4 ms·

Can we please separate criticism of (1) the technical internals of Cryptocat from (2) the core idea behind Cryptocat and, especially, (3) Nadim himself, persona

by plg 13y ago

Can we please separate criticism of (1) the technical internals of Cryptocat from (2) the core idea behind Cryptocat and, especially, (3) Nadim himself, personally? My own take on this is that Nadim ought to be encouraged, and we ought to help him engage additional people who are experienced crypto experts to help implement the Cryptocat internals. If you think the core idea behind Cryptocat is crap, then fine, make a technical argument. If you think the idea is good, then let's encourage and help Nadim make it better. If you want to criticize Nadim's judgment from afar (I assume you are not on the core Cryptocat team) then that's your choice, but trust me, it does not help him, or you, or anyone. We all have our flaws and we all make bad decisions. I for one would bet that Nadim is absolutely interested in making Cryptocat better, not sweeping problems under the rug. Let's help make that happen and let's do it without the personal attacks.

DanBC 13y ago
> If you think the core idea behind Cryptocat is crap, then fine, make a technical argument. People keep making these technical arguments. They are ignored. It is frustrating to have to keep pushing warnings and to have those warnings ignored. > (1) the technical internals of Cryptocat from (2) the core idea behind Cryptocat and, especially, (3) Nadim himself, personally? That sounds reasonable, except it's hard to do. The internals of Cryptocat are closely tied to the core idea. People point out the flaws in the core ideas, and cryptocat team just say "point out an actual attack". So then people are forced to find bugs in the internals. And when they do CryptoCat patch, and say "See! Nothing to worry about!" Except that the core idea is still flawed. People get exasperated playing this game of Whack-a-mole. I get that Nadim is proud of his product, but his choices of promotion have caused friction, and his reaction to some of the criticism has made it worse. Some people have mentioned that the crypto community is toxic. They're right, but there's also a high barrier to entry. When someone releases a product as secure, but has made very many obvious flaws that ruin the security of that product, they're going to attract a lot of flak. Don't forget that many people are not sincerely trying to learn about crypto and make it accessible. Many people are bodging together terrible software and selling it. There's a long history of debunking snake-oil. It's unfortunate that Nadim has been subject to attack, but he should have known it was coming and presented the product differently. > making Cryptocat better It can never be made "good enough". That's the fundamental point.
- rdl 13y ago
  I think someone could probably make a relatively lightweight chat client which used OTR and ran as a mobile app or browser extension (although I'm not totally sure of the security model for extensions, they do seem to be a lot better than website-delivered js). I mean, we have pretty good examples of other people doing this (on mobile) with chatsecure, etc.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Not to be snide, but, you mean like Adium?
    - rdl 13y ago
      Adium is a local mac-specific app, and multi protocol, and pretty complicated. Far bigger and more complicated than I would want to trust. Doesn't ship with OTR out of the box (iirc). Something either browser-extension or mobile app would be a lot better. IMO, also not supporting legacy stuff like aim/yahoo/etc, and supporting OTR out of the box. Nadim did a decent job on the simple UI front. I don't know about the lack of persistent identity (pluses and minuses to that).
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Adium has had OTR out of the box for as long as I've known about it, and you don't have to do anything special to make it work; just talk to someone else that wants to do OTR, and it'll pop up at you.
        rdl 13y ago
        (I use adium too...) I was confusing it with Pidgin for needing the OTR plugin. Adium (and Pidgin) have had security issues in the past due to libpurple; a lightweight app would solve that. I want something where you can just tell someone who starts talking recklessly on FB messenger or SMS or whatever to go to a single URL or download a single app and have pretty high confidence it will work. Mobile is probably more important in the long run, especially for the kind of activist users CryptoCat seems to target. (Another obvious thing is just i18n/l10n for arabic/pashto/etc., of existing tools.) Another feature which would be nice is Grugqian "anti-forensics"; Adium for a while logged OTR chats by default, and even retaining OTR keys could be used against you (even if it doesn't allow decryption of past messages, it is enough outside of a court of law to link you to activity...). A browser extension or mobile app which didn't save local state (doing key derivation from a passphrase?) would probably be great for that. Add in SnapChat-style "no logging in the application", and honest-but-stupid counterparties wouldn't log chats. The only weakness I see is no great way to do message-encryption for multiparty right now in a standard way. I'm not sure how you can do multiparty key agreement with PFS using anything outside academic papers.

