Right now if you re-install Signal on your device, you lose all your messages. That's already a very bad user experience, but imagine how much worse it would be if you lost your entire address book in that moment as well.

Right now that's not a problem because your social graph is in the address book on your phone, and isn't managed by Signal. This is one of the primary reasons that Signal uses phone numbers for addressing: it leverages an existing user-owned and user-managed social graph. However, what we've repeatedly heard from users is that they don't want addressing to be based exclusively on phone numbers for a variety of reasons.

If we're not using that social graph, then where does the Signal-specific social graph live? For every other app in the world, the answer is that it lives in a server-side plaintext database. Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, Wire, FB Messenger, Skype, etc etc... they're all just storing your entire social graph in a plaintext database (along with a bunch of other stuff, like your groups, profiles, etc).

Given the way that technology has developed (devices are fundamentally designed for a world of clients and servers), it's probably not possible for us to build something that makes no use of servers. Instead, we've focused on building something that doesn't store or transmit any sever-side plaintext.

For instance, when you set your Signal profile name and avatar, that lives "in the cloud" so that other Signal users can retrieve and display it. But it's encrypted (https://signal.org/blog/signal-profiles-beta/), so only your contacts can see it (not us).

With Signal Private Groups (https://signal.org/blog/signal-private-group-system/), again we have to store data "in the cloud," so that there's a canonical data source for group management, but again all of the contents are encrypted so that only group members can see it (not us).

In this case, we're using Secure Value Recovery to ensure that a future addressing scheme that's not based on phone numbers is available across app reinstalls, phone switches, phone loss, etc. We could have just done what every other consumer messaging app in the world has done (store it in plaintext on the server), but we built this instead. It is the most user-friendly option that we could conceive of while still being privacy preserving, and took a lot of engineering work.

We're going to keep looking at all the feedback we've gotten, though, to try to make it the best experience we can.

Currently signal is asking for a pin periodically to allow migration to a new device every few years when a user gets a new phone.

Instead of typing in a pin few days/weeks for years, why not just have an export feature that users can select. Have users fill out an encryption key, then 1 minute later when they grab their new phone they can type it in again.

Ideally this would work from the desktop client, a tablet client, and phone clients. So if my device dies, is stolen, or sold I can restore my history from any other signal client I run.

Or maybe use the IOS approach which allows users to cloud sync to keep history (if they want), or to turn it off, which is less convenient, but more secure.

Either approach would save 10s or 100s of pin entries, and still provide a good user experience when switching phones.

> Right now if you re-install Signal on your device, you lose all your messages. That's already a very bad user experience, but imagine how much worse it would be if you lost your entire address book in that moment as well.

Why not just allow users to load their data into the cloud with a pin or password? My friends that use Signal because I pressure them into it (remember, that's why a lot of people use Signal) just want a one click upload/download. Generally these are also iPhone users, which currently doesn't allow this. Why not just give a one-click option to sync into drive or iCloud? Make it optional too (for the privacy folk who are generating your userbase). Doesn't this solve the whole problem?

The point is not to force this idiocy on people. Losing my messages and contacts when setting up a new device is actually a great feature. I regularly delete them and signal even has a feature to do so automatically. And forcing people to create a pin in the ui is just lousy ux. Until I read this article, I had no idea what that meant and just wanted it to go away. Now I want it to go away even more.

Edit: it's especially stupid if you can't use a pw manager with it. I haven't tried it because I don't want to set one. Once I'm forced, I'm going to ditch signal. Fuck that.

> Right now if you re-install Signal on your device, you lose all your messages.

Right now, if I re-install Signal on a new device, it will (hopefully) prompt me for a Signal-generated passphrase that I've stored very securely, and then allow me to restore everything, messages and address book, from a backup that I've diligently made and stored under an additional layer of encryption together with the rest of my data.

Will that facility remain available? Will the backup remain encrypted with the strong passphrase, or will any app with access to external storage be able to exfiltrate something that the Signal Foundation would be able to decrypt under the assumption that SGX is broken?

