2y ago> Unfortunately there is no practical way to verify it either. discuss an exceedingly clear assassination plot against the President exclusively over signal with yourself between a phone that's traceable back to you, and a burner that isn't. if the secret service pays you a visit, and that's the only way they could have come by it, then you have you answer.
- buckle8017 2y agoSignal's servers have access to your profile, settings, contacts, and block list if the PIN you select has low security.
- tptacek 2y agoWhich is to say: in the worst-case plausible failure model for Signal, they get the same metadata access as all the other messengers do. OK!
- fragmede 2y agoThreema leaks no such metadata
- tptacek 2y agohttps://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://breakingthe3ma.app/ You want to use this, by all means.
- rkagerer 2y agoWere any/all of those vulnerabilities mitigated?
- antgiant 2y agoPer the link. Yes. Here the specific statement. Lessons Learned We believe that all of the vulnerabilities we discovered have been mitigated by Threema's recent patches. This means that, at this time, the security issues we found no longer pose any threat to Threema customers, including OnPrem instances that have been kept up-to-date. On the other hand, some of the vulnerabilities we discovered may have been present in Threema for a long time.
- tptacek 2y agoFor what it's worth, and obviously I could have been clearer about this: what's interesting about that link is the description of Threema's design, not the specific vulnerabilities the team found.
- devops99 2y ago[flagged]
- int0x29 2y agoWhile the statments are contradictory I wouldn't take it as sign of some vast conspiracy. I would just take it as a sign they are stuck needing to give out some kind of guidance to prevent foreign access. While they are a domestic police service they are also a counterintelligence service and thus need to provide some guidance there.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoTelcos need a way to comply with court orders. That's it.
- rsingel 2y agoNo, the feds require CALEA-backdoors. Absent CALEA, a telecom could say we don't have the data or the capability
- s5300 2y agoUS Military has atleast privately switched away from any Signal usage within the past few months – it’s undoubtedly compromised in some way. If the FBI is recommending it it’s for exploitative purposes & a false premise of safety.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoSo what’s the alternative
- edm0nd 2y agoSession, Matrix, Tox perhaps
- glaucon 2y agoI know nothing about this field so I went looking for those product names. I believe the Session referred to is here ... https://getsession.org/ https://getsession.org/ Tox is here ? https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/ The Matrix i found seems to have been closed down earlier this month ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(app) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(app) ... that's assuming I found the correct "matrix". If it matters to you don't take my word for those being the correct points of contact, that's just me searching for two minutes. As a side rant, I wish people would choose less generic names for their projects, calling something "session" ? You might as well call it "thing".
- 2y ago
- llamaimperative 2y agoNothing contradictory (in philosophy), really: they said American law enforcement should be able to break encryption when they have warrants and they now say Chinese spies should not be able to. This is obviously technically impossible, but the desire for that end state makes a ton of sense from the IC’s perspective.
- hunter2_ 2y agoThat something can simultaneously be impossible and sensible is peculiar. It almost suggests that the technique has merely not yet been figured out. Secrets fail unsafe. Maybe an alternative doesn't.
- btilly 2y agoIt is sensible that people would want the impossible. It isn't sensible to try to mandate it. Government keeps trying to mandate it in various ways. With predictably bad results.
- tzs 2y agoHow is it obviously technically impossible?
- btilly 2y agoWhatever method is available to American law enforcement is eventually going to become available to Chinese spies. The record of keeping this kind of secret is abysmal. If by no other means, then by social engineering the same access that local police departments were supposed to have. Salt Typhoon - which this discussion is about - is an example. Tools for tracking people that were supposed to be for our side, turn out to also be used by the Chinese. Plus the act of creating partial security often creates new security holes that can be exploited in unexpected ways. Either you build things to be secure, or you have to assume that it will someday be broken. There is no in between.
- llamaimperative 2y agoSomething either has X degree of security (for everyone) or it does not.
