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|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML âSuper secureâ messaging app leaks everyone's phone number
password-app wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
This is why I'm skeptical of any app claiming "super secure" without
open-source verification.
The real lesson: assume every service will eventually leak something.
Use unique passwords everywhere, enable 2FA, and rotate credentials
after breaches.
The tedious part is the rotation. I've seen people skip it because
manually changing 50+ passwords is brutal. Automation helps but needs
to be done securely (local-only, zero-knowledge).
fn-mote wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
Iâm glad âsuper secureâ is in scare quotes.
Iâm glad I have never heard of this app.
Security and trust go hand in hand.
nielsbot wrote 18 hours 19 min ago:
> Neither of us had prior experience developing mobile apps, but we
thought, âHey, weâre both smart. This shouldnât be too
difficult.â
Is this an actual quote? Because it sounds like a standup joke.
nunez wrote 19 hours 2 min ago:
Wow; that's a 101-level exploit.
codedokode wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
> Whatâs going on in that user object? The pin field seems
suspiciously related to the PIN we were asked to input after creating
our account
This might be the fault of opt-out serialization library (by default it
serializes the whole object and you need to manually opt-out fields
from it). So a programmer adds a field, forgets to add opt-out
annotation and voilà .
Or they are just using plain JS dicts on the server and forgot to
remove the key before using it in a response.
> The vulnerability theyâre talking about was presented in a paper by
researchers at the University of Vienna.
This vulnerability (mapping phone numbers to user id via rendevouz API)
is old and was exploited in 2016 in Telegram [1] and allowed Iranian
govt to build a phone book of 15M Telegram users. The paper also
mentions that the vulnerability was known in 2012, still not fixed.
HTML [1]: https://telegram.org/blog/15million-reuters
figassis wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
Sure. But why are we blaming libraries. This is the development
process. Are BE developers not looking at their output anymore? Are
we just vibe coding everything? If the UI does not complain then go
to prod? This canât be the expectation. And then you claim that
your app is secure. Based on what review. Does not look like you even
did an internal review?
If youâre going to design a PIN feature, and donât consider
securing it, what part of design did you do?
I keep seeing people try to explain away incompetence by blaming
unaccountable things aka the tool or system. Exposed password? Must
be the library. People really should stop using it. No, the library
is not wrong, ppl should be better developers.
Peer reviewed paper is full of AI slop, must not be the reviewerâs
fault, the citations were there, they were just fake. What is going
on?
Yoric wrote 18 hours 37 min ago:
> This might be the fault of opt-out serialization library (by
default it serializes the hole object and you need to manually
opt-out fields from it). So a programmer adds a field, forgets to add
opt-out annotation and voilà .
In a previous job, on my first audit of the code, I spotted such
vulnerabilities pretty much everywhere.
Developers simply need to stop using these libraries.
Sardtok wrote 19 hours 8 min ago:
The fact that the PIN is leaked is bad enough, but it also happens to
be plaintext. This is a password. It should not be stored unhashed,
and it should be hashed with strong algorithms.
cbsks wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
Itâs a 6 digit pin. Doesnât seem worthwhile to hash. What are
the best practices here? Iâm not sure
figassis wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
There is never a need to store a pin in the database, store it in
temporary storage like redis. Set the TTL to the expiration date.
You can hash if needed, but Iâm less concerned that someone
hacks into your reds instance and steals your pins from the last
10 minutes, bc everything else is gone.
There should never be a need to return a pin to the client.
Youâve already texted/emailed it to them. They are going to
send it back to you. You will check against your temporary
storage, verify/reject, and delete it immediately after.
dietr1ch wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
Yeah, you can only delay attacks by a tiny little bit, but the
search space of 10^6 is just too small. Salting it doesn't give
you much more security.
SchemaLoad wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
This is such a common issue I've seen in so many API backends, where
sensitive fields on a record are getting sent to the client and no
one notices because it's invisible in the UI.
whoknowsidont wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
Why does the title not match the article? It's under the character
limit.
Original title is: âSuper secureâ MAGA-themed messaging app leaks
everyoneâs phone number
I think that's incredibly important context. Instead of conferring with
actual experts in the field, the populist, fascist segment of our
society just decided to wing it with technology.
They BELIEVED they were more secure, with no evidence to back it up.
NekkoDroid wrote 19 hours 40 min ago:
> Why does the title not match the article? It's under the character
limit.
Well obviously we can't be seen as non-neutral (I wish I would be
joking, but I have a feeling that is the thought process on a good
day)
maqp wrote 19 hours 52 min ago:
Yup, it's almost like they're feelings/emotions over
evidence/science. It's not that hard to understand considering how
that weird lot consists of all sorts of cranks, pooled by the alt
right radicalization pipelines of wellness/conspirituality/flat
earth/alt-med/anti-vaccine/UFOs...
TZubiri wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
For every conscientious hacker that tries to do everything right and
have a secure and reliable app. There's ten naïve hackers that just
publish whatever.
kevin061 wrote 20 hours 50 min ago:
Why would you use a messaging platform that requires you to sign up
with a very difficult to change piece of information that in many
countries is tied to your ID and pretend it is secure?
looks at Signal
Oh.
TZubiri wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
You can register on telegram without using your phone number as an
account identifier.
maqp wrote 19 hours 33 min ago:
Yeah if you buy a number with Durov's TON shitcoin. The original
sales are over and number auctions start from opening bid of 37
dollars, and run all the way to 14,000 USD [1] , and they take very
long, even up to one year to close.
Also, Telegram is not private.
1. It's not E2EE by default
2. It's not E2EE for groups on any platfrom
3. It's not E2EE 1:1 on desktop clients forcing you to downgrade
from secret chats to insecure chats
4. It's collecting 100% of your metadata, including
* who you talk to, when, how much, what type of data you exchange,
* your IP-address which sort of defeats the purpose of having no
phone number, and
* when you enable secret chats
Telegram is also not transparent about its funding, about who
develops it, and who has access to the plaintexts stored on their
server (meaning, anyone with a zero day or two).
Journalists who went to look for Telegram's office in Dubay found
out no-one in the neighboring office had ever seen Telegram staff
enter the space [2] Telegram was built with blood-money from
VKontakte, and Durov has been marketed as living in exile, when in
reality he has visited Russia on average once every 2.4 months
since the exile began, and strangely Durov has not had his
underwear poisoned and windows have been kind to him despite
supposedly betraying Putin's interests.
tl;dr Telegram reeks of FSB/SVR honeypot.
HTML [1]: https://fragment.com/numbers
HTML [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg8mWJUM7x4
r721 wrote 3 hours 27 min ago:
>Durov's TON shitcoin
>Telegram reeks of FSB/SVR honeypot
Btw interesting connection between Durov/TON and Jan Marsalek
(alleged Russian spy) was recently uncovered by FT:
>In 2018 Marsalek invited Ben Halim and other backers of the
Libya projects to invest in a new crypto token being launched by
messaging platform Telegram, whose founder Pavel Durov had met
Marsalek and invited him to participate.
>A special purpose vehicle was set up for them to pool their
money and invest but Credit Suisse, which was organising the sale
of the token, blocked the transaction. It turned out the bank was
happy to take money from Marsalek, whose role in the biggest
corporate fraud in recent European history had yet to be
revealed, but was wary of his Libyan friends.
>As a workaround, Ben Halim and others decided to let Marsalek
invest their money in his name, sidestepping Credit Suisseâs
money laundering checks. However, the US Securities and Exchange
Commission blocked Telegramâs issuance of the tokens and
Marsalek refunded his Libyan associates.
HTML [1]: https://archive.fo/7evmm
TZubiri wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
I mean as in the number is not tied to the identity, maybe you
are asked your number to verify the account, but after that you
can have a non number linked account. The account is tied to a
username @blablabla.
I think Telegram is filth as much as the next guy, but I'm just
making that technical point.
eviks wrote 12 hours 29 min ago:
And the authorities are blocking it to protect people from
falling into the honeypot, right?
baobun wrote 17 hours 50 min ago:
> Yeah if you buy a number with Durov's TON shitcoin
Not even. If you actually try you will discover at the last step
(after full KYC, signing some dubious agreements, and linking an
existing TG account) that the Fragment "market" is actually fully
centralized and has not been open for new buyers-users for a good
while. No secondary markets out there (maybe not even possible on
their network) afaik.
maqp wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
That's... all sorts of funny and sad to hear.
kevin061 wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
Anyone using Telegram and expecting it to be a secure messenger
is delusional.
higginsniggins wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
When you go the website the first line is literally âSay hello to
Freedom Chatâa next-generation messaging app that keeps your
conversations actually private
Bengalilol wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
... and then you encounter things like "Privacyâs been lost.
Weâre here to take it back." or "World-class security".
It looks like "Freedom" is a sure thing.
tonymet wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Can those of you writing off half of America as âignorant â or
âanti -science â please move those comments back to Reddit. And
what conclusions did you draw when obvious left leaning apps were
breached ? FB, LI , Washington Post , twitter (pre Elon) all had
breaches . Does that mean left and right leaning Americans are all
ignorant ?