While I've so far been impressed with Signals' choices (prioritizing security but staying usable), I'm extremely disappointed with the new reliance on SGX, and forcing me into this scheme would likely get me to ditch Signal.

In particular, if I get a dialog forcing me to set a PIN, I'm out (at that point, Signal will be broken for me anyways - I'm using it to talk to very non-technical users that react to UX changes with a blank stare; they won't be able to use the app if a mandatory modal popup shows up, and flying over to teach them how to deal with it isn't exactly an option right now.)

I use Signal so I don't have to trust opaque stuff happening at a third party. From my understanding, Secure Value Recovery relies heavily on SGX, and becomes mostly equivalent to plain text (brute-forcing a short PIN) if you don't trust SGX.

> For every other app in the world, the answer is that it lives in a server-side plaintext database. Snapchat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Matrix, Wire, FB Messenger, Skype, etc etc... they're all just storing your entire social graph in a plaintext database

This is true for today's Matrix network, but we do have peer-to-peer Matrix working now too (as previewed at https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/dip_p2p_matrix/) which stores the metadata purely on the clients. There are no servers, other than rendezvous points to seed the network. (It's still vulnerable to traffic pattern analysis, but we're working on that - and Signal suffers this even more).

It's also worth noting that because Matrix doesn't tie identity to phone numbers (or anything else), the 'social graph' which is built up is of limited use if it's built up of anonymous personae.

I have two comments, one about the signal pin implementation as it exists now, and one possible Avenue forward to obviate the need for signal pins under certain circumstances.

for signal pins today, there should be an option to not be reminded of it because the user has a password manager. The option to not remind could be buried in the settings with a big scary warning that says if you do not get reminded again you will lose everything.

Signal pens can be bypassed entirely in the cases where users have multiple devices such as a linked phone or desktop.

One device sets a strong alphanumeric pin and sends it to the server. Users can share an ID unique to each signal installation on each of their devices. Each individual device has the ID for every other individual device. For each device that does not know the signal pin, it can request it from a device that does have the signal pin and or the device that made it. If a signal installation has the pin and gets a request for the pain from another device ID that it knows about, it provides it.

This device ID exchange behavior is used in syncthing to support e2ee peer-to-peer file sync, and could be used for syncing metadata in the situation where one device has its installation lost or reinstalled and needs to be repulled from the central servers.

An existing device(s) is told the Id of a new device and the new device is told about the existing device(s). None will communicate with the other without already having the user enter the device ID.

Once the two installations have handshaked, the existing device tells the new device what the seignal pin is and it can download it from the signal server.

For users who do not wish for cloud storage could have their device treat another device as the canonical source for the data post handshake and the data could be synced over lan or using stun/turn.

Yeah, I get it. My non-technical wife, brother and friends didn't.

If Signal PINs came with a feature that made it possible for me to not have my identity tied to a phone number I'd have understood (and accepted?) this release and rollout better.

moxie, I want to thank you and the entire team at Signal for all that you're doing to further e2e crypto and making mass surveillance more difficult for nefarious actors around the world. You're making everyone's communications safer.

> Right now if you re-install Signal on your device, you lose all your messages. That's already a very bad user experience, but imagine how much worse it would be if you lost your entire address book in that moment as well.

How about letting people back this up? There's no way to do this on iOS or in the desktop app. You're solving a problem of your own making with a solution your core audience of privacy conscious users does not want.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted? Backups are an essential feature of chat apps, and it seems pretty sane that a lot of Signal users don't want any information stored in the cloud, full stop.

There must be at least 99% of the users that have phone number contacts only, because dealing with usernames is a hassle to begin with. And why not store username-only contacts in the phones normal address book to begin with?

Why force this "feature" on everyone? There is ZERO reason for Signal to do this. I might as well use WhatsApp if you're going to start doing this shit, but I guess that's the point.

