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Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not? I concede that if you can't trust the device itself you can't t

Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not? I concede that if you can't trust the device itself you can't trust anything running on it, but why have you resigned yourself to that? And how does that reflect on signal at all?

mmooss 13d ago
> Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not? While I disagree with these critiques of Signal, the surveillance networks can capture metadata - who talks to who and when - without breaking E2E. The metadata is as valuable as the data. I think Signal has a feature to protect users, but I can't imagine how it works if the attacker can see all parties' Internet connections.
- 420official 13d ago
  It's true someone snooping at either end of a conversation could over time correlate timing and sizes to show that two users are communicating, but that's the most they can do. Signal is not peer to peer so you're not connecting to your recipient, and signal itself has enough raw volume that simply correlating sizes and timing of a small number of messages wouldn't really be sufficient to know who is communicating with who. I think they could make that significantly more difficult by adding csprng delays and padding to the messages. That way you can't really effectively correlate timing and sizes without direct access to signals inner workings. I'm not sure what signal's actual throughput is, but if think as a paid feature it could be economical. Another crazier way would be to send every message to a large number random latched recipients. Good way to 1000x your bandwidth. > The metadata is as valuable as the data. This can be true if you are able to get ahold of a user's device and access their signal messages. It's not true in most other cases. I don't particularly care if you know that I am talking to someone specific as much as I care that you don't know what I'm saying.
  - monocasa 13d ago
    > Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata' > Hayden made the remark after saying he agreed with the idea that metadata - the information collected by the NSA about phone calls and other communications that does not include content - can tell the government "everything" about anyone it's targeting for surveillance, often making the actual content of the communication unnecessary. https://abcnews.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-kill-people-based-on-metadata/ https://abcnews.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-...
  - mmooss 13d ago
    > Signal is not peer to peer Isn't it? I think it has a setting, disabled by default, to proxy connections via a Signal server. If you're not doing that ... it must be P2P? Probably with the IP address of the person you're communicating with in the header of every packet?
    - sudahtigabulan 12d ago
      This setting is "Always relay calls", and the only difference it makes is for already established calls. Messages and calls setup always go through Signal's servers.
- ranger_danger 13d ago
  > the surveillance networks can capture metadata - who talks to who and when If this is part of your threat model then I would suggest a different tool such as SimpleX since it uses onion routing and can be configured to always use private routing/relays.
  - bawolff 13d ago
    I'm not familiar with SimpleX, but keep in mind only some types of onion routing is secure against a global passive adversary. Famously Tor is not.
    - Cider9986 13d ago
      Nym is apparently good against a global adversary.
    - ranger_danger 12d ago
      One idea I had for an improvement to Tor wrt sybils was to split traffic up and send different pieces to different nodes, possibly using different circuits for the pieces, so that even if you have control over all the nodes in one path, you most likely won't have full control over all the paths it sprays the pieces over.
  - mitxela 13d ago
    Session uses onion routing. SimpleX does not.
    - ranger_danger 12d ago
      > SimpleX does not. https://simplex.chat/faq/ https://simplex.chat/faq/ > Private message routing is, effectively, a two-hop onion packet routing. And actually, it's even better than that: > Private message routing routes packets (each message is one 16kb packet), not sockets. Unlike Tor and VPN, it does not create circuits between your client and destination servers. The forwarding server creates one shared session between itself and the destination, and forwards all messages from you and other clients to that destination server, mixing messages from many clients into a single TCP session. > As each message uses its own random encryption key and random (non-sequential) identifier, the destination server cannot link multiple message queue addresses to the same client. At the same time, the forwarding server cannot observe which (and how many) addresses on the destination server your client sends messages to, thanks to e2e encryption between the client and destination server. In that regard, this design is similar to onion routing, but with per-packet anonymity, not per-circuit. > This design is similar to mixnets (e.g. Nym network), and it is tailored to the needs of message routing, providing better transport anonymity than general-purpose networks, like Tor or VPN. You still can use Tor or VPN to connect to known servers, to protect your IP address from them.

mmooss 13d ago

> Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not? While I disagree with these critiques of Signal, the surveillance networks can capture metadata - who talks to who and when - without breaking E2E. The metadata is as valuable as the data. I think Signal has a feature to protect users, but I can't imagine how it works if the attacker can see all parties' Internet connections.