I donât take any offense , but I do have high standards for this
forum and cringe comments make me less likely to hang out here
sigwinch wrote 18 hours 40 min ago:
On a site called Hacker News, we need more analysis of one of the
classic hacker skills, social engineering. Our first luminary
hackers, and their first books, and our first movies, are about
manipulating your average office worker or security guard. It doesn't
work every time, but those people vote and hackers illuminated some
early tools at automating the manipulation.
The turning point was smartphones. No, they don't clandestinely
listen to the audio, or smuggle tower locations of unimportant
people. But (all of our) behavior changes when we rely on an app and
give up those other liberties because app. Some social engineering
was required for mass adoption thereof, and most of us here are
acquainted with the analytical means to concentrate delivering that.
Half of our society has weaknesses that we euphemize as "gaming
habits" or "addictive personalities". Maybe they know it; I'm not
down here haughtily scoffing that they cannot know it.
China and Russia and North Korea don't show those weaknesses because
those people are down in the mines. The powers learned social
engineering within their closed societies, not in our open societies.
They promote a nation and a people unified with one personality. The
United States and similar freedom exponents have to contend with
attracting the world's talent by explicitly tolerating any
personality. At least for now
acdha wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
None of the sites you mentioned are (or were) left-leaning unless you
are saying anyone less politically correct than Fox News is leftie,
but thatâs missing the bigger reason why the MAGA connection
matters: MAGA is at its heart conspiratorial, obsessed with the idea
that the âelitesâ are against the common man. That war on
expertise has been there from the beginning and it makes followers
unusually vulnerable to scams because it normalizes this way of
thinking that everyoneâs opinion deserves equal weight. Sure,
security experts say to use Signal but why should you trust them any
more than the scientists who say the earth is warming or the
economists who say that gold has drawbacks as the basis for an
economic system?
jjgreen wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
The Sturmabteilung were lefties compared to the Schutzstaffel I
guess.
tonymet wrote 17 hours 31 min ago:
Reddit comment++
jjgreen wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
Too kind
tonymet wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
It would waste my breath to try to convince you that MAGA Americans
actually are intelligent. My point is that all apps have breaches ,
and a great many of them are run by liberals (who love climate
change and inflation, as you do ) , so what does any of this have
to do with a tech forum
acdha wrote 18 hours 14 min ago:
> It would waste my breath to try to convince you that MAGA
Americans actually are intelligent
Definitely, because I never said they werenât and certainly
donât believe that â I know too many smart conservatives for
that. Thatâs a big part of the problem: smart people can put a
lot of effort into constructing rationalizations so when
theyâre immersed in a culture where political correctness
trumps objectivity theyâll construct elaborate narratives to
support the ideologically useful outcome.
The relevance to security is that these people are more
vulnerable because they canât tell charlatans who appear to be
on their side apart from people who actually know what theyâre
talking about. There are tons of right-leaning people in tech but
as we saw with election fraud claims, the competent ones know
itâs risky to contradict the narrative and stay quiet rather
than being accused of being RINOs. Itâs similar to how things
like MLM scams spread in religious communities if you have
experience with that, where things usually have to get pretty bad
before someone is willing to criticize a friendly member of their
congregation.
tonymet wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
They are left leaning and run predominantly by left leaning staff
and boards . FB and X have pivoted opportunistically to Trump , and
still only slightly
agentifysh wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
I'm curious why a Canadian is so hell bent on causing more division in
America by embedding his political views in an otherwise decent
vulnerability analysis.
He makes it sound he's on some sort of a mission...like the users of
the messaging app ( which I have never heard of before until today )
should face some sort of backlash for their own political views
opposite of him....which is amusing to say the least as Canadians seem
to have permanently marked conservatives, not just in their own country
but all over the world as "MAGA".
also I'd appreciate if we can keep politics out which just detracts
focus on technical end of things
verdverm wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
> I'd appreciate if we can keep politics out
This is an app specifically built for a specific political group, a
group that is wreaking havoc on our science and technology. "MAGA"
has become the go-to term for a global movement, because there is a
global alt-right movement to undo progress and dominate others into
their world view.
It's going to be a part of HN like it was the first go around. Being
apolitical is how political groups like this come to power.
agentifysh wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
same argument can be made for bluesky or reddit pretty much any
platform you slap political labels on and this only increases
division and radicalizes people on the fringes and desperate for a
sense of belonging to as surrogacy for loneliness
verdverm wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
Do you want the alt-right to take over? If your answer is no,
then understand we need to talk about it all the time to fight
back.
They want us to _not talk_ about what they are doing so we
_remain ignorant of each other_ think about what they are doing,
so they can get away with more
agentifysh wrote 17 hours 46 min ago:
No but do you want the alt-left to take over? I'm for neither
side and im tired of the constant ideological battles
groby_b wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
You'll need to understand that is a criticism of the actor's
stupidity, not the political faction.
If it consistently happens more often for any given political
faction, then it's still not an ideological statement, just a
realization that not every political direction has an equal
commitment to facts and reality.
So, mostly, I'd like the alt-stupids to not take over.
verdverm wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
We need to talk about both of them, not neither
You want constant ideological battles to end, and the answer
is... do nothing?
They have the megaphone. If you want to take it away, we have
to talk to each other about it so they start marginalizing
their posts and opinions. MAGA is the poster child for the
Overton shift, it's not going back any amount without effort
sneak wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
This is the same thing that sent weev to jail when he and JB did it
against AT&T to determine the email addresses (instead of PINs) of
every iPad 3G user.
UberFly wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
The comments here are a disaster. Who could have predicted this???
LetsGetTechnicl wrote 21 hours 15 min ago:
Accusing someone else of a crime/problem/whatever that you're also
currently doing? Well that's just the MAGA way.
UniverseHacker wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
It appears that one of the most central aspects of MAGA is a
postmodernist rejection of the very existence of expertise- except,
ironically, in the art of grifting itself because they see
ârecognized expertsâ in any field as just very successful grifters.
Hence replacing competent government employees at every level with
incompetent employees. It would track that technology developed for and
by the MAGA community is developed with the same philosophy. Anyone
planning to buy the Trump phone?
netfortius wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
Why in the world would any sane person utilize such an app, knowing
what kind of people will be "at the other end" of communication, and
what topics would be discussed, even if the most secure piece of
software ever developed?
the_gipsy wrote 18 hours 54 min ago:
The president of the USA is on the equivalent alternative to Twitter.
ericmcer wrote 21 hours 23 min ago:
It's crazy how many security vulnerabilities are just people pinging
http endpoints in ways they didn't expect. You would think in order to
"hack" a system in 2025 you would need to be doing some crazy computer
science wizardry but it really is just lazy engineers. Like how do you
ship an API and have no rate-limiting. It literally takes a line to
implement in Nginx.
notesinthefield wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
I once went to a B-Sides talk of a person that paid off their
mortgage via API related bounties - you wouldve confused their
presentation with a Postman 101 video if you were only half
listening.
MangoToupe wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
> You would think in order to "hack" a system in 2025 you would need
to be doing some crazy computer science wizardry
Never heard of the wrench technique? It's always gonna work out
great. Way cheaper and easier than "wizardy" too.
murderfs wrote 20 hours 40 min ago:
Ratelimiting doesn't solve anything, you can just parallelize your
queries across IP addresses.
selcuka wrote 15 hours 47 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
overfeed wrote 20 hours 14 min ago:
The whole "defense in depth" principle disagrees. Having a layered
defense can not only buy defenders time, but downgrades attacks
from 100% data exfiltration to <10%
arcfour wrote 20 hours 25 min ago:
Increasing the barrier to entry from "trivial" to "less trivial" is
always a good start.
pragma_x wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
Yup. This is some of the stuff that gets missed when
understanding Security.
Ultimately, you're just buying time, generating tamper evidence
in the moment, and putting a price-tag on what it takes to break
in. There's no "perfectly secure", only "good enough" to the
tune of "too much trouble to bother for X payout."
ericmcer wrote 39 min ago:
or like, are people going to wonder why we dropped the ball so
hard, or are they going to be impressed by what the attackers
pulled off.
Ardren wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
> It literally takes a line to implement in Nginx.
Lots of things are really simple. But you have to know about them
first.
arcfour wrote 20 hours 23 min ago:
I would hardly consider someone that doesn't even know what rate
limiting is to be a "developer."
rainonmoon wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
Obviously software development in general has become more ingenious
(by some metrics) over the past few decades but very little of its
growth has involved secure development principles. Often the primary
goal is efficiency and scalability with as little friction for the
customer. The priority is enabling commerce, not protecting user data
(slightly more so company data, but not by much). I speak to devs
every week who are unfamiliar with things like JavaScript injection
and SSRF, things that can be exploited by virtually complete
beginners. From their perspective they were just building a neat
feature, that it could be used to render external scripts or internal
file paths literally did not occur to them. This isnât a judgement
of them, I appreciate the chance to help them, but just to say
development has unfortunately always had other priorities.
dathinab wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
for quite a while I through many of those dump "internal network
scanning automatized pentests" where pretty pointless
but after having seen IRL people accidentally overlooking very basic
things I now (since a few years) think using them is essential, even
through they often suck(1).
