What's the deal with Signal?
I don't know if I'm opening a can of worms here, and I'm still trying to backtrack a lot of history where I was tuning everything out. I keep seeing random swipes at Signal (or the representatives (?)), and I was wondering whether they are founded or just lies.Is it another situation like Lemmy where we just "take the technology and move on"? Thanks!
Signal is an open-source privacy-focused end-to-end encrypted texting platform (so competing with SMS, WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram, and similar). It’s developed by a donation-funded non-profit organization.
Signal is quite good compared to the competition, but it faces a lot of scrutiny because they make big promises about privacy and security so the people who care will really get into the details on that. Also IIRC there was a period when one of their competitors was trying to slander them more or less.
In general there’s nothing wrong with Signal and it’s quite a good option. If you really care about the privacy details you can always host your own instance (but that would require you to convince your friends to use your instance … it’s not federated).
The deal is that they run their program in a very transparent and wherever possible verifiable way.
More details here: https://lemmy.world/comment/14775870
Hey signal is better than most of the mainstream bs. I use it myself and I'm confident that the messages themselves are secure. However, it had issues.
Since we cannot verify the software they run on the server is the software that is open source then we must assume it is not.
We know for a majority of cases a phone number = a real identity. Signal implements sealed sender but since signal is a centralised point they can correlate the sealed sender extraordinarily easily. We must therefore assume signal knows when and who is communicating (We can verify they don't know what is being said) this therefore means signal could theoretically have a full social graph of real identities for every singe user.
This is of course after we remember signal received funding from BBG which is an organisation funded by the us government purely for the purpose of promoting american propaganda.
Also I believe they used to have federation but all evidence of this seems to have been wiped from the internet.
Signal can either adapt and prove themselves with more than a "trust me bro" or they can die. Just cos they are better than the alternatives does not mean we should not demand better.
great explanation!
we must assume it is not.
100% - Security is about capabilities, not intentions!
Don't assume - verify!
Also I believe they used to have federation but all evidence of this seems to have been wiped from the internet.
They never had.
The talk about federation originated when the EU demanded interoperability from gatekeeper software i.e. Whatsapp. Signal said on day one they wouldn't do from their end because it would mean lowering security.
There was LibreSignal once but it got shut down by Signal. It's quite old. This was like 10 years ago.
I mean long before that with one of the 3rd party apps they used to federate their own server with signal iirc.
If they encrypt meta data like they say they do (https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/), it should be very hard to use meta data the way you explained.
Whether they do can be looked up here (https://github.com/signalapp) by those who know what to look for.
As Signal uses reproducible builds (https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/), itcan be verified that the builds are made from the public source code.
They make offering a secure and trustable app a lot better (by being verifyable) than other messengers.
The point is we cannot trust they run the software they claim to run. Identifying a sender despite sealed sender is trivial if u have a centralised server.
Say I am the signal server and all the clients run the known/provable secure clients that are used. I as the signal server an subject to wiretap and gag orders so I can be obligated to run software that is not the published server software and into tell anyone. As a server I by definition have everyone's IP address. A message with signal protocol has a sealed sender and a known identity recipient. As the signal server I can see when u send a message and from what IP and to which identity and what ip that identity is. I can then simply associate IPs and identities.
I trust the app I cannot trust the server. A reproducible build does not prove anything about the server it only proves the client.
Since we cannot verify the software they run on the server is the software that is open source then we must assume it is not.
But that's like, the case for pretty much every messenger out there, outside of self-hosting, which will not be done by 99.99% of the general population.
This is a good comparison of messengers here:
https://eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm
Btw, an imprtant aspect of privacy is how metadata are handled/leaked. Signal trues to minimize metadata leak to near zero (there are some other messengers that do that, like simplex)
This comparison makes some questionnable choices. It puts the presence of a web client as green, when actually this breaks the thread model of end-to-end encryption.
Signal is great, you should use it.
Current problems with signal
Details
Signal is the best main stream e2e out there, but it's not the last one we will ever see, something will replace it
Your encryption key is stored ON-DEVICE. Not in "the cloud".
In fact, they just had a big hullabalu about the encryption key being stored in plain-text on their desktop client, which they've now resolved.
They now use https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/safe-storage on the desktop client.
Both on device and in the cloud.
https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
That is why when you switch phones and register again with signal using your "pin", you can send messages to your contacts without your verification number changing.
There is not „your encryption key“ because there is not only one.
The cloud backup (protected by the pin) includes the contact list, NOT your messages. Those are encrypted on device with a key that is on device and can not be recovered by anyone from the cloud.
There is not „your encryption key“ because there is not only one.
It's close enough, its the master key from which all other keys can be derived.
https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/
If someone loses their phone, the stretched_key, auth_key, and c1 variables can be regenerated at any time on the client as long as the user remembers their chosen passphrase.
