6 ms·

Yeah, this just gave me the last nudge I needed to give Signal a go.

by yellowapple 2y ago

DemPartyPooper 2y ago
[flagged]
autoexec 2y ago
[flagged]
- abuani 2y ago
  Obligatory request to provide a source to backup some serious claims?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    If you're a signal user and didn't know about this already, that should tell you everything you need to know about signal. See https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... Then read the first line of their terms and privacy policy page which says: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." (https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/) Signal loves to brag about the times when the government came to them asking for information only to get turned away because Signal never collected any data in the first place. They still brag about it. It hasn't actually been true for years though. Now they're collecting the exact info the government was asking for and they're protecting that data with a not-very-secure/likely backdoored enclave on the server side, and (even worse) a pin on the client side.
    - gtvwill 2y ago
      Also signals spam folder isn't open source on server side. They literally have code that reads your messages and checks if spam or not and you cant see what it does or how it's written. Couple this with signal being the preferred messaging app for 5 eyes countries as advised by their 3 letter agencies and well if you think those agencies are going to be advising a comms form they can't track, trace or read you obviously don't understand what they do.
      - alwa 2y ago
        While it seems to be true that it’s not open-source, they claim (in strong terms) that they use techniques other than reading the message to make that assessment: https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/ https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/ They point out that the protocol’s end-to-end cryptographic guarantees are still open and in place, and verifiable as ever. As far as I can tell, they claim that they combine voluntary user spam reports and metadata signals of some sort: > When a user clicks “Report Spam and Block”, their device sends only the phone number that initiated the conversation and a one-time anonymous message ID to the server. When accounts are repeatedly reported as spam or network traffic appears to be automated, we can issue “proof of humanity” checks to suspicious senders so they can’t send more messages until they’ve completed a challenge. For example, if you exceed a configured server-side threshold for making requests to Signal, you may need to complete a CAPTCHA within the Signal application before making more requests. This approach slows down spammers while allowing regular messages to continue to flow. Does that seem unreasonable? Am I missing places where people have identified flaws in the protocol?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - alwa 2y ago
      I see a link to a forum where an anonymous participant says “Since a recent version of Signal data of all Signal users is uploaded to Signal’s servers. This includes your profile name and photo, and a list of all your Signal-contacts.” They then link to a Signal blog (2019) explaining technical measures they were testing to provide verifiably tamperproof remote storage. https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ I’m not equipped to assess the cryptographic integrity of their claims, but 1) it sounds like you’re saying that they deployed this technology at scale, and 2) do you have a basis to suggest it’s “not-very-secure or likely backdoored,” in response to their apparently thoughtful and transparent engineering to ensure otherwise?
      - autoexec 2y ago
        The communication Signal put out was extremely confusing and unclear which caused a lot of issues. They avoided answering questions about the data being collected and instead focused everything on SVR (see https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...) The problems with the security of Signal's new data collection scheme was talked about at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant.info/2020/06/16/does-signals-secure-value-recovery-really-work/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... You'll have to decide for yourself how secure pins and enclaves are, but even if you thought they were able to provide near-perfect security I would argue that outright lying to highly vulnerable users by saying "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." on line one of their privacy policy page is inexcusable and not something you should tolerate in an application that depends on trust.
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
        > 2) do you have a basis to suggest it’s “not-very-secure or likely backdoored,” in response to their apparently thoughtful and transparent engineering to ensure otherwise? The forum post explains this: > This data is encrypted by a PIN only the user can know, however users are allowed to create their own very short numeric PIN (4 digits). By itself this does not protect data from being decrypted by brute force. The fact that a slow decryption algorithm must be used, is not enough to mitigate this concern, the algorithm is not slow enough to make brute forcing really difficult. The promise is that Signal keeps tge data secured on their servers within a secure enclave. This allows anyone to verify that no data is taken out of the server, also not by the Dignal developers themselfs, not even if they get a subpoena. At least that is the idea. > It is also not clear if a subpoena can force Signal to quietly hand over information which was meant to stay within this secure enclave. That should be very concerning for activists/journalists who use Signal to maintain privacy from their government. Subpoena + gag order means the data is in the hands of the government, presuming Signal want to keep offering their services to the population of the country in question.
    - avmich 2y ago
      Sounds quite fishy :( . Any specific proofs in addition to all what have been said so far? I've checked the links, they don't really prove anything...