(1): Like due to false positives, wrong severity classifications,
wrong reasoning for why something is a problem and in generally not
doing anything application specific, etc.
I mean who would be so dump to accidentally expose some RCE prone
internal testing helper only used for local integration tests on
their local network (turns out anyone who uses docker/docker-compose
with a port mapping which doesn't explicitly define the interface,
i.e. anyone following 99% of docker tutorials...). Or there is no
way you forget to set content security policies I mean it's a ticket
on the initial project setup or already done in the project template
(but then a careless git conflict resolution removed them). etc.
thesuitonym wrote 21 hours 16 min ago:
> It literally takes a line to implement in Nginx.
"Yeah but it wasn't in the docker tutorial I skimmed so I have no
idea what it means."
verdverm wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
Soon to be... "Yeah, it was the Ai, I have no idea how any of this
works"
SchemaLoad wrote 19 hours 7 min ago:
At least on the flipside. Code scanning tools are getting
increasingly good. We finally moved to github at work and it's
scanned the whole repo and pointed out tons of concerning
security issues in the code. Not sure if it's powered by AI in
any way (I assume not since they would scream from the rooftops
if it was) but it's pretty useful.
verdverm wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
for sure, coding scanning tools are indispensable, just like
linting and testing.
They are likely a bit of both, increasingly more so going
forward.
- some checks are straightforward and it would be dumb to use
AI for them
- some checks require AI
serial_dev wrote 20 hours 11 min ago:
Though once s hits the fan, you can just tell AI âI have no
idea how any of this works andI donât really even care but I
need rate limiting, so do what you must, I trust youâ.
thesuitonym wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
Except the vibe coders aren't going to know to even ask about
rate limiting.
theultdev wrote 21 hours 41 min ago:
Freedom Chat just looks (and sounds) like a grift tbh.
The website doesn't really spark any confidence.
Never heard of it and I'd be surprised if they have more than 100
users.
burnt-resistor wrote 20 hours 53 min ago:
And it will invariably become a SIGINT and HUMINT pipeline leading
straight to Moscow.
CodingJeebus wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
I stumbled upon a GOP jobs board a year ago that stored submitted job
applications in the same search index as the job listings themselves,
so all you had to do was search "bob" and find a bunch of resumes and
application answers for people who had applied, I couldn't believe it.
tonymet wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
Which one ?
CodingJeebus wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
gopjobs.com, looks like itâs been fixed though
tonymet wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
i tried to see if it has any ties to the actual GOP national or
any state parties and it's unclear. I'm guessing it's not
affiliated and GOP is not trademarked.
I asked because both political parties have chapters at national,
regional, state & local levels so "GOP job board" on the face
wasn't clear which organization was running it. Some parties
cover rural counties of just a few thousand people.
hypeatei wrote 21 hours 44 min ago:
Does Freedom Chat® have a feature to prevent journalists from joining
your group chat? Asking for a friend that works at the DoD (sorry, DoW)
aanet wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
The emoji :facepalm: was invented for exactly this...
kgwxd wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Not really, the grift is going exactly as planned. I indirectly, and
accidentally, made some money off a similar grift about a year ago.
I'm starting to think I should just lower my standards for a few
years, then retire. It's so easy to extract millions from idiots,
with very little investment.
ben_w wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
> but I like to provide only the best blog posts to my tens of readers
It may not be pertinent to the subject, but clearly I have found a
kindred spirit in this author.
Havoc wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
When something is "super secure" you know it's full of holes. It's
right up there with "impossible to hack" and "military grade" aka
lowest cost bidder.
maqp wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
Yup. As the guy who put together the most secure FOSS messaging
system*, it's not "impossible to hack". It's a caveat ridden,
inconvenient to use, tedious to setup, hardware-isolated, multinode
application, with long must-read documentation, and that requires
experience with electronics and soldering.
* github.com/maqp/tfc
lesuorac wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
And "complies with all applicable laws"; as-in we're operating at the
lowest possible standard we can.
hamdingers wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Unsinkable
shreddit wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
At least the Hindenburg was iceberg proof
HTML [1]: https://xkcd.com/2350/
hbarka wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
âWeâre clear on OpSec.â
jakeydus wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
Obligatory Colin Jost Pete Hegseth warrior ethos post:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZb1WO1_lGI
lettergram wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
Feels a little like clickbait "MAGA-themed", never heard of Converso.
That said, the analysis itself is interesting and worth a look, if
nothing else it's a general pattern you can follow for many chat
applications to see how secure it is.
SV_BubbleTime wrote 21 hours 33 min ago:
This, I have extremely varied media sources and Converso isnât a
real thing.
lettergram wrote 15 hours 25 min ago:
1000 downloads lol
HTML [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freedomc...
SV_BubbleTime wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
Exactly! The premise here is BS. Just a thinly veiled âlul look
how dumb maga isâ when itâs a no name app no one has ever
used and has nothing to do with âmagaâ.
crnkovic wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
Converso renamed itself to Freedom Chat after my blog post:
HTML [1]: https://crnkovic.dev/testing-converso/
SV_BubbleTime wrote 16 hours 4 min ago:
Still not a real thing. Highly suspect here.
agentifysh wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
This article is the first time I am hearing about it
mikestew wrote 21 hours 6 min ago:
Are you and OP being sarcastic? Or are your media sources just not
as "varied" as you might think?
HTML [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/17/converso_e2ee_app/
lettergram wrote 15 hours 26 min ago:
All 1000 downloads...
HTML [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freedo...
Arch485 wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
If I had a nickel for every "secure" app that handled sensitive user
data and then subsequently leaked that data this year...
I'd only have 20 cents, which I guess is good. But I'm sure there's
more I'm forgetting.
Related: [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44684373
HTML [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43964937
HTML [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45985036
lawlessone wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
and these are just the ones we know about
sigwinch wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
For this specific movement, venturing outside Facebook Messenger is
an important cue.
pavel_lishin wrote 22 hours 5 min ago:
> 2025-12-09: Freedom Chat notifies us issues have been patched
Have they?
ryandrake wrote 22 hours 6 min ago:
I love the quote the article starts with:
> Neither of us had prior experience developing mobile apps, but we
thought, âHey, weâre both smart. This shouldnât be too
difficult.â
I think, 40 years from now when we're writing about this last decade or
so of software development, this quote is going to sum it all up.
expedition32 wrote 20 hours 46 min ago:
I downloaded a save game editor for a videogame last night and the
developer was honest about using AI.
But for a commercial messaging app you expect better...
shadowgovt wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
Software development and governance for this era, more or less yes.
There's a general zeitgeist of "Experts don't know what they're
talking about" that has fed both pieces of this space. It's an Age of
Doubt, as it were, but the hubristic kind of doubt, not the questing
kind.
oersted wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
Great and terrible things have been done from:
> We did it not because it was easy, but because we thought it was
easy.
tclancy wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
For me, it was in the linked blog post
>"Now, anyone who has read Mindset by Carol Dweck, Grit by Angela
Duckworth, or The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D.,
knows that you can be, do, and have whatever you want."
The gap between "read" and "understood" swallows so many. Also, did
he use TR's "Man in the Arena" quotation? Reader, of course he did.
phantasmish wrote 21 hours 10 min ago:
Understanding these might not be enough, even. IDK about the last
entry but IIRC the first two works are basically in the
âpop-science/self-help wooâ category that hustle-culture people
reliably fall for.
locopati wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
that pretty much sums up the American conservative mindset, without
the part about being smart
firefax wrote 21 hours 31 min ago:
> Neither of us had prior experience developing mobile apps, but we
thought, âHey, weâre both smart.
Great example of how perception and reality can differ vastly
jakelazaroff wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
> To help bring this idea to life, I enlisted one of my employees
from Zeke SEOâa very talented developer with an MBA in computer
science from Stanford.
That⦠is not a real degree.
Insanity wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
Pretty sure they just mean a Master degree and they _think_
thatâs what MBA means. I might be too charitable, but if someone
doesnât have experience with higher education itâs not an
unlikely mistake.
sigmoid10 wrote 21 hours 16 min ago:
Stanford, Kentucky perhaps.
elif wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
I think it was a typo. The computer scientist in question likely
received his UGA degree in Sanford stadium, and in fairness no
one else at the school was able to discern the difference between
a business degree and computer science.
jcranmer wrote 21 hours 23 min ago:
You can charitably read it as "MBA from Stanford, with a focus on
computer science-related stuff," or maybe "MBA and a bachelor's in
CS from Stanford." Or you could assume that it's an MS in CS that
was 'autocorrected' to MBA.
