nkobeissi

That makes sense. In this case I think it would be interesting to analyze the state space for the network protocol involved.

Signal is applying SGX secure enclaves to engineer a new contact discovery server design. This is doubtlessly promising and innovative.

My only question is the following: what protection is there against the server sending a correct remote attestation for the code being executed to the client, and then, right after this attestation is validated, the server rerouting the network pipe so that the contact list the client sends goes to a different server running different, non-SGX code?

I ask that as a non-expert in SGX, so this might be something that has an obvious answer.

Edited to add: Also, isn't it the case that verifying SGX remote attestations requires phoning home to Intel? If that's the case here (and I'm not sure that it is,) is Intel consequently able to build an IP address graph of Signal users?

Edit 2: Matthew Green has provided a credible answer to my initial question: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/91274558241391820...

I want to understand how this story makes sense, and I can't. If you put the facts together, they don't add up. First, here's the chronology.

1. Original Note 7 phones were blowing up, Samsung issued a recall.

2. Samsung released (suspiciously quickly) a new phone that used new batteries made by Amperex, which also provides batteries for the iPhone line. [A]

3. A report comes in of a post-recall, "safe" phone blowing up while not being connected to a charger and being turned off to be put in the owner's pocket. [B]

4. Another report of a "safe" phone blowing up while in the back pocket of its owner. [C]

5. Two more reports come in, both of a Note 7 blowing up overnight while their owners were asleep. [D,E]

Second, here's what I don't understand:

* We know the batteries are likely safe since they come from a reputed manufacturer also providing iPhones their batteries. Heck, even the initial battery manufacturer was Samsung itself, and Li-Ion batteries aren't exactly a new and unstudied technology.

* Even after the new batteries were put in use, the phones are still exploding even when not connected to a charger, as explicitly stated by reports [D] and [C], and as is likely the case for [B] and [E].

How are these phones blowing up when, in all likelihood, the batteries are safe and have been replaced, and the phone isn't even under heavy use at the time of the explosion? Maybe you could blame CPU heating or a faulty charging mechanism, but the phones were not charging or under heavy load. All they were doing was discharging at an idle rate. This is literally the state least likely to cause this kind of explosion.

Can anyone explain what I'm missing?

Sources:

[A] https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-galaxy-note-7-explosion-ba...

[B] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/5/13175000/samsung-galaxy-no...

[C] http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201610080009.aspx

[D] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/9/13215728/samsung-galaxy-no...

[E] http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/9/13218730/samsung-galaxy-no...

Ugh, thank your for posting this, I opened up the comments section to post exactly the same thing. It's incredibly annoying how misleading this article is. I don't know what the HN rules are for dealing with things like this.

It seems anything that links back to the "World Socialist Website" is just a waste of everyone's time.

> I have a feeling that if WhatsApp were recording their users' locations in order to provide a more advanced location-aware version of the same strategy, people would not be very happy about that.

They don't need to record your location. WhatsApp client can just query your IP address and silence the call-prohibiting UX if it finds out you're outside Saudi address space. This is an exceedingly obvious solution with no effect on user privacy.

> Money? That's harder, unfortunately. It's hard to innovate when people want to cling on to what they already know.

This is a core element of my questions that other answers are unfortunately not addressing. Even if you make software that's less clunky than legacy-grade Adobe Kamatsu-tractor like offerings, how do you make make switching lucrative to the point of achieving self-sustainability?

I have no idea what that hash corresponds to and haven't even seen it before. Also, to be clear. I have absolutely not the slightest idea what kind of issue tptacek seems to be referring to in general. Honest. I'd swear under oath if I could.

Wow.

That's somewhat helpful but doesn't fully address Chris's story. Would Chris be able to write his own implementation, interoperable with AxolotlKit (the iOS Signal Protocol implementation), from scratch, without any explicit code reuse, and then publish it under whatever license he chooses?

If the answer is yes, I strongly encourage you to publish an official statement from OWS stating so. I know for a fact that FOSS projects are losing their funding because of the impression that even if they write their interoperable implementation from scratch there would still be licensing questions.

You've clarified this somewhat on Twitter before, but if you can publish a short statement on behalf of OWS, that would go a long way into clearing up the issue for a lot of free software developers. Thanks.

These kinds of arguments may have force on Reddit, but they're verboten on HN. You need to engage the argument itself and not try to dredge things up about the arguer.