      - autoexec 2y ago
        here are links to additional discussions from the time of the change: https://community.signalusers.org/t/mandatory-pin-is-signal-following-the-path-of-digg/15448/3 https://community.signalusers.org/t/mandatory-pin-is-signal-... One of the few articles that talked about it at the time: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... One of the many reddit posts by confused users who misunderstood the very unclear communications by Signal: https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...
    - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
      I wanted to add that there is the cease and desist case against Signal-FOSS fork that tried to implement an open server, too. In my opinion Briar is where it's at, but because there's no data collection it's pain to do a handshake or manage contacts.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        Signal-FOSS is still around right? Got a link to some of the drama? I'm curious to see what their grounds were. Did they just object to the use of their name?
        h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
        There is still Molly as a fork, but no idea how hardened it actually is. After Moxie's statement at the time I kind of ditched everything regarding Signal's ecosystem. I understand the business perspective of it, but it's kind of pointless trying to say this is open source when it's illegal to press the Fork button on GitHub, you know. https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
- andrepd 2y ago
  Can you elaborate? I'm semi-familiar with the Signal protocol but I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    See https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... Then read the first line of their terms and privacy policy page which says: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." (https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/)
    - codazoda 2y ago
      I was going to discount most of this. It appears this link is missing or private now. What did it say?
      - autoexec 2y ago
        fixed the link. Just to be safe, here's an archive of the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community...
- loufe 2y ago
  I'm a big signal user yet skeptical that it's not directly involved with intelligence agencies. That's all to say, this sounds like FUD but I think it should be taken seriously. Out of curiosity, where have you read this?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    It was a bit of a controversy when the change happened: see https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... Note that the "solution" of disabling pins mentioned at the end of the article was later shown to not prevent the collection and storage of user data. It was just giving users a false sense of security. To this day there is no way to opt out of the data collection.
- orblivion 2y ago
  Following the conversation down, it sounds like what you're really saying is that Signal stores sensitive information encrypted with PIN+SGX, which is controversial. And maybe you have a good argument for why it's bad (and I'm uneasy with it myself). But I think people don't like that you made the assumption for them that PIN+SGX is bad.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Even if everyone agreed that the system was secure, and they absolutely don't, see for example https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant.info/2020/06/16/does-signals-secure-value-recovery-really-work/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... I think we should all agree that outright lying to users on the very first line of their privacy policy page is totally unacceptable.
    - orblivion 2y ago
      You cited this so I think this is what you mean: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." I interpret this, I think reasonably, to not include encrypted information. For that matter they collect (but probably don't store) encrypted messages. The question is, does PIN+SGX qualify as sufficiently encrypted? This line is a lie only if it does not. Sorry I skimmed those articles, I don't want to read them in depth. But it sounds like they are again ultimately saying "PIN+SGX is not secure enough".
      - nightpool 2y ago
        "I interpret this, I think reasonably, to not include encrypted information" Why? Encrypted information is still sensitive information.
        orblivion 2y ago
        Maybe via metadata? The size of the information, etc. Do you mean that they should have a caveat about that? Or if you want to be literal, you have to say that they're storing sensitive information even if it's encrypted. But by connotation that phrase implies that someone other than the user could conceivably have access to it. So for all any user could care, they just as well are not storing it. Do you mean that they should rephrase it so it's literally correct? Or do you mean that it's actually bad for them to be collecting safely encrypted sensitive data? Because if so, you literally cannot accept any encrypted messenger because 3rd parties will always have access to it.
- teemur 2y ago
  Interesting. Could you provide a better alternative? Preferably even remotely as user friendly as signal/whatsapp?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    I don't have a good answer. Personally, I'm using Jami for secure communications but I won't pretend it replaces signal in terms of user-friendliness especially back when signal allowed SMS and secure communications in the same app!
  - hsuduebc2 2y ago
    Threema comes to mind.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    I found SimpleX recently (https://simplex.chat/ https://simplex.chat/), which got my attention because it uses a unique account schema that doesn't have any individual account identifiers. It's got some interesting features. Not sure about user-friendliness since I don't use other messaging apps to know what to expect. It's mostly just interesting to me that they did away with the username entirely and they instead have users connect exclusively through shared secrets like they're Diffie and Hellman.

