4 ms·

Obligatory request to provide a source to backup some serious claims?

by abuani 2y ago

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

Obligatory request to provide a source to backup some serious claims?

by abuani 2y ago

Obligatory request to provide a source to backup some serious claims?

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