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> Given Cloudflare's less-than-straight approach to sales, it is astonishing the words "secure" and "Signal" ever appear in the same sentence. This is an overl

> Given Cloudflare's less-than-straight approach to sales, it is astonishing the words "secure" and "Signal" ever appear in the same sentence. This is an overly binary take. Security is all about threat models, and for most of us the threat model that Signal is solving is "mainstream for-profit apps snoop on the contents of my messages and use them to build an advertising profile". Most of us using it are not using Signal to skirt law enforcement, so our threat model does not include court orders and warrants. Signal can and should append some noise to the images when encrypted (or better yet, pad them to a set file size as suggested by paulryanrogers in a sibling comment) to mitigate the risks of this attack for those who do have threat models that require it, but for the vast majority of us Signal is just as fit for purpose as we thought it was.

crawfordcomeaux 2y ago
Hello, I'm an organizer for a system to coordinate multiple mutual aid networks, many of which are only organizing by Signal & Protonmail exclusively because they think they're secure and private. People who are doing work to help people in ways the state tries to prevent (like giving people food) rely on this tech. These are the same groups who were able to mobilize so quickly to respond to the LA fires, but the Red Cross & police worked to shut down. This impacts the people who are there for you when the state refuses to show up. This impacts the future version of you who needs it. Most people aren't disabled, yet. Doesn't mean they don't need us building infrastructure for if/when they become disabled.
- Evidlo 2y ago
  What groups did the police and Red Cross shut down? Any links?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - basilgohar 2y ago
    In any geopolitical crisis, you tend to have victims on both sides be prevented from getting relief, except when the one side is imperial. The powerful entities tend to prohibit relief to the oppressed side, even making it illegal.
    - nxobject 2y ago
      I’m thinking as well more “mundane” things as well, like red states with “charitable feeding” laws that in effect make it illegal to feed the homeless without large amounts of red tape. But, truly, I think you’re right to highlight wars. https://www.salon.com/2023/08/07/criminalizing-the-samaritan-why-cities-across-the-us-are-making-it-illegal-to-feed-the-homeless/ https://www.salon.com/2023/08/07/criminalizing-the-samaritan...
- lolinder 2y ago
  This is why I say that it's overly binary, not incorrect. Some people do have such needs, and Signal can and should fix this for those people.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Someone should tell anyone who seeks confidentiality that no email is secure. Use Signal and enable the data retention (i.e., automatic message deletion) feature. By itself that is not perfectly secure, but it's a start.
  - upofadown 2y ago
    The people involved are likely all using Protonmail. So that would mean TLS for the connection to Protonmail with E2EE for messages passing through Protonmail. Not sure that encrypted email in general would be less secure than, say, Signal. Since Signal is an instant messenger on a phone it might actually be less secure[1]. [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:emailvsim https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:emailvsim
- cekanoni 2y ago
  people who think protonmail is secure it's to the same level as mail.yahoo.com :)
hedgedoops2 2y ago
Maybe not individual warrants (at least not warrants to do non-scalable collections like hardware bugs in one's phone - I.e. warrants that, most users, with high probability, are not subject to). But mass surveillance, e.g. NSA, even with 'mass warrants' (e.g. Verizon-FISA warrant), that everyone is subject to, is probably in most people's attacker model. I don't have a study handy, but it seems reasonable that most users use signal to protect against mass surveillance and signal advertises itself as being good for this. Also Marlinspike and Whittaker are quite outspoken about mass surveillance. If cloudflare can compile a big part of the "who chats with whom" graph, that is a system design defect.
- autoexec 2y ago
  I highly doubt that signal does anything to help with mass surveillance. Signal started keeping people's name, photo, phone number, and contacts in the cloud protected by a "secure" enclave the NSA almost certainly has access to and hackers already got into (https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attack-signals-cloud-storage-and-contact-discovery-vulnerable/14892 https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attac...) and even leaving all that aside, all anyone needs is a PIN that can be trivially brute forced. (https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worri...)
  - crtasm 2y ago
    I thought it was digits only but see there's always been the option to use an alphanumeric passphrase as the "PIN". That prevents brute-forcing for anyone that bothered to use one, right?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      It was only digits initially (https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/oc6ow4/so_a_four_digit_numeric_pin_is_secure_enough_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/oc6ow4/so_a_four_di...), with nothing preventing very easy ones like "1234", but even after they fixed it they continued to call it a PIN and many people would just assume is a number ("number" is right in the acronym), and often a very short one. Most people didn't want to set a PIN at all, they'd been being nagged about setting one and then got nagged again and again to reenter it. It was not clear to most people that their highly sensitive info was being uploaded to the cloud at all let alone that it was only protected by the PIN. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people picked something as simple as possible. https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/gqc2hu/the_new_pin_feature_is_a_usability_nightmare/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/gqc2hu/the_new_pin_...
vel0city 2y ago
> Signal can and should append some noise to the images when encrypted (or better yet, pad them to a set file size as suggested by paulryanrogers in a sibling comment) to mitigate the risks of this attack for those who do have threat models that require it Adding padding to the image wouldn't do anything to stop this "attack". This is just watching which CF datacenters cache the attachment after it gets sent.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Right, my bad on the ambiguity—I was replying to the OP's concern about image sizes, not the attack in TFA: > It really doesn't matter that they can't see an image or video, knowing its size upfront or later (for example in response to a law enforcement request) is enough
  - vel0city 2y ago
    That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification, my bad!
rangestransform 2y ago
I think the threat model of enough signal users to matter is nation-state actors, and signal should be secure against those actors by default so that they may hide among the entire signal user population