Yeah, this just gave me the last nudge I needed to give Signal a go.

DemPartyPooper 2y ago

[flagged]

autoexec 2y ago

[flagged]

abuani 2y ago
Obligatory request to provide a source to backup some serious claims?
- autoexec 2y ago
  If you're a signal user and didn't know about this already, that should tell you everything you need to know about signal. See https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... Then read the first line of their terms and privacy policy page which says: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." (https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/) Signal loves to brag about the times when the government came to them asking for information only to get turned away because Signal never collected any data in the first place. They still brag about it. It hasn't actually been true for years though. Now they're collecting the exact info the government was asking for and they're protecting that data with a not-very-secure/likely backdoored enclave on the server side, and (even worse) a pin on the client side.
  - gtvwill 2y ago
    Also signals spam folder isn't open source on server side. They literally have code that reads your messages and checks if spam or not and you cant see what it does or how it's written. Couple this with signal being the preferred messaging app for 5 eyes countries as advised by their 3 letter agencies and well if you think those agencies are going to be advising a comms form they can't track, trace or read you obviously don't understand what they do.
    - alwa 2y ago
      While it seems to be true that it’s not open-source, they claim (in strong terms) that they use techniques other than reading the message to make that assessment: https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/ https://signal.org/blog/keeping-spam-off-signal/ They point out that the protocol’s end-to-end cryptographic guarantees are still open and in place, and verifiable as ever. As far as I can tell, they claim that they combine voluntary user spam reports and metadata signals of some sort: > When a user clicks “Report Spam and Block”, their device sends only the phone number that initiated the conversation and a one-time anonymous message ID to the server. When accounts are repeatedly reported as spam or network traffic appears to be automated, we can issue “proof of humanity” checks to suspicious senders so they can’t send more messages until they’ve completed a challenge. For example, if you exceed a configured server-side threshold for making requests to Signal, you may need to complete a CAPTCHA within the Signal application before making more requests. This approach slows down spammers while allowing regular messages to continue to flow. Does that seem unreasonable? Am I missing places where people have identified flaws in the protocol?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - alwa 2y ago
    I see a link to a forum where an anonymous participant says “Since a recent version of Signal data of all Signal users is uploaded to Signal’s servers. This includes your profile name and photo, and a list of all your Signal-contacts.” They then link to a Signal blog (2019) explaining technical measures they were testing to provide verifiably tamperproof remote storage. https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/ I’m not equipped to assess the cryptographic integrity of their claims, but 1) it sounds like you’re saying that they deployed this technology at scale, and 2) do you have a basis to suggest it’s “not-very-secure or likely backdoored,” in response to their apparently thoughtful and transparent engineering to ensure otherwise?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      The communication Signal put out was extremely confusing and unclear which caused a lot of issues. They avoided answering questions about the data being collected and instead focused everything on SVR (see https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/fyjy7a5/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...) The problems with the security of Signal's new data collection scheme was talked about at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant.info/2020/06/16/does-signals-secure-value-recovery-really-work/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... You'll have to decide for yourself how secure pins and enclaves are, but even if you thought they were able to provide near-perfect security I would argue that outright lying to highly vulnerable users by saying "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." on line one of their privacy policy page is inexcusable and not something you should tolerate in an application that depends on trust.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      > 2) do you have a basis to suggest it’s “not-very-secure or likely backdoored,” in response to their apparently thoughtful and transparent engineering to ensure otherwise? The forum post explains this: > This data is encrypted by a PIN only the user can know, however users are allowed to create their own very short numeric PIN (4 digits). By itself this does not protect data from being decrypted by brute force. The fact that a slow decryption algorithm must be used, is not enough to mitigate this concern, the algorithm is not slow enough to make brute forcing really difficult. The promise is that Signal keeps tge data secured on their servers within a secure enclave. This allows anyone to verify that no data is taken out of the server, also not by the Dignal developers themselfs, not even if they get a subpoena. At least that is the idea. > It is also not clear if a subpoena can force Signal to quietly hand over information which was meant to stay within this secure enclave. That should be very concerning for activists/journalists who use Signal to maintain privacy from their government. Subpoena + gag order means the data is in the hands of the government, presuming Signal want to keep offering their services to the population of the country in question.
  - avmich 2y ago
    Sounds quite fishy :( . Any specific proofs in addition to all what have been said so far? I've checked the links, they don't really prove anything...
    - autoexec 2y ago