But the way it's phrased and worded... at best, it's the kind of
really bad typo that shows rank incompetence; at worst, it's
outright fabrication that is actively lying about the credentials;
and what I think most likely, it's obfuscation that's relying on
credentialism to impart an imprimatur of credibility that is wholly
undeserved (i.e. "I got an unrelated degree at Stanford, but it's
Stanford and how could anyone who goes there be bad at CS?").
jijijijij wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
No degree, just a kid with a Macbook Air.
garyfirestorm wrote 21 hours 9 min ago:
i mean looking at the app's security its indeed an MBA in CS from
Stanford
tclancy wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
Graduated with the highest temperature in his class.
voidfunc wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
It really says a lot about our society in general. I believe there's
a small portion of bad actors pushing stupid policies for their own
agenda, but then I also believe there's a huge number of actual
people who have lost any ability to reason critically and learn. What
we're seeing is those people learning via trial and error while
subjecting us to their live trials because they couldn't be bothered
to pick up a book or trust the existing experts.
munificent wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
Social media is the greatest force multiplier ever invented for
narcissists.
hydrogen7800 wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
>because they couldn't be bothered to pick up a book or trust the
existing experts.
It's not laziness. It's populism rejecting what they consider
elitism, which includes expertise and experience.
iwontberude wrote 21 hours 4 min ago:
How could they not have realized that leopards eat peopleâs
faces.
titzer wrote 21 hours 19 min ago:
I don't know how to square "populism" with the metric asston of
propaganda coming from people whose job is literally to know
better but instead chose to feed people bad information and
amplify stupidity. This ain't grass roots populism...at all.
jtbayly wrote 20 hours 57 min ago:
Are you talking about Fauci or who?
nyeah wrote 21 hours 11 min ago:
Obviously getting people hooked on harmful lies was not
originally populism. But now it sort of functions like
populism. Now it hurts when the lies stop.
I think we've all been the one who got fooled in some
relationship. Maybe for you it wasn't a political party. But I
bet it still hurt.
throwacct wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
I love it. This needs to be on the front page of every newspaper,
hehe. I don't care if you're a republican or a democrat, anyone going
that way deserves everything they get.
swatcoder wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
> 40 years from now when we're writing
"ChatGPT, write an essay about software development during the
smartphone social networking boom. Find a good quote to sum it all
up."
bigfishrunning wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
God i hope not.
V__ wrote 21 hours 58 min ago:
I think this also sums up most of the administration: "Nobody knew
health care would be that hard"
candiddevmike wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
No, in this case you can attribute to malice instead of stupidity.
Thankfully the stupidity is limiting the amount of malice in some
cases.
jiggawatts wrote 21 hours 37 min ago:
Single payer is easy!
If you reject the best and only easy option from the outset because
you donât want actual healthcare, then yeah⦠whatever remains
is going to be âhardâ.
What the US has right now is a complex entrenched system of
financial middlemen that refuse to abandon their rent seeking. They
provide only(!) financial âservicesâ and will fight actual
healthcare tooth and nail.
Trump wasnât strong enough â or simply didnât care enough â
to fight these people.
nickff wrote 21 hours 39 min ago:
Your quote would seemingly apply to a number of recent
administrations, given the state of federal healthcare programs and
legislation.
lobf wrote 21 hours 14 min ago:
What other administrations have said healthcare wouldn't be hard?
RankingMember wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
The difference is that they didn't brag about how easy it would
be before failing
unglaublich wrote 21 hours 15 min ago:
Always the asymmetric standards... R may fuck everything up if
D made a mistake.
RankingMember wrote 20 hours 56 min ago:
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.
DonHopkins wrote 21 hours 1 min ago:
But Rs fuck things up on purpose, even things that hurt
themselves, just own own the libs, and then complain about
how things are so fucked up.
j45 wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
Hubris as a feature.
josh2600 wrote 22 hours 7 min ago:
This is why signalâs encrypted phone number lookup system is so cool.
The server uses a bitwise xor when querying for numbers using hardware
encrypted ram. The result is that even if youâre examining the
machine at the most basic levels you canât tell the difference
between a negative or positive hit for the phone number unless youâre
the phone requesting the api.
Obviously ratelimiting is a separate and important issue in api
management.
The thing about building secure systems is that there are a lot of
edges to cover.
theamk wrote 2 hours 6 min ago:
Such a nice design on server-side.. and yet on the client side, it
uses system address book - something that Google backs up on the
server, and many carriers back up too, and many apps (like Whatsapp)
save it too.
"Hey, _we_ don't store your contacts, we are good! Instead you have
to manage them yourself, and in process share your presumably
"secure" Signal contact list with Apple, Google, Facebook phone
carriers and everyone else. But it's not on our servers, so we don't
care"
heavyset_go wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
I don't think it's cool at all, a secure messaging app should not
require personal/tracking identifiers like phone numbers in the first
place.
josh2600 wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
Signal requires a phone number for signup but you only have to
share a username.
We know from subpoenas that signal only holds the user phone
number, creation timestamp, and last login timestamp. Thatâs it.
stavros wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
What's more secure? A moderately secure messaging app all your
friends have installed, or a very secure messaging app nobody else
has?
immibis wrote 18 hours 15 min ago:
Signal's security model does not include metadata, and this is a
valid design.
robot-wrangler wrote 19 hours 9 min ago:
Signal blasted my whole contacts list the day I signed up so that I
was surprised to see lots of people saying "finally you got
signal". That was also the moment I uninstalled the app. Leaking
contact info appears to be part of the design.
Should have deleted my account instead of just removing the app,
because it turns out the difference between using signal and using
SMS is obscured for most phones, and when people thought they were
texting me they weren't. I was just out of contact for a long time
as people kept sending me the wrong kind of messages. I suppose
one could argue protecting contact/identity is not a real goal for
e2e encryption, but what I see is a "privacy oriented" service
that's clearly way too interested in bootstrapping a user base with
network effects and shouldn't be trusted.
guizadillas wrote 17 hours 45 min ago:
The people that already had your contact info in their devices
were notified that you joined Signal via that contact info?
Seems like it was working as designed, if you don't want any app
to get your contact info don't share your contact info to anyone
ever. Eventually they will share that info with any app.
mmooss wrote 18 hours 8 min ago:
> Leaking contact info appears to be part of the design.
Those people already had your contact info, probably.
Also, I think there is a setting in Signal to prevent that - and
via the OS you can block Signal's access to your contacts, of
course.
robot-wrangler wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
> Those people already had your contact info, probably.
What leaked was that I was a signal user, and that the person
on the other side was a signal user. The security implications
are obvious, and by itself, that's already enough to get
someone who really needs to care about privacy killed.
> Also, I think there is a setting in Signal to prevent that
False. It happened without my permission as soon as the app
was installed, and there was no way to opt out. Maybe they
changed it since then, but the fact remains they obviously
cared more about network-effects and user-counts than user
privacy.
Sigh, there's just no need for this kind of apologism. You
could just admit that a) it's bad behavior, b) they did it on
purpose, and c) it's not possible to trust someone who does
something like this. I'm aware they are nonprofit, so I don't
know why it's like this, but the answer is probably somewhere
in the list of donors.
mmooss wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
That's a lot to pile on people who disagree with you. Maybe
other people have perspectives that are both 1) different
from yours and, 2) valid?
robot-wrangler wrote 10 hours 26 min ago:
> Maybe other people have perspectives
Yeah, no. The whole "every perspective has some validity"
thing won't really apply to most safety/security issues.
The most charitable thing to say here is that the workflow
is completely broken. Less charitable but also valid is
pointing out that it's actively harmful, and deliberate. I
would be really surprised if this hadn't ever caused
serious consequences whether a whistle blower was fired, an
abused spouse got extra abused, or an informant was killed.
If you think you've got a "valid perspective" that
prioritizes mere user-discovery over user-safety, then you
should not be attempting work that's close to safety and
security, full stop.
lukeschlather wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
How would you suggest Signal allow you to communicate with
your contacts without leaking the fact that both of you are
Signal users? Should it just blackhole the message if the
other number doesn't have an account?
I understand the unease about the notifications, but there
are some hard tradeoffs between how you can store as little
information as possible, remain as decentralized as possible,
while getting the same benefits as centralized systems like
Facebook.
I'm really of the opinion that a messenger similar to Signal
but more centralized in the fashion of WhatsApp or even
Facebook Messenger should exist, but I also understand why
Signal works the way it does.
immibis wrote 18 hours 11 min ago:
When someone on your contacts list gets Signal, Signal displays
this in its UI. I don't think this is a privacy violation. Signal
aims to hide your messages, but it does not have its own contacts
system, and piggybacks on your existing phone number and phone
number contacts. Nor does it attempt to hide the fact you have
Signal.
maqp wrote 20 hours 9 min ago:
The sad part is, that's what's keeping Signal safe from spam.
Also, average Joe is not using proxy to hide the IP-address of
their device so they leak their identity to the server anyway.
Signal is not keeping those logs so that helps.