I can see why the ability to store a social graph and other metadata on Signal's servers would be a useful feature for users who don't want to tie their Signal data to their phone number and/or a plaintext social graph, and it would make sense to give users the opportunity to opt into that functionality. But for those of us whose social graph is our phone's contact list, having it forced upon us is a significant step backwards in terms of UX while adding essentially no value.

One of the things that made me optimistic about broad adoption for Signal prior to this change is that it was basically zero-friction for Android users to use Signal over the stock messaging app, aside from the few seconds it takes to download Signal and enter your phone number. But bugging the user for a PIN all the time is a significant reason to stick to the stock messaging app (or any other one, for that matter) and makes it a lot harder for me to recommend Signal in good faith to friends and family who don't care about privacy.

I think you are overreacting. Other, more popular messaging apps, also have prompts and yet they are used by hundreds of million of people.

In my opinion as power users we forget what regular users want and need, and are not willing to give up a little of what we like. But think of the benefits (phoneless sign ups and much much better private groups, to begin with) and tell me they don't outweigh the cons (a PIN prompt once every 2 weeks, in the marginal case).

It’s frustrating that we can’t still use a local address book for this. vCard is an extensible format, so a contact vCard could very well contain a Signal-specific identifier. I don’t know if the various mobile contact APIs support this though; I suspect not.

>I guarantee you, the vast majority of Signal users are only using it because they have some weird privacy-obsessed friend (i.e. us) that has roped them into using it. They don't care enough about Signal to memorize a PIN and get constantly tested on whether they remember it. They want it to just work.

This cannot be stressed enough

I think they've messed up badly with this update. I have several friends who want to get rid of Signal because they could not access their messages until they've set up a PIN.

Imagine needing to configure and remember a PIN on the spot when you need to urgently read your messages.

Interesting, mine keeps nagging me at the bottom of the screen every day, but hasn't forced it on me at all yet.

3rd

Samezies

At first mine behaved like parent, but then behaved like grandparent. Perhaps the was another update?

I've lobbied for signal, and gotten friends and family to join. Most are annoyed by the PINs and some have left.

Their handling of PINs seems quite contrary to their goal of pretty good security for the largest possible number of people.

It's VERY frustrating to have your device asking for pins every time you use it. I'm trying to protect from attackers on the internet, not someone who is going to assault me. After all if they assault me for my phone they can assault me for my pin. Single devs need to read https://xkcd.com/538/

That's not what the PINs are for.

What are they for?

Read the blog post, friend! They're for restoring your data to a new device.

Still stupid, shouldn't they ask if I want that functionality? Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN.

They should explain what the pins is BEFORE they ask. What it looks like is you are going to be locked out of signal if you make a mistake. Not like the average signal user is watching the whisper systems blog.

> Still stupid, shouldn't they ask if I want that functionality?

It's kind of a difficult thing to ask. "Do you want this app to work like every other app in the world in the ways you've come to expect?" If people were to simply reinstall Signal and find that all of their contacts were gone, all of their groups were gone, all of their block lists were gone, etc... they'd almost certainly be surprised. It's not a behavior anyone expects.

Every other consumer messaging app in the world solves this by storing all of that information in plaintext on their servers. We're trying to do something privacy preserving instead, and have done a fair amount of engineering work to try to make it as frictionless as we possibly can.

If you have ideas for how we can achieve the same ends with less friction, we're definitely interested in the feedback.

> Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN.

Check out this blog post for more information about the technology:

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

> "It's kind of a difficult thing to ask. "Do you want this app to work like every other app in the world in the ways you've come to expect?" If people were to simply reinstall Signal and find that all of their contacts were gone, all of their groups were gone, all of their block lists were gone, etc... they'd almost certainly be surprised. It's not a behavior anyone expects."

You could say:

"Hi there! Do you want to keep a backup of your conversation metadata locally, or via the cloud? The latter requires you to be badgered for a pin every day and lose all your data, even the information that the pin doesn't protect, if you lose it. The former allows you to backup to a file you can save on your computer, and store a password in your password manager!"

I think calling it a PIN and asking for it so frequently is part of the problem. It certainly induces me to use a shorter one than I would otherwise like (since I keep having to enter it so often _right_ at the time I am trying to use the app).

