Greetings!

A friend of mine wants to be more secure and private in light of recent events in the USA.

They originally told me they were going to use telegram, in which I explained how Telegram is considered compromised, and Signal is far more secure to use.

But they want more detailed explanations then what I provided verbally. Please help me explain things better to them! ✨

I am going to forward this thread to them, so they can see all your responses! And if you can, please cite!

Thank you! ✨

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 days ago

    As you say yourself (cryptocraphic nerd here):

    Signal’s E2EE protocol means that, most likely, message content between persons is secure.

    So a shame there are no free servers, are the server soft not open source, only the signal app itself?

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 day ago

      The server is supposedly open source, but they did anger the open source community a few years back, by going a whole year without posting any code updates. Either way that’s not reliable, because signal isn’t self-hostable, so you have no idea what code the server is running. Never rely on someone saying “just trust us.”

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 hours ago

        I have read that it is self hostable (but I haven’t digged into it) but as it’s not a federating service so not better than other alternative out there.

        Also read that the keys are stored locally but also somehow stored in the cloud (??), which makes it all completely worthless if it is true.

        That said, the three letter agencies can probably get in any android/apple phones if they want to, like I’m not forgetting the oh so convenient “bug” heartbleed…

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Also read that the keys are stored locally but also somehow stored in the cloud (??),

          Which keys? Are they always stored or are they only stored under certain conditions? Are they encrypted as well? End to end encrypted?

          which makes it all completely worthless if it is true.

          It doesn’t, because what you described above could be fine or could have huge security ramifications. As it is, my guess is that you’re talking about how Signal supports secure value recovery. In that case:

          1. The key is used to encrypt your contacts, profile name, group avatars, social graph, etc., but not your messages.
          2. Your key is only uploaded to the cloud if you have a recovery PIN or passphrase
          3. Your key is encrypted using your PIN or passphrase using techniques (key-stretching, storing in server secure enclaves) that make it more difficult to brute force

          The main criticism of this is that you can’t opt out of it without opting out of the Registration Lock, that it necessarily uses the same PIN or passphrase, and that, particularly because it isn’t clear that your PIN/passphrase is used for encryption, users are less likely to use more secure pass phrases here.

          But even without the extra steps that we can’t 100% confirm, like the use of the Secure Enclave on servers and so on, this is e2ee, able to be opted out by the user, not able to be used to recover past messages, and not able to be used to decrypt future messages.