Messaging apps cater to different needs, sometimes you need only
content-privacy. It's not a secret you're married to your partner
and you talk daily, but the topics of the conversation aren't
public information.
When you need to hide who you are and who you talk to (say Russian
dissident group, or sexual minorities in fundamentalist countries),
you might want to use Tor-exclusive messaging tools like Cwtch. But
that comes at a near-unavoidable issue of no offline-messaging,
meaning you'll have to have a schedule when to meet online.
Signal's centralized architecture has upsides and downsides, but
what matters ultimately is, (a) are you doing what you can in the
architectural limitations of the platform (strong privacy-by-design
provides more features at same security level), and (b), are you
communicating the threat model to the users so they can make
informed decision whether the applications fits their threat model.
rendaw wrote 10 hours 9 min ago:
I get zero spam on Line... I don't allow people to add me by
phone number. Line isn't known for their cryptography/security
skills.
wkat4242 wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
I get lots of spam on WhatsApp which also requires a number. And
some on signal too for that matter.
Signal is just much smaller in terms of users so the potential
value is lower.
coppsilgold wrote 17 hours 11 min ago:
If you intend to use SMS (phone numbers) as a resource constraint
(sign up requires 'locking up' a resource that is worth at least
a few cents) then at least you can offer a ZKP system where the
'consumed' phone number is not tied to an account. You could also
offer to accept cryptocurrency for this function - call it a
donation.
That Signal did none of those things implies that privacy was not
their objective. Only secure communications was.
It's possible that the reason behind their anti-privacy stand is
strategic, to discourage criminal use which could be used as a
vector of attack against them. Doesn't change the fact that
Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.
vintermann wrote 5 hours 41 min ago:
It's also possible that a lot of the criticism for Signal
setting a practical/realistic level of what security they will
try to provide, is from people who would rather that people
either
1. were unable to communicate effectively, or
2. used no security at all.
Do you really use a communication system where you have all
exchanged private keys in person and where even the fact that
you use it is hidden from your government and phone operator?
ethersteeds wrote 14 hours 0 min ago:
Your first formulation I agree with:
> privacy was not their objective. Only secure communications
was.
> Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.
But your second is uncharitable and misses Signal's historical
context.
The value of a phone number for spam prevention has been
mentioned, but that's not the original reason why phone numbers
were central to Signal. People forget that Signal was initially
designed around using SMS as transport, as with Twitter.
Signal began as an SMS client for Android that transparently
applied encryption on top of SMS messages when communicating
with other Signal users. They added servers and IP backhaul as
it grew. Then it got an iOS app, where 3rd party SMS clients
aren't allowed. The two clients coexisted awkwardly for years,
with Signal iOS as a pure modern messenger and Signal Android
as a hybrid SMS client. Finally they ripped out SMS support.
Still later they added usernames and communicating without
exposing phone numbers to the other party.
You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone
number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design"
elides the origins of that design. It took a lot of refactoring
to get out from under the initial design, just like Twitter in
transcending the 140-character limit.
coppsilgold wrote 13 hours 50 min ago:
> Signal is demonstrably anti-privacy by design.
> You can reasonably disdain still having to expose a phone
number to Signal, but calling it "anti-privacy by design"
elides the origins of that design.
They introduced usernames without removing the requirement
for phone numbers.
I rest my case.
illiac786 wrote 1 hour 4 min ago:
Youâre blatantly trolling, itâs boring man. What do you
call SMS if signal is âanti-privacy by designâ?
delichon wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
Public broadcasting.
hnarn wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
Not a very good case made since you obviously didnât read
the parent discussion.
coppsilgold wrote 10 hours 46 min ago:
The parent attempted to excuse them by pointing out that
the initial design was based on phone numbers. Putting
aside the fact that initial design is irrelevant to
present design criticism, they went out of their way to
design usernames yet deliberately disallow signup without
phone numbers.
> Not a very good case made since you obviously didnât
read the parent discussion.
This isn't an argument, do you have anything to back up
your assertion?
lukeschlather wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
If privacy wasn't their objective they would just have a
database of all the phone numbers.
Perfect privacy would mean not sending any messages at all,
because you can never prove the message is going to the
intended recipient. Any actual system is going to have
tradeoffs, calling Signal anti-privacy is not serious,
especially when you're suggesting cryptocurrency as a solution.
A ZKP system where you make a public record of your
zero-knowledge proof sounds anti-privacy to me. Even if you're
using something obfuscated like Monero, it's still public. I
see where you're coming from, but I think I would prefer Signal
just keep a database of all their users and promise to try and
keep it safe rather than rely on something like Monero.
coppsilgold wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
> have a database of all the phone numbers
They have exactly that. They rely on TPMs for "privacy" which
is not serious.
> Perfect privacy would mean not sending any messages at all
Not sending messages is incompatible with secure messaging
which is the subject of the discussion...
> ZKP system where you make a public record of your
zero-knowledge proof sounds anti-privacy to me.
A zero-knowledge proof provably contains zero information.
Even if you use a type of ZKP vulnerable to a potential CRQC
it's still zero information and can never be cracked to
reveal information (a CRQC could forge proofs however).
> especially when you're suggesting cryptocurrency as a
solution
Would you elaborate on why cryptocurrencies are not a
solution? Especially if combined with ZKPs to sever the
connection between the payment and the account. When combined
with ZKPs, they could even accept Paypal for donations in
exchange for private accounts.
lucyjojo wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
signal was intended for the general public. crypto defeats
the purpose.
kragen wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
If you wanted to keep it safe from spam, you'd use a
proof-of-work scheme using a memory-hard hash function like
scrypt, or a Captcha, or an invite-code system like lobste.rs or
early Gmail. Signal's architects already knew that when they
started designng it.
maqp wrote 19 hours 6 min ago:
>proof-of-work scheme using a memory-hard hash function like
scrypt
So who's doing the computation? The spammer can't afford to run
3 second key derivation time per spam device? Or how long do
you think normal user will wait while you burn their battery
power before saying "Screw it, I'll just use WA"? Or is this
something the server should be doing?
>Captcha
LLMs are getting quite good at getting around captchas.
>invite-code system
That works in lobste.rs when everyone can talk together, and
recruit interesting people to join the public conversation. Try
doing that with limited invites to recruit your peers to build
a useful local network of peers and relatives. "I'm sorry Adam,
I'm out of invites can you invite my mom's step-cousin, my mom
needs to talk to them?"
>Signal's architects already knew that when they started
designng it.
I think they really did, and they did what the industry had
already established as the best practice for a hard problem.
The only reasonable alternative would've been email with heavy
temp-mail hardening, or looking into the opposite end of
Zooko's triangle and having long, random, hard-to-enumerate
usernames like Cwtch and other Tor-based messengers do. But
even that's not removing the spam-list problem of any publicly
listed address ending up in a list that gets spammed with
contact requests or opening messages with spam.
kragen wrote 18 hours 47 min ago:
Those are reasonable questions, but they suggest that you
don't understand the landscape very well.
The user's device has to do the computation for it to be
effective. How long does it normally take to sign up for a
new messaging service like WhatsApp? Five minutes? You
should burn the user's cellphone battery for about half that
long, 150 seconds, 50 times more than you were thinking.
Plus another half-minute every time you add a new contact.
Times two for every time someone blocks you, up to a limit of
150 seconds. Minus one second for each day you've been
signed up. Or something like that.
The value of signing up for Signal is much higher to a real
user than it is to a spammer, so you just have to put the
signup cost somewhere in the wide range in between.
LLMs didn't exist when Signal was designed, and Captchas
still seem to be getting a lot of use today.
Invite codes worked fine for Gmail, and would work even
better for any kind of closed messaging system like Signal;
people who don't know any users of a particular messaging
system almost never try to use it. The diameter of the
world's social graph is maybe ten or twelve, so invite codes
can cover the world's social graph with only small,
transitory "out of invites" problems.
The "industry" had "established" that they "should" gather as
much PII as possible in order to sell ads and get investments
from In-Q-Tel.
lukeschlather wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
> How long does it normally take to sign up for a new
messaging service like WhatsApp? Five minutes? You should
burn the user's cellphone battery for about half that long,
150 seconds
If you actually do that you're going to crash a lot of
cellphones and people will rightly blame your app for being
badly coded.
kragen wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
What, their CPUs will overheat? I've run infinite loops
on cellphones lots of times without that happening. In
fact, I'm running four of them right now, and have been
for the last five minutes as I write this comment. The
battery drain is annoying but I haven't seen instability.
I've run plenty of compiles on cellphones (things like
BLAS and Numpy) that take longer than that, and I've
never seen one crash a phone.
vel0city wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
Invite codes worked fine for Gmail, but you weren't limited
to only the people on Gmail to talk to. It was a full,
regular email service. You could email anyone and receive
mail from anyone. I doubt it would have been very
successful if it was invite only and you could only email
other Gmail users for the first few years.
Waze was also invite-only, G+ was initially invite only.