- Animats 2y ago"...implies that the attack wasn't against the broadband providers directly, but against one of the intermediary companies that sit between the government CALEA requests and the broadband providers" Yup. The attack hit the CALEA backdoor via a wiretapping outsourcing company. Which one? * NEX-TECH: https://www.nex-tech.com/carrier/calea/ https://www.nex-tech.com/carrier/calea/ * Substentio: https://www.subsentio.com/solutions/platforms-technologies/ https://www.subsentio.com/solutions/platforms-technologies/ * Sy-Tech: https://www.sytechcorp.com/calea-lawful-intercept https://www.sytechcorp.com/calea-lawful-intercept Who else is in that business? There aren't that many wiretapping outsourcing companies. Verisign used to be in this business but apparently no longer is.
- supriyo-biswas 2y agoThank you for posting this. The search term "calea solutions"[1] also brings up some relevant material, such as networking companies advising how to set up interception, and an old note from the DoJ[2] grumbling about low adoption in 2004 and interesting tidbits about how the government sponsored the costs for its implementation. [1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=calea+solutions https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=calea+sol... [2] https://oig.justice.gov/reports/FBI/a0419/findings.htm https://oig.justice.gov/reports/FBI/a0419/findings.htm
- tguvot 2y agowhere from ""...implies that the attack wasn't against the broadband providers directly, but against one of the intermediary companies that sit between the government CALEA requests and the broadband providers" comes from ? from schneier ? because if you go to the actual reporting in wsj for example, it doesn't imply that attack was against TTP providers. also TTP providers are optional
- Maxious 2y agoWSJ: U.S. Wiretap Systems Targeted in China-Linked Hack https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-t... That seems pretty clear.
- petesergeant 2y agoThe FBI has a weird mandate in that it's both counter-espionage and counter-crime, and those are two quite different missions. Unsurprising to know that counter-espionage want great encryption, and counter-crime want backdoorable encryption.
- JTbane 2y agoIt seems like every few years law enforcement puts out statements about how good encryption is for criminals, and then they have to walk it back as data breaches happen.
- kube-system 2y agoSometimes you're on offense, sometimes you're on defense. The government does both.
- rat87 2y agoYou want the new anti democratic/authoritarian administration to look through the FBIs emails to find something to frame them for? You sure that's wise? Even if they don't respect privacy like they should?
- devops99 2y ago[flagged]
- rsingel 2y agoWhat a load of horseshit. Yeah, if a nation-state thinks you are a bad enough actor, they might use a high power way to get at you. See Pegasus, for instance But those exploits are rare, expensive and can be blown. No one has ever said Signal is perfect security. But it is damn good. Your SMSes aren't sitting in plaintext on your mobile ISPs network. You aren't going to have them intercepted by a fake mobile tower. And if you and your recipients use disappearing messages, good luck to any prosecutor trying to get them off a device. And as for Apple sending a fake update? Might could happen but 1) Apple fought this once and 2) it'd be hard to do in any widespread way without being detected Saying Signal protects you from fuck all is not just wrong, it's irresponsible AF. It's like saying that locks, firewalls, alarm systems, curtains and network monitoring don't work because some people know how to defeat them. Signal is a great security upgrade for almost anyone. I love seeing more people use it. Normalizing encryption is great.
- devops99 2y ago[flagged]
- jesseendahl 2y agoThe amount of one-off work this would take is quite high, so the amount of motivation for a company like Apple to say “No, you can’t legally compel us to to allocate engineering resources to this” is also quite high. My point is that they (and other tech companies) would be highly incentivized against implementing something like a malicious update targeting a single device/user based purely on capitalistic motivations, rather than philosophical/ethical ones.
- devops99 2y agoI wish I could agree with you but the real world doesn't work this way. Companies that don't play ball get broken up with anti-trust. Or what happened to the CEO (former CEO) of Qwest happens. The "infrastructure" for the targeted updates is implemented by compartmentalized teams, who will be comprised of the clearance community, and the "external" people who work with them are a part of the clearance community.