420official 13d ago
It's true someone snooping at either end of a conversation could over time correlate timing and sizes to show that two users are communicating, but that's the most they can do. Signal is not peer to peer so you're not connecting to your recipient, and signal itself has enough raw volume that simply correlating sizes and timing of a small number of messages wouldn't really be sufficient to know who is communicating with who. I think they could make that significantly more difficult by adding csprng delays and padding to the messages. That way you can't really effectively correlate timing and sizes without direct access to signals inner workings. I'm not sure what signal's actual throughput is, but if think as a paid feature it could be economical. Another crazier way would be to send every message to a large number random latched recipients. Good way to 1000x your bandwidth. > The metadata is as valuable as the data. This can be true if you are able to get ahold of a user's device and access their signal messages. It's not true in most other cases. I don't particularly care if you know that I am talking to someone specific as much as I care that you don't know what I'm saying.
- monocasa 13d ago
  > Ex-NSA Chief: 'We Kill People Based on Metadata' > Hayden made the remark after saying he agreed with the idea that metadata - the information collected by the NSA about phone calls and other communications that does not include content - can tell the government "everything" about anyone it's targeting for surveillance, often making the actual content of the communication unnecessary. https://abcnews.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-kill-people-based-on-metadata/ https://abcnews.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-...
- mmooss 13d ago
  > Signal is not peer to peer Isn't it? I think it has a setting, disabled by default, to proxy connections via a Signal server. If you're not doing that ... it must be P2P? Probably with the IP address of the person you're communicating with in the header of every packet?
  - sudahtigabulan 12d ago
    This setting is "Always relay calls", and the only difference it makes is for already established calls. Messages and calls setup always go through Signal's servers.
ranger_danger 13d ago
> the surveillance networks can capture metadata - who talks to who and when If this is part of your threat model then I would suggest a different tool such as SimpleX since it uses onion routing and can be configured to always use private routing/relays.
- bawolff 13d ago
  I'm not familiar with SimpleX, but keep in mind only some types of onion routing is secure against a global passive adversary. Famously Tor is not.
  - Cider9986 13d ago
    Nym is apparently good against a global adversary.
  - ranger_danger 12d ago
    One idea I had for an improvement to Tor wrt sybils was to split traffic up and send different pieces to different nodes, possibly using different circuits for the pieces, so that even if you have control over all the nodes in one path, you most likely won't have full control over all the paths it sprays the pieces over.
- mitxela 13d ago
  Session uses onion routing. SimpleX does not.
  - ranger_danger 12d ago
    > SimpleX does not. https://simplex.chat/faq/ https://simplex.chat/faq/ > Private message routing is, effectively, a two-hop onion packet routing. And actually, it's even better than that: > Private message routing routes packets (each message is one 16kb packet), not sockets. Unlike Tor and VPN, it does not create circuits between your client and destination servers. The forwarding server creates one shared session between itself and the destination, and forwards all messages from you and other clients to that destination server, mixing messages from many clients into a single TCP session. > As each message uses its own random encryption key and random (non-sequential) identifier, the destination server cannot link multiple message queue addresses to the same client. At the same time, the forwarding server cannot observe which (and how many) addresses on the destination server your client sends messages to, thanks to e2e encryption between the client and destination server. In that regard, this design is similar to onion routing, but with per-packet anonymity, not per-circuit. > This design is similar to mixnets (e.g. Nym network), and it is tailored to the needs of message routing, providing better transport anonymity than general-purpose networks, like Tor or VPN. You still can use Tor or VPN to connect to known servers, to protect your IP address from them.