Did that model help or hurt them?
vel0city wrote 13 hours 41 min ago:
Sorry, not Waze, Wave.
kragen wrote 14 hours 24 min ago:
I think it helped them. Gmail had more trouble with
invite codes because some people wanted a Gmail account,
but didn't know any existing Gmail users, because Gmail
was useful for communication with non-Gmail users.
G+ didn't have that problem so much, but I don't remember
it using invite codes.
cyphar wrote 18 hours 6 min ago:
> Invite codes worked fine for Gmail
Back in 2004, sure. Today, Gmail asks you for a phone
number when signing up because of the spam problem.
NorwegianDude wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
To be fair, Gmail asks for a phone number, but you dont
have to add one.
cyphar wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
This might depend on the country you're in, but I'm
quite certain I've gotten locked out of the signup flow
in the past when I refused to provide a phone number.
wkat4242 wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
It depends what you do it from. If you do it from an
android device you don't have to. If you do it from
the web you do.
kragen wrote 17 hours 27 min ago:
I don't think that's why they ask for it, no.
account42 wrote 8 hours 11 min ago:
Exactly, just like all those site that added SMS 2FA
didn't do it for the extra security.
maqp wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
>but they suggest that you don't understand the landscape
very well.
Yeah, what could I possibly know about secure messaging.
>Plus another half-minute every time you add a new contact.
Can you point to some instant messaging app that has you
wait 30 seconds before talking to them? Now niché is it?
You want proper uptake and accessibility to everyone, you
need something like Samsung A16 to run the work in 150
seconds. Some non-amateur spammer throws ten RTX 5090s to
unlock access to random accounts at 80x parallelism (capped
by memory cost), with the reasonable time cost of whatever
iterations that is, with quite a bit shorter time than 150
seconds. 121.5GFLOPs vs 10x104.8 TFLOPs leads to overall
performance difference of 8,800x. And that account is then
free to spam at decent pace for a long time before it gets
flagged and removed.
The accounts are not generated in five minutes per random
sweat shop worker: [1] has tap actions synced across sixty
devices. And that's just to deal with human-like captchas
that need to show human-like randomness. Proof-of-work is
not a captcha, so you can automate it. Signal's client is
open source for myriad of reasons, the most pressing of
which is verifiable cryptographic implementations. So you
can just patch your copy of the source to dump the
challenge and forward it to the brute force rig.
Either the enumeration itself has to be computationally
infeasible, or it has to be seriously cost limited (one
registration per 5 dollar prepaid SIM or whatever).
>Invite codes worked fine for Gmail
Yeah and back in ~2004 when Hotmail had 2MB of free
storage, GMail's 1,000MB of free storage may have also
"helped".
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHU4kWQY3E8
kragen wrote 17 hours 53 min ago:
All I know about your level of knowledge is what you
post.
Scrypt is memory-hard precisely to defeat attacks like
that, which reinforces my belief that you don't know what
you're talking about. It doesn't matter how many FLOPS
or integer MIPS you have.
maqp wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
So why don't you present your claim with more nuance
than nu-uh, then?
immibis wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
If the PoW cost is a low-end cellphone CPU for 2.5 minutes,
then it's nothing to the spammer with the 200-core hourly
AWS server. If each spammer can create 10000 identities
(not connections, identities) per hour, then you might as
well not have a limit at all. If they could even create
only 2 identities per day that would be enough to spam with
(yet still unacceptable to actual users). 250000 identities
per day is way too many.
kragen wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
The speed ratio is much smaller than you say with
memory-hard PoW problems, which depend on the amount of
RAM you have (and its response time). But it's surely
true that a spammer could create many accounts per day,
perhaps 1000 per hour on a big server, which could then
go on to spam a few accounts each before becoming
uneconomical to keep using.
But that would still put the CPM of the spam around US$2,
which very few spammers can afford. Maybe mesothelioma
lawyers and spearphishers.
You don't have to make spamming physically impossible,
just unprofitable.
immibis wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
A single identity can send messages to hundreds or
thousands of users.
kragen wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
You're talking about a different proposal than the
one I wrote in the comment you were replying to,
then.
creata wrote 19 hours 10 min ago:
> you'd use a proof-of-work scheme
I thought the general belief (e.g., 'âProof-of-Workâ Proves
Not to Work') was that proof-of-work isn't very good anti-spam.
> or a Captcha
Aren't bots better at those than humans by now?
And making people do captchas in an instant messenger is a
great way to make people not use that instant messenger.
> or an invite-code system like lobste.rs or early Gmail.
That's not a long-term option if you want to make something
mainstream.
alkindiffie wrote 18 hours 21 min ago:
> That's not a long-term option if you want to make something
mainstream.
Groups in messaging apps rarely contain more than 100 users.
So invite codes can work well for messaging apps.
kragen wrote 18 hours 39 min ago:
There are people who believe that proof-of-work isn't very
effective, but none of them have succeeded in spamming the
Bitcoin network with blocks they've mined, driving the other
miners out of business, nor (for the last several years) with
spamming the Bitcoin network with dust transactions they've
signed, so I don't think we should take their opinions very
seriously.
Bots may be better than humans at Captchas now, although I'm
not certain of that, but they certainly weren't when Signal
was designed.
I don't see why invite codes would be a problem for
mainstream use.
creata wrote 17 hours 26 min ago:
> none of them have succeeded in spamming the Bitcoin
network with blocks they've mined
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I have no idea what you're
getting at, because the sentence sounds kind of absurd. As
a result, I'm not sure if it addresses your point, but just
to throw it out there: Bitcoin and anti-spam are different
applications of proof of work. Anti-spam has to strike a
compromise between being cheap for the user (who is often
on relatively low-powered mobile hardware), and yet
annoying enough to deter the spammer. It's not unreasonable
to believe that such a compromise does not exist.
> Bots may be better than humans at Captchas now, although
I'm not certain of that, but they certainly weren't when
Signal was designed.
Fair point, but again, even in 2014, an instant messenger
with captchas would have much more friction than every
other messenger. And captchas aren't just bad because they
introduce enough friction to drive away pretty much
everybody: they also make users feel like they're being
treated as potential criminals.
> I don't see why invite codes would be a problem for
mainstream use.
Can you elaborate? Invite codes blocking access to the
service itself "like lobste.rs" mean that no one can use
your service unless they've been transitively blessed by
you. That's obviously going to limit its reach...
kragen wrote 16 hours 51 min ago:
Bitcoin had a spam transaction problem ("dust
transactions") which was a bigger problem than email
spam, because every transaction is received by every
node. It was easy to solve because Bitcoins are minted
by proof of work.
I don't think a Captcha for signup would have been much
friction. Certainly less than providing a phone number.
Why would someone want to use a closed messaging service
like Signal unless they knew an existing user? I don't
think that the requirement for that existing user to
invite them would be a significant barrier. So I think
it's not going to limit its reach.
Ieghaehia9 wrote 18 hours 0 min ago:
> There are people who believe that proof-of-work isn't
very effective, but none of them have succeeded in spamming
the Bitcoin network with blocks they've mined, driving the
other miners out of business, nor (for the last several
years) with spamming the Bitcoin network with dust
transactions they've signed, so I don't think we should
take their opinions very seriously.
Different system. The parent and GP are talking about
proof-of-work being used directly for account creation. If
a chat service required mining-levels of PoW (and hence any
prospective new users to have an ASIC), it would not be
very popular. Nor would it be very popular if it used a
relative difficulty system and the spammers used dedicated
servers while the legitimate users had to compete using
only their phones.
codedokode wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
Or a small payment in cryptocurrency.
kragen wrote 18 hours 35 min ago:
Yes, that would also work, but you should probably offer
alternatives.
0x1ch wrote 20 hours 16 min ago:
There's no alternative to reduce spam and fake accounts, unless we
collectively are fine with blocking Russia, India, China, and
friends from the internet.
K0balt wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
I agree, but since a messaging apps utility is some fraction of the
square of the # of users on the platform, a facile way to propagate
virally is a de facto requirement for an app targeting wide spread
adoption / discovery rather than targeted cells of individuals
focused around a pre shared idea.
Itâs a compromise meant to propagate the network, and it has a
high degree of utility to most users. There are also plenty of apps
that are de-facto anonymous and private. Signal is de facto
non-anonymous but private, though using a personally identifiable
token is not a hard requirement and is trivial to avoid. (A phone
number of some kind is needed once for registration only)
overfeed wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
Security and usability are frequently at odds. The ease with which
users can discover and exchange messages with their contacts is a
major usability issue. Phone number as a proxy for identity mostly
works, at the cost of some privacy risks.
soulofmischief wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
This made sense when Signal/TextSecure allowed users to send
regular SMS, making it easy to convince others to set it as their
default messenger.