Asking for it once at the time of a new registration, install, or a restore/reinstall would be far more preferable to me. Treating it more like a "filevault" key or an "encryption phrase/password", would certainly encourage me to use a much longer key and just put it into a password manager (and/or write it down and put it somewhere physically safe).

>It's kind of a difficult thing to ask. "Do you want this app to work like every other app in the world in the ways you've come to expect?" If people were to simply reinstall Signal and find that all of their contacts were gone, all of their groups were gone, all of their block lists were gone, etc... they'd almost certainly be surprised. It's not a behavior anyone expects.

I see a lame excuse.

Lets be real: Groups have never worked very well in Signal, so people use alternatives. It's been my experience that at some point it screws up and everyone has to delete the group and we start over again.

Contacts are stored by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and/or their work email provider for a large majority of the population. Only the minority using burners might care and they are likely already used to setting up lists every time they burn a device.

Put a checkbox in the app for: 'Store my blocklist and profile info in Apple/Google's backup system. This will share info with them'. Some users will want that, others won't. Quite a few people would like to have Signal's message backups included in an offline iOS backup, their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Stop pontificating and give the option. It was a bigger compromise on your end creating a Signal Desktop app than it was to provide an option to include message exports in an encrypted backup.

Say what you will about Telegram, they made a much more reasonable compromise with their 'secure messaging'. This feature is not in their desktop apps as the attack surface of a desktop/laptop is too large. Secure chats instead focus on ephemerality and are torn down after completion. It's a more realistic threat model.

>Check out this blog post for more information about the technology:

Ah yes, the complex technology that relies on the insecure broken thing from Intel: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/hacke...

> Not like it's going to be hard to brute force a user's PIN.

I guess it depends on if you buy into SGX. Lots of people don't.

> Still stupid

Yeah, this isn't making anyone happy it seems. Still, they are a small organization and having configuration increases maintenance burden. As long as Signal keeps operating as non-commercial product, I will keep cutting them slack.

Can the pin be 1111? I use a similar pin for the app Threema. Better than nothing I guess and easy to remember. (Also, after restarting the device I have to enter a complicated password.)

Edit: Now I see. Signal wants to save data in the cloud. My Threema PIN is just for my device.

I don't think so. They blocked common pins like 1234, 1111, 0000, etc.

Alphanumeric PINs are all valid though, such as 'OOOO'.

Yes, 'aaaa' works. Sweet!

> I don't care about their Intel SGX whatever because I don't want to have to trust their servers in the first place.

Yeah: particularly given how Intel SGX gets broken every year :/... prime+probe, foreshadow, load value injection, plundervolt... Moxie's fetish for Intel SGX is extremely concerning.

SGX has simply just been shown to be incompatible with secure software and is impossible to justify. Signal can happily operate without the need for this sort of thing to begin with, but they keep insisting on weak solutions for no reason.

These weak solutions are actually enough to keep the government requests at bay, for the moment. Why go into crazy crypto theory if that's good enough right? That's what Apple and Google are doing as well.

As far as I understand, Apple is using dedicated secure enclave chips in their iCloud keychain service; the attacks against SGX are usually (admittedly, not always) side channel attacks due to being able to use the CPU for arbitrary insecure execution and then use that to extract information from the container. It is also my understanding that Apple controlled the keys for their hardware, and could watch themselves destroy the key: as far as they know, they can't access the data themselves and nor can anyone else... Intel SGX is subject to upgrade keys from Intel and their remote attestation can be forced by Intel: if a government wants the data they should bring the computer to Intel and start a similar battle to the one the FBI had with Apple on their older phones (where Apple already had a back door but didn't want to be forced to use it by signing a firmware to access the phone).

It's not optional because its purpose is incompatible with that.

They want to add signal identifiers that aren't phone numbers. If such identifiers are to communicate with you, you need to store what's necessary.

> It's not optional because its purpose is incompatible with that.

