this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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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! ✨

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

I can't speak about telegram, but signal is absolutely not secure to use. Its a US-based service (that must adhere to NSLs), and requires phone numbers (meaning your real identity in the US).

Matrix, XMPP, or SimpleX are all decentralized, and don't require US hosting.

[–] logging_strict@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

You are right but

we like doing the wrong thing over and over again. And being surprised, each and every time, when it turns out to be wrong. Never picking up onto the repeating simple pattern.

1111111111111 what's the next number ... errrr Signal! That's it you got it. Good job.

Embrace the idiocracy!

This is why Telegram is awesome.

Eventually you will come around and realize how hopeless humanity is and embrace that it is well beyond hope.

And then you will have a larger network and enjoy each and every one of them.

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This entire article is guessing at hypothetical backdoors. Its like saying that AES is backdoored because the US government chose it as the standard defacto symmetrical encryption.

There is no proof that Signal has done anything nefarious at all.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There was also no proof that a ton of US companies were spying on their users, until the global surveillance disclosures. Crypto AG ran a honeypot that spied on communications between world leaders for > 40 years until it got exposed.

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Right but Signal has been audited by various security firms throughout its lifetime, and each time they generally report back that this messenger has encryption locked down properly.

[–] juli@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This entire article is guessing at hypothetical backdoors. Its like saying that AES is backdoored because the US government chose it as the standard defacto symmetrical encryption.

There is no proof that Signal has done anything nefarious at all.

As an outsider, I mean isn't that the same for news coverage for chinese/russian backdoors, but everyone believes it without any proof.

Why is US company being a US honeypot a big surprise, and its government recommending it not a big red flag? but it is when China recommends wechat? Can't we be critical and suspicious of both authoritarian countries?

Do you have access to Signal servers to verify your claims by any chance? Afaik their servers are running modified codebase, and third party apps cannot use them. So how do you claim anything that goes behind closed doors at all? Genuinel curious.

[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Do you have access to Signal servers to verify your claims by any chance?

That's not how it works. The signal protocol is designed in a way that the server can't have access to your message contents if the client encrypts them properly. You're supposed to assume the server might be compromised at any time. The parts you actually need to verify for safe communication are:

  • the code running on your device
  • the public key of your intended recipient
[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Being critical is good, and we should always hold them accountable for our security. We can look to third party audits for help with that.

https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243

[–] flux@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So if I understand it Signal has your phone number but only logs sign up date and last activity date. So yes they can say this person has Signal and last used it on date X. Other than that no information.

Matrix doesn't require a phone number but has no standard on logging activity so it's up to the server admin what they log, and they could retain ip address, what users are talking in what, rooms, etc. and E2EE is not required.

I think both have different approaches. I'm just trying to understand. On one hand you have centralized system that has a standard to minimize logs or decentralized system that must be configured to use E2EE and to remove logs.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

They have your phone number (meaning your full identity, and even current address), and as the primary identifier, it means they have message timestamps and social graphs.

Its impossible to verify what code their server is running. Or that they delete their logs, because they say they do? You should never rely on someone saying "just trust us". Truly secure systems have much harder verifiability tests to pass.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

and requires phone numbers (meaning your real identity in the US).

This gets shared a lot as a major concern for all services requiring a phone number. It is definitely true that by definition, a phone number is linked to a person's identity, but in the case of signal, no other information can be derived from it. When the US government requests data for that phone number from Signal, like they occasionally do, the only information Signal provides them with is whether they do have a signal account and when they registered it last and when they last signed in. How is that truly problematic? For all other services which require a phone number, you would have much more information which is where it is truly problematic, say social graph, text messages, media, locations, devices etc. But none of that is accessible by Signal. So literally the only thing signal can say is whether the person has an account, that's about it. What's the big deal about it? Clearly the US government already has your phone number because they need it to make the request for Signal, but they gain absolutely no other information.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Your data is routed through Signal servers to establish connections. Signal absolutely can does provide social graphs, message frequency, message times, message size. There's also nothing stopping them from pushing a snooping build to one user when that user is targeted by the NSA. The specific user would need to check all updates against verified hashes. And if they're on iOS then that's not even an option, since the official iOS build hash already doesn't match the repo.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Signal absolutely can does provide social graphs, message frequency, message times, message size.