Now that this crucial adoption feature has been removed, it makes
zero sense for Signal to continue to rely on phone numbers. Since
that feature has been removed, the utility of Signal has been
lost anyway and many in my groups returned to regular SMS. So the
system is already compromised from that perspective. At least
forks such as Session tried to solve this (too bad Session
removed forward secrecy and became useless)
codedokode wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
Does Signal protect from the scheme when the government sends
discovery requests for all existing phone numbers (< 1B) and gets a
full mapping between user id and phone number?
While slightly unrelated, I thought, how we can fix this for truly
secure and privacy-aware, non-commercial communication platforms like
Matrix? Make it impossible to build such mapping. The core idea is
that you should be able to find the user by number only if you are in
their contact list - strangers not welcome. So every user, who wishes
to be discovered, uploads hash(A, B) for every contact - a hash of
user's phone number (A) and contact's phone number (B), swapped if B
< A. Let's say user A uploaded hashes h(A,B) and h(A,C). Now, user B
wishes to discover contacts and uploads hashes h(A, B) and h(B, D).
The server sees matching hashes between A and B and lets them
discover each other without knowing their numbers.
The advantages:
- as we hash a pair of 9-digit numbers, the hash function domain
space is larger and it is more difficult to reverse the hashes (hash
of a single phone number is reversed easily)
- each user can decide who may discover them
Disadvantages:
- a patient attacker can create hashes of A with all existing numbers
and discover who are the contacts of A. Basically, extract anyone's
phone book via discovery API. One way to protect against this would
be to verify A's phone number before using discovery, but the
government, probably, can intercept SMS codes and pass the
verification anyway. However, the government can also see all the
phone calls, so they know who is in whose phone book anyway.
- if the hash is reversed, you get pairs of phone numbers instead of
just one number
godelski wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
Signal publicly shares government requests AND the data that they
send them
The data Signal has is: 1) registration time for a given phone
number, 2) knowledge of daily login (24hr resolution). That's it.
That's the metadata.
They do not have information on who is communicating with who, when
messages are sent, if messages are sent, how many, the size, or any
of that. Importantly, they do not have an identity (your name)
associated with the account nor does that show for contacts (not
even the phone number needs be shared).
Signal is designed to be safe from Signal itself.
Yes, it sucks that there is the phone number connected to the
account, but you can probably understand that there's a reason
authorities don't frequently send Signal data requests; because the
information isn't very useful. So even if you have a phone number
associated with a government ID (not required in America) they
really can only show that you have an account and potentially that
the account is active.
Like the sibling comment says, there's always a trade-off. You
can't have a system that has no metadata, but you can have one that
minimizes it. Signal needs to balance usability and minimize bots
while maximizing privacy and security. Phone numbers are a barrier
to entry for bots, preventing unlimited or trivial account
generation. It has downsides but upsides too. One big upside is
that if Signal gets compromised then there's can be no
reconstruction of the chat history or metadata. IMO, it's a good
enough solution for 99.9% of people. If you need privacy and
security from nation state actors who are directly targeting you
then it's maybe not the best solution (at least not out of the box)
but otherwise I can't see a situation where it is a problem.
FWIW, Signal does look to be moving away from phone numbers. They
have usernames now. I'd expect it to take time to completely get
away though considering they're a small team and need to move from
the existing infrastructure to that new one. It's definitely not an
easy task (and I think people frequently underestimate the
difficulty of security, as quoted in the article lol. And as
suggested by the op: it's all edge cases)
HTML [1]: https://signal.org/bigbrother/
mmooss wrote 18 hours 3 min ago:
That doesn't answer the GP question:
> Does Signal protect from the scheme when the government sends
discovery requests for all existing phone numbers (< 1B) and gets
a full mapping between user id and phone number?
Signal does have the phone numbers, as you say. Can they connect
a number to a username?
godelski wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
> That doesn't answer the GP question:
It does.
They asked
>>> Does Signal protect from the scheme when the government
sends discovery requests for all existing phone numbers (< 1B)
and gets a full mapping between user id and phone number?
Which yes, this does protect that. There is no mapping between
a user id and phone number. Go look at the reports. They only
show that the phone number has a registered account but they do
not show what the user id is. Signal doesn't have that
information to give.
> Can they connect a number to a username?
From Signal
Usernames in Signal are protected using a custom Ristretto
25519 hashing algorithm and zero-knowledge proofs. Signal
canât easily see or produce the username if given the phone
number of a Signal account. Note that if provided with the
plaintext of a username known to be in use, Signal can connect
that username to the Signal account that the username is
currently associated with. However, once a username has been
changed or deleted, it can no longer be associated with a
Signal account.
This is in the details on[0] right above the section "Set it,
share it, change it"
So Signal cannot use phone numbers to identify usernames BUT
Signal can use usernames to identify phone numbers IF AND ONLY
IF that username is in active use. (Note that the usernames is
not the Signal ID)
If you are worried about this issue I'd either disable
usernames or continually rotate them. If the username is not
connected with your account at the time the request is being
made then no connection can be made by Signal. So this is
pretty easy to thwart, though I wish Signal included a way to
automate this (perhaps Molly has a way or someone can add it?)
Either rotating after every use or on a timer would almost
guarantee that this happens given that it takes time to get a
search warrant and time for Signal to process them. You can see
from the BigBrother link that Signal is not very quick to
respond...
[0]
HTML [1]: https://signal.org/blog/phone-number-privacy-usernames...
codedokode wrote 19 hours 19 min ago:
> Phone numbers are a barrier to entry for bots, preventing
unlimited or trivial account generation.
What's wrong with account generation? Nothing. The problem is if
they start sending spam to random people. So we can make
registration or adding contacts paid (in cryptocurrency) and the
problem is gone.
godelski wrote 18 hours 23 min ago:
> What's wrong with account generation?
Your comment *literally* explains one issue...
wtfwhateven wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
>What's wrong with account generation?
What's right with it? Accounts being generated (i.e. many
inauthentic accounts controlled by few people) are always used
to send spam, there are no exceptions. The perpetrators should
be in prison.
jfindper wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
>So we can make registration or adding contacts paid (in
cryptocurrency) and the problem is gone.
The majority of the user base would be gone, too.
I had a hard enough time convincing my friend group to use
Signal as is. If they had to pay (especially if it had to be
via cryptocurrency) none of them would have ever even
considered it.
codedokode wrote 18 hours 48 min ago:
I would rather pay $1 than with my phone number which is much
much much more valuable. Telegram did an experiment with paid
anonymous registration, but the prices were ridiculous and
targeted for the riches.
jfindper wrote 18 hours 46 min ago:
>I would rather pay $1 than with my phone number which is
much much much more valuable.
Most people would not, though, and that's the issue.
codedokode wrote 18 hours 21 min ago:
So let everyone pay with their preferred method and let
evil governments go mind their own business.
0xCMP wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
Ah yes, and convincing friends/family/partners to use Signal
instead of Whatsapp clearly what will convince them is that
they need to setup, acquire, and use cryptocurrency to register
or connect with me on the encrypted messaging service. "No
thanks, I just use Whatsapp/iMessage. I heard they're actually
e2e encrypted too, so what's the problem?"
ruined wrote 20 hours 15 min ago:
yes. users can disable phone number discovery
Groxx wrote 19 hours 31 min ago:
can they disable it before or after it tells other people that
they joined, if those other people had their number in their
synced contacts list?
(I would be thrilled to learn that this changed, but it has been
in place for many years and it's kinda hard to personally test)
ruined wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
yes before.
discoverability does default to "on", but there is an
opportunity to disable it during registration, which prevents
those notifications.
heavyset_go wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
The hash space for phone numbers is so small that you can enumerate
them all.
Arathorn wrote 20 hours 45 min ago:
There's some really interesting stuff we've been looking into on
the Matrix side to solve this - e.g. [1] aka [2] or [3] .
Meanwhile, Matrix for now does support hashed contact lookup,
although few clients implement it given the privacy considerations
at
HTML [1]: https://github.com/asonnino/arke
HTML [2]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1218
HTML [3]: https://martin.kleppmann.com/2024/07/05/pudding-user-disco...
HTML [4]: https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/identity-service-api/#sec...
wkat4242 wrote 13 hours 4 min ago:
Yeah you're doing a lot better job on the privacy side than
signal is IMO.
Especially just being able to run my own service will be
priceless when something like chatcontrol eventually makes it
through. Signal can only comply or leave, but they'll never
manage to kill all the matrix servers around.
wizzwizz4 wrote 20 hours 52 min ago:
And it's trivial to reverse a hash in such a scenario. This scheme
is completely broken.
jazzyjackson wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Still lame that they require phone number at all, it took them a long
time to add usernames so you don't have to expose your phone number
to a new contact. Still skeeves me out that the account is associated
with a SIM at all.
nanomonkey wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
I agree, but you can mitigate that to some extent by using a phone
number that is not linked to your identity.
Phreeli [ [1] ] allows you to get a cell number with just a zip
code. They use ZKP (Zero Knowledge Proofs) for payment tracking.
