Comment on Why Signal’s post-quantum makeover is an amazing engineering achievement

heysoundude@eviltoast.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• lemmee_in@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Signal puts a lot of effort into their threat model that assumes a hostile host (i.e. AWS). That’s the whole point of end to end encryption, even if the host is compromised the attackers do not get any information. They even go as far as padding out the lengths of encrypted messages so everyone looks like they are sending identical blocks of data

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  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m assuming that they were more referring to the outage that occurred today that pulled a ton of the internet services, including signal offline temporarily.

    You can have all the encryption in the world, but if the centralized data point that allows you to access the service is down, then you’re fucked.

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    • heysoundude@eviltoast.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That was my point. But as somebody else pointed out here, the difficulties in maintaining the degree of security we currently enjoy as Signal users starts to get eroded away

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  • frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Padding isn’t anything special. Most practical uses of block ciphers require it.

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    sending identical blocks of data

    Nitpicking here but assuming from the previous words in your comment that you mean blocks of data of identical length.

    Although it should be as if we are sending multiples of identical size, I suppose.

    Anyway, sorry for nitpicking.

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• alimanana@feddit.cl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  or federated server

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  • null@piefed.nullspace.lol ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Would be very cool to be able to host a Signal homeserver.

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    • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ here is Moxi’s take on that (former Signal CEO).

      So I don’t think it’s happening.

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    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      they won’t do that.

      Matrix tried for quite a while to get interoperability, but signal is just too paranoid about distributed hosting or interoperability of their software/protocol. it’s quite annoying

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      • monogram@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        And yet simplex exists.

        simplex.chat

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• elvis_depresley@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I guess the research doesn’t have to be limited to signal. If other apps can benefit from it the more resilient “private communications over the internet” get.

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• victorz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  So that’s why Signal didn’t send my messages very quickly today then, maybe.

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  • DaGeek247@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It's not completely out yet. That was likely AWS being down.

    Also, the new quantum protected message encryption headers are about 2kb. If that's causing issues with your internet, you may want to consider looking at new internet.

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    • frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      2kb? While it may not sound like much, that’s at least three packets worth of data (depending on MTU). If you think about it in terms of how TCP sends packets and needs ACKs, there’s actually a lot of round trip data processing going on for just that one part.

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      • xthexder@l.sw0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        TCP will generally send up to 10 packets immediately without waiting for the ACKs (depending on the configured window size).

        Generally any messages or websites under 14kb will be transmitted in a single round-trip assuming no packets are dropped.

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    • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That was likely AWS being down.

      Sorry, yeah, that’s what I was referring to.

      My internet connection is 500/500 Mbps, and I can’t change it. 😄👍

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      • naticus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Should have been pretty obvious to anyone reading any tech news whatsoever today, especially in the context of where you responded. No apology from you should have been necessary!

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    • Lumisal@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The average for a person sending / receiving a message is about 35 / day. That’s 70kb / person.

      Signal has aprx. 100 million users.

      Which means this adds about 7 terabytes daily.

      Just doing the math on it, there’s no point to this message 😁

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• thepompe@ttrpg.network ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Just use Matrix…

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  • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I did, it’s a buggy undercooked mess that doesn’t work half the time. The app that’s officially supported is missing half the features. Trying to get people to switch to it is like pulling teeth as the onboarding process in overly complicated for the average user.

    Meanwhile Signal works right out of the box with very little fuss.

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  • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I could. Presumably so could the others commenting on this post. But then what are we to do about the privacy or tech illiterate people we’ve carried to Signal over the years?

    It’s easy to winge about just doing what you perceive as the optimal solution. It’s more difficult when you need to navigate the path to get there from where we are now.

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  • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    No

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