WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete

Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by tptacek on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @02:20PM (#11432959)

For my part: because "Axolotl" is one of the most widely name-dropped terms in hipster cryptography, and because it's been adopted by other projects, and because it's distinctive, and because they basically own the term. In a stroke, everyone doing secure key ratchets would have been using their product.

It's also just a cool name.

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by garrettr_ on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @05:26PM (#11434642)

I always liked "Axolotol" because axolotols are a type of salamander with the amazing ability to regenerate parts of their bodies (including their brains!), and the Axolotol protocol, like OTR, is "self-healing", meaning it's capable of recovering from a compromised session key (https://whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/).

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by vmasto on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @01:59AM (#11436909)

And you're spelling it wrong which pretty much validates the renaming.

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by david-given on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @06:52AM (#11437910)

Axolotls are also cool because they're not really a species in their own right --- they're actually just the juvenile form of a salamander. But they can breed while in their juvenile form! It's as if tadpoles could lay eggs without having to turn into frogs first.

In fact, axolotls only metamorphose into salamanders if triggered by the external environment. If you don't stimulate them in the right way, they stay axolotls. For a long time they were thought of as two different types of creature completely.

There's a story of one of the very early researchers looking at his vivarium one day and discovering that it was now full of salamanders rather than the axolotls he was expecting. I would love to have heard the conversation...

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by seivan on Thursday April 07, 2016 @12:33AM (#11444742)

Basically like a Pokemon.

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by DigitalJack on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @05:52PM (#11434833)

I thought it was a misspelling of axlotl from dune, so I had to google it. Frank Herbert must have taken his inspiration from the salamander as well, given what the axlotl tanks were for.

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Re:WhatsApp's Signal Protocol integration is now complete by aw3c2 on Tuesday April 05, 2016 @03:11PM (#11433412)

Thanks and I agree about that!

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