> WhatsApp makes a lot of sacrifices to have encryption by default, like no backup of messages

Small clarification: WhatsApp actually does seem to have a backup feature, at least on my Android phone. I was prompted by the application to enable it just this morning.

Of course, I was only referring to vulnerabilities I could verify are real.

Steve was paid two separate bug bounties and invited to a Cryptocat hackathon in NYC. I also consider him a friend and never heard a complaint from him regarding the project's disclosure policies.

I am the original author of the software you refer to. Before its complete rewrite (released two months ago), Cryptocat was based on a codebase that I wrote starting in my early undergrad and that was notorious for containing many high-severity vulnerabilities. The most important was "Decryptocat", documented by Steve Thomas [0] but we also had:

* AES-CTR counter-reuse (2012)

* Biased Fortuna CSPRNG implementation [1] (2013)

To be sure, Cryptocat's substandard reputation was well-deserved; but all the same, I think that every vulnerability that did pop up was addressed responsibly and with full disclosure.

Since then, there has been a major rewrite that I am conversely quite happy with.

[0] https://tobtu.com/decryptocat.php

[1] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/07/09/anatomy-of-a-pse...

> Complaints about Signal are, unsurprisingly, getting dumber and more venomous. For instance, last week, Nadim Kobeissi (the author of Cryptocat, a competing secure messaging system that I think you should avoid) was on Twitter talking about how impossible a GPL violation could have been given that Wire's Signal implementation is in Rust.

Given that I'm mentioned by name (and tied to a bunch of exaggerated claims), I'd like to clarify a few points.

1. I never claimed that a GPL violation was impossible because of different programming languages. I merely questioned whether this was the case with Wire's Rust codebase [0], given that its data structures, namespacing etc. are substantially different from the OWS Java code [1]. To me, different code organization + different implementation style + different programming language don't exactly amount to a line-by-line conversion from Java to Rust as OWS seems to be claiming.

2. Cryptocat does not compete with Signal: it's a desktop XMPP client that focuses on synchronous messaging (that I write in my free time and with no funding or business plan, to boot), and does not at all target the mobile space. I was very happy to adopt a variant of Signal Protocol into Cryptocat and consider Signal's contributions to the field of secure messaging to be highly valuable. I'm not sure why tptacek brings up Cryptocat (completely unrelated to this discussion) but by all means, don't avoid it! The recent rewrite is pretty good, actually.

Overall, this situation just struck me as very ugly. Moxie seemed at some point to be reticent to allow fully independent implementations of the protocol, and Wire's lawsuit was pretty aggressive. Both parties locked in a catfight and then (apparently?) realized their approaches were counterproductive and gave it up.

The best resolution here, in my view, would have been for Moxie to publish a public-domain reference specification document of Signal Protocol that's independent of the code, and for Wire to be allowed to write a Rust implementation of it without any party causing drama.

[0] https://github.com/wireapp/proteus

[1] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/libsignal-protocol-java

Oh, not at all. I've been thinking this through for some time. I don't regret it. It's rather the case that I don't think much good discussion ever comes out of Hacker News specifically, and tend to avoid it like the plague. Your comment, sadly, is somewhat reminiscent of the kind of logic that makes me dislike this message board: binary, accusatory, and somehow allergic to considering the possibility of a limited perspective on the matter (beyond seeing it plastered on a highly ephemeral front page for "hot hacker startup news.")

It's going to grab some attention, folks in the field will understand why I made my decision, and hopefully I'll then be able to move on. I don't aim for anything more, or less. It was a statement I had to make, the resulting reaction was inevitable, and I hope it's not louder than it has to be. Both myself and the folks at Peerio have lives to move on with.

I stayed silent for eight months, but it was painful, because I felt like I had empowered (and largely built) a company that now had ulterior motives and was open to blackmailing its own. The sad thing is, I can't issue an alarm bell without there being some wave of confusion and misinterpretation across the community, and I just wish I could do the former without being inundated with the latter.

(I will not be replying to further comments.)

This is Nadim (someone just pointed this link out.) Please don't upvote this. I'm not appreciating the attention, not looking for drama. Just needed to set the record straight on something that's been bothering me for months, especially given that Peerio was issuing statements with my not being allowed to respond due to lawsuit threats. This is not something I want to become a big story, it was a necessary statement I had to make to put Peerio behind me and move on with my side of the story fully expressed. Thanks.