Do you have anything to back this up?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They have to. They can't route your messages otherwise.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They have to know who the message needs to go to, granted. But they don't have to know who the message comes from, hence why the sealed sender technique works. The recipient verifies the message via the keys that are exchanged if they have been communicating with that correspondent before or else it is a new message request.

So I don't see how they can build social graphs if they don't know who the sender if all messages are, they can only plot recipients which is not enough.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But they don't have to know who the message comes from, hence why the sealed sender technique works.

Anyone who's worked with centralized databases can tell you that even if they did add something like that, with message timestamps, it'd be trivial to find the real sender of a message. You have no proof that they even use that, because the server is centralized, and closed source. Again, if their response is "just trust us", then its not secure.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

From what I understand, sealed sender is implemented on the client side. And that's what's in the github repo.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

How does that work? I wasn't able to find this. Can you find documentation or code that explains how the client can obscure where it came from?

[–] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 1 points 9 hours ago

https://signal.org/blog/sealed-sender/ explains the feature.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13842 has some links into the code base showing where sealed sender is implemented.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Your link lists all the things they don't share. The only reasonable reading is that anything not explicitly mentioned is shared. It's information they have, and they're legally required to share what they have, also mentioned in your link in the documents underneath their comment.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

If you open the latest instance, from August 2024, you will find a California government request, for a number of phone numbers.

The second paragraph of that very page says:

Once again, Signal doesn’t have access to your messages; your calls; your chat list; your files and attachments; your stories; your groups; your contacts; your stickers; your profile name or avatar; your reactions; or even the animated GIFs you search for – and it’s impossible to turn over any data that we never had access to in the first place.

They respond to the request with the following information:

  1. The responsive information that Signal possessed was:

a. REDACTED: Most Recent Registration: 2023-01-31 T19:42:10 UTC; Most Recent Login: 2023-01-31 T00:00:00 UTC.

b. REDACTED: Most Recent Registration: 2022-06-01 T16:30:01UTC; Most Recent Login: 2022-12-12 T00:00:00 UTC.

c. REDACTED: Most Recent Registration 2021-12-02T03:42:09 UTC; Most Recent Login: 2022-12-28 T00:00:00 UTC.

The redacted values are the phone numbers.

That is the full extent of their reply. No other information is provided, to the government request.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago

We can't verify that. They have a vested interest in lying, and occasionally are barred from disclosing government requests. However, using this as evidence, as I suggested in my previous comment, we can use it to make informed guesses as to what data they can share. They can't share the content of the message or calls -- This is believable and assumed. But they don't mention anything surrounding the message, such as whom they sent it to (and it is them who receives and sends the messages), when, how big it was, etc. They say they don't have access to your contact book -- This is also very likely true. But that isn't the same as not being able to provide a social graph, since they know everyone you've spoken to, even if they don't know what you've saved about those people on your device. They also don't mention anything about the connection they might collect that isn't directly relevant to providing the service, like device info.

Think about the feasibility of interacting with feds in the manner they imply. No extra communication to explain that they can't provide info they don't have? Even though they feel the need to communicate that to their customers. Of course this isn't the extent of the communication, or they'd be in jail. But they're comfortable spinning narratives. Consider their whole business is dependant on how they react to these requests. Do you think it's likely their communication of how they handled it is half-truths?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

California does not issue NSLs, the US federal government does. And those come with gag orders that means you will go to federal prison if you tell anyone that you've been asked to spy on your users.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Are you implying that Signal is withholding information from the Californian Government? And only providing the full extent of their data to the government?