by plg 13y ago

DanBC 13y ago

> If you think the core idea behind Cryptocat is crap, then fine, make a technical argument. People keep making these technical arguments. They are ignored. It is frustrating to have to keep pushing warnings and to have those warnings ignored. > (1) the technical internals of Cryptocat from (2) the core idea behind Cryptocat and, especially, (3) Nadim himself, personally? That sounds reasonable, except it's hard to do. The internals of Cryptocat are closely tied to the core idea. People point out the flaws in the core ideas, and cryptocat team just say "point out an actual attack". So then people are forced to find bugs in the internals. And when they do CryptoCat patch, and say "See! Nothing to worry about!" Except that the core idea is still flawed. People get exasperated playing this game of Whack-a-mole. I get that Nadim is proud of his product, but his choices of promotion have caused friction, and his reaction to some of the criticism has made it worse. Some people have mentioned that the crypto community is toxic. They're right, but there's also a high barrier to entry. When someone releases a product as secure, but has made very many obvious flaws that ruin the security of that product, they're going to attract a lot of flak. Don't forget that many people are not sincerely trying to learn about crypto and make it accessible. Many people are bodging together terrible software and selling it. There's a long history of debunking snake-oil. It's unfortunate that Nadim has been subject to attack, but he should have known it was coming and presented the product differently. > making Cryptocat better It can never be made "good enough". That's the fundamental point.

rdl 13y ago
I think someone could probably make a relatively lightweight chat client which used OTR and ran as a mobile app or browser extension (although I'm not totally sure of the security model for extensions, they do seem to be a lot better than website-delivered js). I mean, we have pretty good examples of other people doing this (on mobile) with chatsecure, etc.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Not to be snide, but, you mean like Adium?
  - rdl 13y ago
    Adium is a local mac-specific app, and multi protocol, and pretty complicated. Far bigger and more complicated than I would want to trust. Doesn't ship with OTR out of the box (iirc). Something either browser-extension or mobile app would be a lot better. IMO, also not supporting legacy stuff like aim/yahoo/etc, and supporting OTR out of the box. Nadim did a decent job on the simple UI front. I don't know about the lack of persistent identity (pluses and minuses to that).
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Adium has had OTR out of the box for as long as I've known about it, and you don't have to do anything special to make it work; just talk to someone else that wants to do OTR, and it'll pop up at you.
      - rdl 13y ago
        (I use adium too...) I was confusing it with Pidgin for needing the OTR plugin. Adium (and Pidgin) have had security issues in the past due to libpurple; a lightweight app would solve that. I want something where you can just tell someone who starts talking recklessly on FB messenger or SMS or whatever to go to a single URL or download a single app and have pretty high confidence it will work. Mobile is probably more important in the long run, especially for the kind of activist users CryptoCat seems to target. (Another obvious thing is just i18n/l10n for arabic/pashto/etc., of existing tools.) Another feature which would be nice is Grugqian "anti-forensics"; Adium for a while logged OTR chats by default, and even retaining OTR keys could be used against you (even if it doesn't allow decryption of past messages, it is enough outside of a court of law to link you to activity...). A browser extension or mobile app which didn't save local state (doing key derivation from a passphrase?) would probably be great for that. Add in SnapChat-style "no logging in the application", and honest-but-stupid counterparties wouldn't log chats. The only weakness I see is no great way to do message-encryption for multiparty right now in a standard way. I'm not sure how you can do multiparty key agreement with PFS using anything outside academic papers.