I don't blame signal for forcing strong PINs, I don't know what's their purpose, but non phone number identifiers don't require cloud storage. The contact list (with the associated public keys) does.

What? How? You just need a key (password). If you are able to log into that "identified" then you are online with that and others can message you on that, and the network will route messages to your client.

There's nothing to store up to this point.

And if people want backups they can optionally enable that. Or the network could support multiple clients signed in for the same "identified" and allow those authenticated and authorized clients to sync/backup among themselves.

Isn't the point of something like this PIN that the only thing stored on the cloud is an encrypted blob that they don't have the keys to? That way it doesn't matter if SGX or similar breaks or not, since the encryption is only happening on your devices. The PIN is the key.

The PIN is a very short key, so the only real protection is that Intel SGX (which notably gets broken every year, and so this doesn't actually work) is preventing people from getting access to the encrypted data to brute force the key; the enclave then enforces some limit on the number of attempts (and maybe some rate limit on the speed of attempts).

The client allows them to be alphanumeric, but the default is 4 numbers. The irritating behaviour of repeatedly asking for it to be entered at awkward times means people will just set it to 1337 and call it a day.

I haven't even opened Signal since hearing about this update, so I don't know how irritating the prompts are, but I did see this in the blog:

>Because Signal doesn’t have access to your keys – or your data – your PIN isn’t recoverable if you forget it, so our apps help you remember your PIN with periodic reminders. Don’t worry, these reminders get less frequent over time.

Having read that, I doubt I'll get too irritated at the reminders and eventually they'll go away. You have a point that anyone who hasn't read the update blog will have no similar hope and might use something easy. I guess I'd hope the Signal user base is more security conscious than that. For instance, I know my PIN is going to be alphanumeric and immediately stored my password database.

You can fill it in with your password manager at every prompt?

There is a large segment of people who don't like complicated passwords and will not use a password manager, so the PIN scheme w/ advanced options and password manager integration is the way to thread that needle.

I used my debit card PIN, so I should be fine right?

Bank level encryption. Yep, fine.

I was quite disappointed as well. I guess the only way to go is to use a strong password, which is NOT "memorizable" and hope that the reminder banner won't show up too often. Very sad ...

Does homefort sync over the lan or it requires a 3rd party/ proxy broker? It says "The mobile app connects to your home computer" which concerns me a bit as it sounds like a VNC headline.

The idea is to use try to use NAT traversal (i.e. STUN or UPnP) to get a direct connection, and otherwise relay (i.e. TURN) with end-to-end encryption. I'm hoping IPv6 will eventually allow direct connections everywhere so nothing needs to be relayed.

I haven't built that stuff yet though so the current version requires that your home computer has a public IP address and that you open a port in your router. Obviously it's only usable by technical people right now, but I do eventually want this to be something my mom can install and use on her own.

Check out zerotier; I've been looking at similar p2p techniques and ZT does a good job of packaging them all up with a relaying fallback.

I’d really like to have a more sane version of Signal as a fork, which allows the maintaining of compatibility, but given how hostile they’ve been towards this sort of thing I suspect it would be unmaintainable.

From what I understand, they are fine with forks of Signal as long as these forks have distinct branding and don't depend on OWS services to operate, I'd imagine because they don't want the operational burden of ensuring the compatibility of third party clients nor confused users going to OWS for support instead of the third party devs.

Which, imo, is a pretty reasonable decision.

I think I liked Signal better when it was just encrypting text and sending it over SMS. I noticed recently that someone has been maintaining such a fork, under the name "Silence", but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

I used Silence as my primary SMS app for several years while I was on Android. Overall I had no complaints. Beware though, they seem to have been booted out of the Play Store at some point, so you might need to install through F-Droid.

They don't block third party clients ala WhatsApp, but going on GitHub and arguing with people isn't a good thing either :/

One alternative is Wire. I use both.

My partner uninstalled Signal when it failed to work from within the UAE and could not contact me. If she wouldn't have done it then, she would now with this PIN nonsense. At least we can text via Wire.