This comes back to the earlier point that there is no proof Signal even has more data than they have shared.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you don't know what an NSL is, then you definitely shouldn't be speaking about privacy.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's unfortunate that you react like this. I don't claim to be an expert, never have. I've only been asking for evidence, but all we get to are assumptions and they all seem to stem from the fact that allegedly the CIA has indirectly funded Signal (I'm not disputing nor validating it).

The concern is valid, and it has caused a lot of distrust in many companies due to the Snowden leaks, but that distrust is founded in the leaks. But so far there is no evidence that Signal is part of any of it. And given the continued endorsement by security experts, I'm inclined in trusting them.

[–] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 2 points 9 hours ago

The concern is valid, and it has caused a lot of distrust in many companies due to the Snowden leaks, but that distrust is founded in the leaks.

Snowden explicitly endorsed Signal, too - and as far as I know he’s never walked that endorsement back.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

I think Dessalines most recent comment is fair even if it's harsh. You should understand the nature of a "national security letter" to have the context. The vast majority of (USA) government requests are NSLs because they require the least red tape. When you receive one, it's illegal to disclose that you have, and not to comply. It requires you to share all metadata you have, but they routinely ask for more.

Here's an article that details the CIA connection https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/signal-facing-collapse-after-cia

The concern doesn't stem from the CIA funding. It's inherit to all services operating in or hosted in the USA. They should be assumed compromised by default, since the laws of that country require them to be. Therefore, any app you trust has to be completely unable to spy on you. Signal understands this, and uses it in their marketing. But it isn't true, they've made decisions that allow them to spy on you, and ask that you trust them not to. Matrix, XMPP and SimpleX cannot spy on you by design. (It's possible those apps were made wrong, and therefore allow spying, but that's a different argument).

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Thank you for your post!

I want you to know your effort and knowledge is appreciated, this will help future readers make better decisions.✨

But the situation stands that my friend and their friends are not as technologically literate as we are, and I would rather have them on something easy and secured than unsecured at all, especially from my experience with getting communities to use such decentralized platforms you mentioned.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml -2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Matrix is no more difficult to sign up on than signal, and they don't forward your information to the US government.

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I am not uneducated in this matter, I run Matrix instances and have dabbled in development of tools around it.

Perhaps our experience is different, but I have had great difficulty in helping groups on the ground to use Matrix.

Regardless of our agreement that Matrix is better than Signal, it should not cloud our judgement in at least reducing the harm that is Telegram.

In the future we can keep joining hands to work towards a better future, but for now I hope you can understand my perspective and choice.

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Matrix is centralized around Matrix.org or servers they run tho. Since the protocol is a big data/metadata sync by design & medium–large-sized servers are expensive to run, almost all of metadata is with Matrix.org—of which was originally funded my Israeli intelligence & I wouldn’t be surprised if they were getting data out of it to this day.

Further, they're hosted in Germany, so they must still follow German law and court requests.

[–] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How is setting up e2e on matrix these days?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

On by default, and just works.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

SimpleX is taking a lot of venture capital money which makes it just slightly suspect, imho. Those guys usually want a return of some kind on their investment. I simply don't trust the motives of technocrats like Jack Dorsey.

The Matrix Foundation, on the other hand, seems a lot more democratic in governance and stewardship of the protocol.

[–] HotCoffee@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago

Good projects require money. And SimpleX is still way better than Signal and Telegram, so imo it's worth supporting and using

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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 points 5 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.

Reding the link now " The reason the US government hasn’t tried to block or hinder Signal, is because it’s satisfied with the amount of information Signal can provide to it." Well the metadata of who is contacting who can be acquired by other means. CIA also like to have secure tools. Just like you can argue the CIA connection in the TOR case . It doesn't mean backdoors and so on.

Centralisation argument sure, but that issue will always be there at some level, even for matrix.

Phonenumber discovarability argument is no longer correct as it is possible to use signal and not disclosing it to contacts, but yes still to signal.

I have a signal account with a fake number so that is an option as well, if even more work than matrix process.