6 ms·

Can you elaborate more, please?

• scott_karana 12y ago
  It's a cryptographically well-audited replacement to iMessage, Skype, and traditional telephony, all of which leave room for governmental and malicious meddling.
  • WhitneyLand 12y ago
    It's not really a replacement, more of a secure alternative. Ideally it would be possible to totally replace iMessage with Signal allowing non-secure messages from legacy contacts. However, even if the team were so inclined Apple does not provide adequate messaging APIs. For example, there is no way to intercept an SMS message, see message history, etc.
    • mahyarm 12y ago
      TBH I think keeping SMS separate from an ip based communications method is better. Lets not pretend that SMS is secure. The only thing I would find missing are quick reply APIs.
      • scott_karana 12y ago
        How are IP and SMS traffic different, other than "packet" size and encoding constraints? Both are easily interceptable and spoofable, necessitating strong crypto. I don't see how chacha20/poly1305 is somehow "worse" over SMS.
        • nzp 12y ago
          The difference is mostly that in case of SMS, metadata leaks to carriers. In case of Signal/TextSecure/RedPhone, some limited metadata leaks to Google Cloud Messaging and Apple's equivalent platform (I can't remember the name). That's necessary because of scaling problems with push messages, but I understand there is work going on to develop a self contained alternative using WebSockets.
• LeoPanthera 12y ago
  For me, it means I can finally ditch SMS. iMessage to other iOS users, and Signal/TextSecure to Android users.