HTML [1]: https://www.phreeli.com/
codedokode wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
In my country, you cannot legally get a phone number not linked
to the identity, and the prices are relatively high on the black
market. Also, the phone discloses your location with pretty good
precision, especially in US where everyone is living in their own
house.
sneak wrote 21 hours 12 min ago:
Signal accounts do not require a SIM. There is no requirement that
the phone you use for running the app Signal has the phone number
you use for Signal login.
My Signal number is a Google Voice number that has nothing to do
with any mobile phone. The Google account has advanced protection
turned on so you canât port it or get the SMSes without a
hardware login token.
the_gipsy wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
In my country I cannot buy a SIM card / phone number without
giving my full identification.
sneak wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
So buy a number from a different country.
extraduder_ire wrote 18 hours 11 min ago:
Can you buy a phone number from a different country? (genuinely
curious, I live somewhere I can buy a sim card with cash, and
saw some in the impulse-purchase section of a store earlier
today)
codedokode wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
But has something to do with a bank card you used to pay for it?
jazzyjackson wrote 19 hours 56 min ago:
That's cool that there are phonenumbers without SIMs, my
concern was more about SIM swap takeover. (Signal only guards
this with a 4 digit PIN iirc)
codedokode wrote 18 hours 13 min ago:
Google Voice doesn't look like a safe option, your number can
be taken away if you forget to pay or you can be banned for
arbitrary reason without a way to appeal.
Zak wrote 19 hours 15 min ago:
The PIN can be longer than four digits. Signal also guards
against this with safety numbers; if someone takes over an
account, every contact will see that the safety number has
changed and should consider that the account may be
compromised until verifying out of band.
HNisCIS wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
It's still associated with a credit card and your google account
requires another phone number to create.
HNisCIS wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
We need an established secure anonymous/subpoena-resistant chat app
at this point. Signal is great for a minimal threat model but
we're kinda past that now given everything going on.
Simplex was a decent option but they're going down the crypto
rabbit hole and their project lead is...not someone who should be
trusted by anyone in the crosshairs right now.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
Maybe DeltaChat?
maqp wrote 20 hours 6 min ago:
No.
HTML [1]: https://delta.chat/en/help#pfs
integralid wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
Can you explain more about simplex? I remember reading about it a
while ago and being really impressed. Sad to hear the project is
going downhill.
heavyset_go wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
Check out the developer/owner's social media, the chats they're
in, and their responses to others and you'll see. They're much
more interesting in crypto and politics than they are acting
professional in public and towards others while representing
their project and company.
It's not hard to do so, so if they're having difficulty doing
that, what other simple things are they having difficulty with?
Why would anyone hinge their safety and well being on the whims
of such a person?
I say this as a person who bought into the initial concept, and
who has used it myself.
akimbostrawman wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
>They're much more interesting in crypto and politics
I have yet to see any of that while just using the app. Do
you think people owning a project should not be allowed to
have and share there options about anything but the project?
maqp wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
SimpleX front page lied by omission about it having no
identifiers. The fine print threat model did not mention the
server has access to your IP addresses, and the mitigation to
create "decentralized" system of users talking via separate
servers ran into the problem of there being two VPS companies
hosting the entire public server infrastructure. These issues
were major as SimpleX advertised itself as an improvement over
Cwtch, which should've meant superset of metadata had been
protected. But that obviously wasn't the case.
The CEO vanished from the discussion (again) so my proposals to
improve ease of use of Tor never reached them. You can catch up
on the discussion at
HTML [1]: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/simplex-vs-cwtch-w...
akimbostrawman wrote 7 hours 28 min ago:
>so my proposals to improve ease of use of Tor never reached
Probably because it has always been trivial to proxy Tor with
build in and supported socks5
miroljub wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
What do you use now? Catch? Briar? Tox?
I liked the SimpleX concept, but would prefer its relay
server were replaced by Tor or i2p network.
And if they used Signal instead of NIH protocol.
Actually, the only unique SimpleX feature I really like is
that it uses separate ids for every connection and group.
maqp wrote 17 hours 58 min ago:
>What do you use now?
Signal mostly.
>separate ids for every connection and group
The thing is, there's Akamai and Runonflux, two companies
hosting the entire public SimpleX infrastructure. If you're
not using Tor and SimpleX Onion Services with your buddies,
these two companies can perform end-to-end correlation
attacks to spy on which IPs are conversing, and TelCos know
which IPs belong to which customers at any given time.
Mandatory data retention laws about the assigned IPs aren't
rare.
miroljub wrote 8 hours 55 min ago:
Yes, that's why I said I don't like their relays. It
doesn't even have to be Akamai, you need to trust SimpleX
first that not to track your IP. I'd rather use a
messenger where something is not possible (or even hard)
than trust.
As long as IP leaks are possible, I'd rather also use
Signal, where at least the rest is battle tested and
state of the art.
My concern with Signal is they'll either comply or move
out of the EU with the incoming Chat Control, and I'd
rather have a fully decentralized messenger with as few
leaks as possible.
m4rtink wrote 21 hours 36 min ago:
Do we relly know the server actually does this when you can't run
your own Signal server instances you have compiled yourself from
source code ?
maqp wrote 19 hours 57 min ago:
Short answer is no.
Signal provides content-privacy by design with E2EE. Signal provide
metadata-privacy by policy, i.e. they choose to not collect data or
mine information from it. If you need metadata-privacy by design,
you're better off with purpose-built tools like Cwtch, Ricochet
Refresh, OnionShare, or perhaps Briar.
GranPC wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
They use remote attestation based on SGX. So, assuming SGX can be
trusted, yes. See
HTML [1]: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
dathinab wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
and assuming you have a practical way to
- verify the attestation
- make sure it means the code they have published is the attested
code
- make sure the published code does what it should
- and catch any divergence to this *fast enough* to not cause
much damage
....
it's without question better then doing nothing
but it's fundamentally not a perfect solution
but it's very unclear if there even is a perfect solution, I
would guess due to the characteristics of phone numbers there
isn't a perfect solution
mjg59 wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
Well, no - as long as someone you trust is able to do that
verification, that's good enough.
master-lincoln wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
I thought you could compile from source and run Signal server
instances, but there is no federation, so you would need a client
that points to your server and you could only talk to other people
using that client.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
ronsor wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
> The server uses a bitwise xor when querying for numbers using
hardware encrypted ram. The result is that even if youâre examining
the machine at the most basic levels you canât tell the difference
between a negative or positive hit for the phone number unless
youâre the phone requesting the api.
Do you have further reading on this?
dathinab wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
This article [1] has some details but is more focused on improving
their solution other blogs from the are "we want to build this
soon" kind of blogs. It seems that most articles about this topic
either have too little content to be of interest or are technology
previews/"we maybe will do that" articles about things Signal wants
to implement, where it's unclear if they did do that or something
similar.
To cut it short they use Intel SGX to create a "trusted
environment" (trusted by the app/user) in which the run the contact
discovery.
In that trusted environment you then run algorithms similar to
other messengers (i.e. you still need to rate limit them as it's
possible to iterate _all_ phone numbers which exist).
If working as intended, this is better then what alternatives
provide as it doesn't just protect phone numbers from 3rd parties
but also from the data center operator and to some degree even
signal itself.
But it's not perfect. You can use side channel attacks against
Intel SGX and Signal most likely can sneak in ways for them to
access things by changing the code, sure people might find this but
it's still viable.
In the end what matters is driving up the cost of attacks to a
point where they aren't worth in all cases (as in either not worth
in general or in there being easier attack vectors e.g. against
your phone which also gives them what they want, either way it
should be suited for systematic mass surveillance of everyone or
even just sub groups like politicians, journalists and similar).
HTML [1]: https://signal.org/blog/building-faster-oram/
LunaSea wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
I believe that the search term you can look for is constant time
equality.
tapoxi wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
sigwinch wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
Since Anom, we need a new word than âhoneypotâ. The next secure
messenger will not be created by these types. But many will be
incrementally marketed, and each campaign will succeed in reaching a
new batch of near-hit recruits.
agentifysh wrote 20 hours 47 min ago:
we have so many failure-as-a-feature ops these days im surprised we
aren't discussing it more. something that consistently happens with
enough frequency without any repercussions ultimately just becomes a
feature of its own.
we consistently have data breaches in institutions we trust is
converging to a point where its literally just a data harvesting ops
and everybody stops caring. They won't even bother to join class
action lawsuits anymore because the rewards enrich the lawyers while
everybody gets their twenty bucks in the mail after providing more
personal data to the law firm its like a loophole.
we now have legalized insider trading in the form of "prediction
markets", legalized money laundering and pump and dump through
crypto, all of these always lead to failures for the participant
disguised as wins.
burnt-resistor wrote 20 hours 55 min ago:
"Petepot"
LordGrey wrote 22 hours 11 min ago:
> Screenshots arenât really crucial to anything being discussed here,
but I like to provide only the best blog posts to my tens of readers
....
A sentence clipped from a point a little past the introduction, but
catchy nevertheless.
I suspect there will be more than "tens of readers" shortly.
DIR <- back to front page