Your encryption key can be stored encrypted in the cloud. This isn't a fundamentally bad thing, but they should allow better protection than the short pins they allowed last time I checked.
my problem with signal is that they have a hard requirement to use a phone number for signup and that they don't want to do anything about federation or messenger intercompatibility.
Their resoning is that they only trust themself to keep the meta data safe and so need you. Leaves a little bit of a sour tast in my mouth that they don't even give their users the option to opt into federation.
they don’t want to do anything about federation or messenger intercompatibility.
Their reasoning is that they only trust themself to keep the meta data safe and so need you.
That's not their reasoning. Their reasoning is that it's much harder to evolve the protocol in a decentralized context than a centralized one. It's not that they only trust themselves with your metadata, it's that they can improve the protocol much faster in order to get rid of most metadata.
They have been able to deploy a ton of protocol updates with regards to minimizing the amount of metadata anyone has access to (including them), while other decentralized alternatives have essentially been stuck in limbo for a while:
On the other hand, Matrix, XMPP and email are very leaky with regards to metadata. I'm not going into email because that's pretty documented, but here it is for matrix:
It's mostly minor shit, it's better than the alternatives unless you self-host (which has a boatload of other issues).
The thing is I have yet to see any reasonable alternatives.
Threema is the closest but it’s not free-of-charge, so a non-starter for most of my friends.
The others are controlled by Russia (telegram) or Meta. What else even is viable?
I'm trying to move my family to Matrix with a self hosted server. It's not easy though because of bugs in it.
Session, an Australian fork of Signal with onion routing and no phone number requirement, seems promising.
How does simplex compare?
Different people don't like it for different reasons. Some people don't like it because they think it has CIA financial backing (nope), and some people don't like it because it requires your phone number, therefore it is not private (the privacy it provides is more than sufficient for anyone not actively being persecuted by a Five Eyes state), and some people don't like it because it feels corporate (it's a 501c3 nonprofit, and how corporate it feels is subjective).
And some people don’t like it because it used to handle SMS on Android, and they removed that feature for security reasons.
That was a pretty wild decision
This was such a dumb decision
This might be offtopic but:
Fun Fact, you can use an open source app like Secure Space Encryptor (SSE) (on iOS its called "Paranoia Text Encryption") to convert any string of text into a encrypted ciphertext, and you can then copy-paste that ciphertext and send it over any medium, like SMS, without the internet. (Most encrypted messaging apps require you have to have internet AFIAK, so people without a data plan is fucked, but with SSE, you can just send ciphertext over SMS) Its not intergrated with SMS, so you'll have to type plaintext in the app then copy paste the ciphertext it spits out.
Or you can also PGP over SMS
I remember when Signal used to intergrate with SMS, and I kinda liked that more than the Signal today where you have to use the internet and go through their servers.
Some people don’t like that they attached a crypto wallet to the app. I couldn’t care less and use the messenger daily!
I don't care or use it either, but I haven't seen a single use case for that wallet nor mobilecoins. Does people actually use it and for what?
Accurate. And if you are being targeted by 5 eyes, your phone is probably fucked, one app vs another probably won't make a difference
If you ARE targeted by 5 eyes, you'd probably want to not be using your phone for communications, but Signal sorta requires you to, even if there's a desktop client.
However, I don't presume to know what would be the best option. SimpleX maybe, as the servers don't keep messages? Otherwise, I use Matrix because it's a lot more common and very easy to set up your own homeserver. However, again, if I had to hide something from a 5 eyes threat actor, they'd just find some vulnerability in my server config or, hell, maybe they can somehow sneakily get root access through the VPS provider itself, as I'm not hosting on my own hardware.
Honestly, meeting in person might be the most private solution if you've got that kind of a threat model.
I don't think I've ever seen people say it has CIA financial backing. It did however until only a couple of years ago have strong ties to the State Department's Open Tech Fund (from the same financial envelope that brings you RFA/RFE/VOA).
The main developer of Lemmy seems to think there's a solid connection. I'm not jumping in that fight, I got no dog in that fight, I don't have that kind of threat model.
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/why_not_signal.html#cia-funding
However, considering he's openly Marxist, he may be just slightly biased.
I suspect OP of this post actually saw the recent /c/Privacy thread over at lemmy.ml where Dessalines was proselytizing against Signal while not seeming to have a problem with SimpleX chat being funded by a group of Venture Capital investors, including Jack Dorsey.
I understand why, but I get annoyed that I can't integrate it into ferdium with my other things like discord, e-mail and calendar.
Signal likely does not have
But this is the kind of information that can be only dispositive.
That is, because we cannot prove a negative, and the only time you can be certain about whether an organization—especially one like the CIA—has provided funding for something, is after it has been proven.