lvh

68 ms·

721.
by lvh 8y ago
What? No, SMS is not a reauth factor in Signal, and the number doesn’t have to be physically proximate to you: you just have to receive a text message on it once.
722.
by lvh 8y ago
I know; I lived in one. A burner number does not imply getting a SIM. That is not how journos in sensitive countries get a number.
723.
by lvh 8y ago
I'm sure 'tptacek is tired of grinding this particular axe so I'll trot out the usual arguments: - Discovery didn't create the bug. You have no idea who has been exploiting the shit out of it already. - Vendors will have
724.
by lvh 8y ago
> Also, a centralized messenger with a single server means that all traffic between all the users around the world goes through one data-center in one country that can do what? Observe the traffic and detect who is using this messenger,
725.
by lvh 8y ago
That equivalence does not follow. The counterpoint is simple: can people figure out how to get burner numbers? Yes, they can: there are a myriad of services for doing so. And, importantly: journalists already know how.
726.
by lvh 8y ago
In what sense is HTTP/2 or TLS 1.3 federated?
727.
by lvh 8y ago
I'm concerned that they don't work well at all: a number of highly important properties are missing and a number of the criteria have been challenged; see rest of thread.
728.
by lvh 8y ago
That only works if you trust the store, and you somehow only know how to audit from source. Neither is true for professional audits: you'd generally start from the APK anyway, even if it's minified, and in many cases you'd ac
729.
by lvh 8y ago
> Allo, whatsapp and other closed systems that give you no resaon to trust them other than faith in the people shilling them. Their claims can't be verified so they can only be marked as just that, claims. I have repeatedly refuted
730.
by lvh 8y ago
You asked "what valuable thing has Signal done" and offered to track them, and I responded with two examples. "What if someone threatens a Signal employee" is a moved goalpost. Who else has solved private contact discove
731.
by lvh 8y ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere: you do not need the source code to verify what something does, that's not generally how you'd audit this. Audits may be source-assisted, but you'd still bang at it from the actual binary. If
732.
by lvh 8y ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere: this is why you audit the apk, not the claimed source.
733.
by lvh 8y ago
Since the author added a link to the Wire audit after I pointed out it existed, I think it means "third party has audited it and verified claims". On the other hand, they also still claim Telegram has been audited in this sense, w
734.
by lvh 8y ago
What good messenger is better than Signal but just has a smaller _marketing budget_?
735.
by lvh 8y ago
The care Signal puts in that actually makes it a better, more secure messenger is primarily about metadata management. Consider how long it took for them to implement profiles, how much time they took to explain how their contact discovery
736.
by lvh 8y ago
In order to comment on individual cells, we appear to first have to have an argument about how audits work. You say WhatsApp can only "claim" certain features as a consequence of it being closed source, but that's because of
737.
by lvh 8y ago
> "this phone number sent a message to this phone number at this time" (information that is even stored, at least temporarily, on their servers in order to implement rate limiting) This claim appears to be unsupported by both S
738.
by lvh 8y ago
This is not responsive to the core of my argument that nobody who actually audits and analyzes this stuff will tell you that source availability is necessary or even useful for figuring out if a particular application does what it says it d
739.
by lvh 8y ago
You can't validate anything about an open source project either unless you have repeatable builds. Real audits can be source-assisted, but do not rely on anyone pinky-swearing that this is actually the checkout that eventually produced
740.
by lvh 8y ago
This is silly hair-splitting. If it's "hard to adapt" to mobile then it's the protocol implying poor UX. Fortunately, in XMPP country, we're always just a XEP away! </s>
741.
by lvh 8y ago
Could you elaborate how WhatsApp and Signal are not doing well from a security/privacy perspective? Can you name an alternative that does better under those criteria? I was under the impression that Signal precipitated most modern mess
742.
by lvh 8y ago
Neither server nor peer will notice if you perform the serious attack: exfiltrate the plaintexts or key material and keep the OMEMO/Signal dance around as kabuki theater :-)
743.
by lvh 8y ago
Dust is woefully underspecified and uses an ancient design with no forward secrecy and no (specified) message or sender authentication of any kind. Blockchain, as usual, purports to solve a problem nobody had. Dust doesn't try to addre
744.
by lvh 8y ago
That's all fine but not responsive to my point. GP post said "but what if whatsapp silently hamstrings e2e overnight" -- my point is: what if my XMPP client/server does? EDIT: I previously said "turns off E2E",
745.
by lvh 8y ago
Typo correction, but I can no longer edit: WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, just with fewer of the privacy tweaks in the implementation. The criteria don't seem to consider those. They're important, but the two should be equival
746.
by lvh 8y ago
S/MIME for XMPP E2E: https://xmpp.org/rfcs/rfc3923.html I am aware that OTR is being rolled back. My point is that extensibility is at odds with practical security and privacy for the vast majority of users. The p
747.
by lvh 8y ago
How do I know my XMPP client is actually doing what it says? Are you saying the provenance for my XMPP client is fundamentally better than that of the WhatsApp app?
748.
by lvh 8y ago
That's a fair point, but the fact that there's yet another protocol, not mentioned on the XMPP E2E wiki, kinda plays into the point itself: XMPP has E2E maybe with a bunch of random protocols and the stars (and the people you talk
749.
by lvh 8y ago
This is neat but it has plenty of flaws. I wish the definitions were spelled out. It says Signal isn't "anonymous", which I assume means "uses a phone number to find peers". And it has the usual feature matrix probl
750.
by lvh 8y ago
Are you one of the developers/speaking for them? That warning is pretty old.

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