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@[email protected] to [email protected]English • 1 year ago

Downsides of Signal alternatives compared to Signal?

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Downsides of Signal alternatives compared to Signal?

@[email protected] to [email protected]English • 1 year ago
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I’m thinking of the things listed on the Privacy Guides real-time communication section

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Signal stores your encryption key on their servers…

    That would surprise me. What’s your source for this?

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      3•1 year ago

      https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/

      • @[email protected]
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        4•1 year ago

        master_key is never stored or sent to the SGX, only c2, the entropy bits. The user’s password is still required to generate the key.

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          1 year ago

          Brute forcing 4-6 digit pins is trivial.

          And even if the user set a actual password, it’s still very trivial

          https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-thoughts-about-signals-secure-value-recovery/

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            2•1 year ago

            “Very trivial” if they set a proper password? Yet the source you provide says it’s robustly secure

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              1•1 year ago

              I can’t find the phrase robustly secure in the last link:

              https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2020/07/10/a-few-thoughts-about-signals-secure-value-recovery/

              Signal asks users to set a pin/password which needs to be periodically reentered. This discourages people from using high entropy passwords like BIP38.

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          4•1 year ago

          The password is literally a pin

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            3•1 year ago

            If you set a small pin, perhaps. Most people set a password

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              2•1 year ago

              Pin is the suggested option, so I really doubt “most” of the people choose password

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                3•1 year ago

                Most people who care* I guess would be more apt

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                  1•1 year ago

                  For the people who really care, they can disable The pin. I believe the client will generate a BIP 38 password randomly, and use that for the data encrypted in the SVR. But all the data is still uploaded to the cloud. So if there’s a problem with the SVR encoding, the BIP 38 password generation etc the data is still exploited

                  Not only do you have to care, everyone you talk to has to do the same thing, because if your counterparty has their key in the cloud, the conversation is at risk.

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                    2•1 year ago

                    Regardless, the master key is never uploaded

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        3 days ago

        deleted by creator

        • @[email protected]
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          1•1 year ago

          One nit to pick, messages have to transit through the signal network. And they could be recorded during transit. Carnivore style

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            2•1 year ago

            True, but that’s more or less out of the scope of this thread. I could go on for way longer about centralized versus federated services…

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