      here are links to additional discussions from the time of the change: https://community.signalusers.org/t/mandatory-pin-is-signal-following-the-path-of-digg/15448/3 https://community.signalusers.org/t/mandatory-pin-is-signal-... One of the few articles that talked about it at the time: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... One of the many reddit posts by confused users who misunderstood the very unclear communications by Signal: https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disabling_pins_will_now_upload_nothing_to_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/htmzrr/psa_disablin...
  - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
    I wanted to add that there is the cease and desist case against Signal-FOSS fork that tried to implement an open server, too. In my opinion Briar is where it's at, but because there's no data collection it's pain to do a handshake or manage contacts.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Signal-FOSS is still around right? Got a link to some of the drama? I'm curious to see what their grounds were. Did they just object to the use of their name?
      - h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
        There is still Molly as a fork, but no idea how hardened it actually is. After Moxie's statement at the time I kind of ditched everything regarding Signal's ecosystem. I understand the business perspective of it, but it's kind of pointless trying to say this is open source when it's illegal to press the Fork button on GitHub, you know. https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android https://github.com/mollyim/mollyim-android
andrepd 2y ago
Can you elaborate? I'm semi-familiar with the Signal protocol but I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
- autoexec 2y ago
  See https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096 https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-secu... Then read the first line of their terms and privacy policy page which says: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." (https://signal.org/legal/ https://signal.org/legal/)
  - codazoda 2y ago
    I was going to discount most of this. It appears this link is missing or private now. What did it say?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      fixed the link. Just to be safe, here's an archive of the page: https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community...
loufe 2y ago
I'm a big signal user yet skeptical that it's not directly involved with intelligence agencies. That's all to say, this sounds like FUD but I think it should be taken seriously. Out of curiosity, where have you read this?
- autoexec 2y ago
  It was a bit of a controversy when the change happened: see https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community.signalusers.org/t/proper-secure-value-security-pins-are-too-easy-to-brute-force-sgx-is-not-reliable-enough/15096/2 https://web.archive.org/web/20210109010728/https://community... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... Note that the "solution" of disabling pins mentioned at the end of the article was later shown to not prevent the collection and storage of user data. It was just giving users a false sense of security. To this day there is no way to opt out of the data collection.
orblivion 2y ago
Following the conversation down, it sounds like what you're really saying is that Signal stores sensitive information encrypted with PIN+SGX, which is controversial. And maybe you have a good argument for why it's bad (and I'm uneasy with it myself). But I think people don't like that you made the assumption for them that PIN+SGX is bad.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Even if everyone agreed that the system was secure, and they absolutely don't, see for example https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant.info/2020/06/16/does-signals-secure-value-recovery-really-work/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210126201848mp_/https://palant... https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-feature-worries-cybersecurity-experts https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkyzek/signal-new-pin-featur... I think we should all agree that outright lying to users on the very first line of their privacy policy page is totally unacceptable.
  - orblivion 2y ago
    You cited this so I think this is what you mean: "Signal is designed to never collect or store any sensitive information." I interpret this, I think reasonably, to not include encrypted information. For that matter they collect (but probably don't store) encrypted messages. The question is, does PIN+SGX qualify as sufficiently encrypted? This line is a lie only if it does not. Sorry I skimmed those articles, I don't want to read them in depth. But it sounds like they are again ultimately saying "PIN+SGX is not secure enough".
    - nightpool 2y ago
      "I interpret this, I think reasonably, to not include encrypted information" Why? Encrypted information is still sensitive information.
      - orblivion 2y ago
        Maybe via metadata? The size of the information, etc. Do you mean that they should have a caveat about that? Or if you want to be literal, you have to say that they're storing sensitive information even if it's encrypted. But by connotation that phrase implies that someone other than the user could conceivably have access to it. So for all any user could care, they just as well are not storing it. Do you mean that they should rephrase it so it's literally correct? Or do you mean that it's actually bad for them to be collecting safely encrypted sensitive data? Because if so, you literally cannot accept any encrypted messenger because 3rd parties will always have access to it.
teemur 2y ago
Interesting. Could you provide a better alternative? Preferably even remotely as user friendly as signal/whatsapp?
- autoexec 2y ago
  I don't have a good answer. Personally, I'm using Jami for secure communications but I won't pretend it replaces signal in terms of user-friendliness especially back when signal allowed SMS and secure communications in the same app!
- hsuduebc2 2y ago
  Threema comes to mind.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  I found SimpleX recently (https://simplex.chat/ https://simplex.chat/), which got my attention because it uses a unique account schema that doesn't have any individual account identifiers. It's got some interesting features. Not sure about user-friendliness since I don't use other messaging apps to know what to expect. It's mostly just interesting to me that they did away with the username entirely and they instead have users connect exclusively through shared secrets like they're Diffie and Hellman.