crawfordcomeaux 2y ago

Hello, I'm an organizer for a system to coordinate multiple mutual aid networks, many of which are only organizing by Signal & Protonmail exclusively because they think they're secure and private. People who are doing work to help people in ways the state tries to prevent (like giving people food) rely on this tech. These are the same groups who were able to mobilize so quickly to respond to the LA fires, but the Red Cross & police worked to shut down. This impacts the people who are there for you when the state refuses to show up. This impacts the future version of you who needs it. Most people aren't disabled, yet. Doesn't mean they don't need us building infrastructure for if/when they become disabled.

Evidlo 2y ago
What groups did the police and Red Cross shut down? Any links?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- basilgohar 2y ago
  In any geopolitical crisis, you tend to have victims on both sides be prevented from getting relief, except when the one side is imperial. The powerful entities tend to prohibit relief to the oppressed side, even making it illegal.
  - nxobject 2y ago
    I’m thinking as well more “mundane” things as well, like red states with “charitable feeding” laws that in effect make it illegal to feed the homeless without large amounts of red tape. But, truly, I think you’re right to highlight wars. https://www.salon.com/2023/08/07/criminalizing-the-samaritan-why-cities-across-the-us-are-making-it-illegal-to-feed-the-homeless/ https://www.salon.com/2023/08/07/criminalizing-the-samaritan...
lolinder 2y ago
This is why I say that it's overly binary, not incorrect. Some people do have such needs, and Signal can and should fix this for those people.
mmooss 2y ago
Someone should tell anyone who seeks confidentiality that no email is secure. Use Signal and enable the data retention (i.e., automatic message deletion) feature. By itself that is not perfectly secure, but it's a start.
- upofadown 2y ago
  The people involved are likely all using Protonmail. So that would mean TLS for the connection to Protonmail with E2EE for messages passing through Protonmail. Not sure that encrypted email in general would be less secure than, say, Signal. Since Signal is an instant messenger on a phone it might actually be less secure[1]. [1] https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:emailvsim https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:emailvsim
cekanoni 2y ago
people who think protonmail is secure it's to the same level as mail.yahoo.com :)

hedgedoops2 2y ago

Maybe not individual warrants (at least not warrants to do non-scalable collections like hardware bugs in one's phone - I.e. warrants that, most users, with high probability, are not subject to). But mass surveillance, e.g. NSA, even with 'mass warrants' (e.g. Verizon-FISA warrant), that everyone is subject to, is probably in most people's attacker model. I don't have a study handy, but it seems reasonable that most users use signal to protect against mass surveillance and signal advertises itself as being good for this. Also Marlinspike and Whittaker are quite outspoken about mass surveillance. If cloudflare can compile a big part of the "who chats with whom" graph, that is a system design defect.

autoexec 2y ago
I highly doubt that signal does anything to help with mass surveillance. Signal started keeping people's name, photo, phone number, and contacts in the cloud protected by a "secure" enclave the NSA almost certainly has access to and hackers already got into (https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attack-signals-cloud-storage-and-contact-discovery-vulnerable/14892 https://community.signalusers.org/t/sgx-cacheout-sgaxe-attac...) and even leaving all that aside, all anyone needs is a PIN that can be trivially brute forced. (https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/signal-new-pin-feature-worri...)
- crtasm 2y ago
  I thought it was digits only but see there's always been the option to use an alphanumeric passphrase as the "PIN". That prevents brute-forcing for anyone that bothered to use one, right?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    It was only digits initially (https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/oc6ow4/so_a_four_digit_numeric_pin_is_secure_enough_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/oc6ow4/so_a_four_di...), with nothing preventing very easy ones like "1234", but even after they fixed it they continued to call it a PIN and many people would just assume is a number ("number" is right in the acronym), and often a very short one. Most people didn't want to set a PIN at all, they'd been being nagged about setting one and then got nagged again and again to reenter it. It was not clear to most people that their highly sensitive info was being uploaded to the cloud at all let alone that it was only protected by the PIN. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people picked something as simple as possible. https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/gqc2hu/the_new_pin_feature_is_a_usability_nightmare/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/gqc2hu/the_new_pin_...

vel0city 2y ago

> Signal can and should append some noise to the images when encrypted (or better yet, pad them to a set file size as suggested by paulryanrogers in a sibling comment) to mitigate the risks of this attack for those who do have threat models that require it Adding padding to the image wouldn't do anything to stop this "attack". This is just watching which CF datacenters cache the attachment after it gets sent.

lolinder 2y ago
Right, my bad on the ambiguity—I was replying to the OP's concern about image sizes, not the attack in TFA: > It really doesn't matter that they can't see an image or video, knowing its size upfront or later (for example in response to a law enforcement request) is enough
- vel0city 2y ago
  That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification, my bad!

rangestransform 2y ago

I think the threat model of enough signal users to matter is nation-state actors, and signal should be secure against those actors by default so that they may hide among the entire signal user population