It will be open source, end to end encrypted using Signal’s double ratchet encryption protocol, and he plans to make it easy for fediverse platforms to integrate it. The beta will release later this month.
He’s also the creator of https://fedidb.org btw
While I doubt I could get my friends and family on yet ANOTHER messaging app in the year of our lord 2023.
Sup. Is a fucking brilliant name.
Could be a fantastic way to replace dm, that’s my first thought.
I remember idly wondering how DMs worked in Lemmy, and I was kinda shocked when I realized they aren’t secure.
“secure” is relative. They may not be e2e encrypted, but they are still encrypted via TLS, like any HTTPS traffic. It’s the same encryption used for online banking. If you care about your instance admin being able to read your messages, you should use Signal or a Matrix client though.
But remember that only a few years ago, almost nobody used e2e encryption, and it wasn’t much of an issue.
Double rachet encryption protocol is also rather dope
I personally hate the name, but only because I had a roommate in college who would start every conversation with “sup.”
On text messages, IMs, in person, you name it. It really started to get under my skin.
But I hope the software is good.
sup.
Yep. That’s what he’d do. So basically he’d always want you to start the conversation.
No man, you’re just supposed to say “Sup.” back to them and then repeat ad nauseum.
After a few sups, the least dominate of the two has to say “nunmuch chu?”
So, you’re playing a little Playstation, huh? That’s whack. Playstation is whack. 'Sup with the whack Playstation, 'sup?
I might know that guy lol
(what’)SUP 🤪
I think it will integrate with the existing fediverse
This is good.
It really is. In the past a new messenger or Plattform was always annoying as it inevitable meant, how can I get my friends to use this. But with activity pub it doesn’t matter anymore. Everbody can use the fediverse software of his taste and we can still all be interconnected. What a relieve. So many software solutions can compete against each other without us having always to start from zero. Brave new world.
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He’s a madman
I wonder if he is friends with the guy who runs calibre and kitty terminal. I read somewhere that he was seriously planning to single-handedly maintain python 2 after it was EOLed because it was so integral to calibre. But was eventually talked into transitioning to python 3. The idea of that is totally nuts; the guy is a machine.
I’ve been following Daniel since he started working on Pixelfed and dude’s a beast. His code and skill improved astronomically and he just doesn’t stop. Great example of how “doing it” is best way to learn anything software related.
Makes more sense as matrix client than ActivityPub
Oh god matrix is such a bitch to handle and deal with, laggy and just in need of so much work. I’ll be so happy to have an alternative.
I used it and hosted it for months with friends and family and we all got locked out due to bugs and had neighboring federated servers that wouldn’t connect.
I’m still trying to figure out why this would be used over Matrix. It seems to be the same without bridges?
I’ve been unhappy with the direction Signal has taken in recent months and Matrix always felt like it was trying to do too many things at once.
Happy to see something that would integrate directly into Fediverse platforms as it will greatly enhance interplatform communication.
Like a better FB messager.
personally love the direction Signal is heading but would be happy to not have “all my eggs in one basket”, as well as diversifying the open source E2EE communication options.
I felt that removing SMS while still having it tied to your phone number, stories, and that weird cryptocurrency were not what I was looking for in a messanger.
I also don’t like the fact that Signal needs your phone number and that the only way to connect to other people is by their phone number.
And that your phone number inevitably leads to being spammed
TIL Margot Robbie has strong opinions about encrypted messaging apps. My respect grows by the day.
I agree. As soon as the update that disabled SMS was pushed to my phone, signal was effectively dead.
Integrating with SMS was so smart. The person who got me into it said “there is literally no reason not to do it” because it was seamless. And I used the same argument to get other people into it. But basically everyone stopped using it as soon as SMS was removed. I don’t have the brain space to remember who is on signal and who is not and go to the appropriate messenger.
I read the whole long thread on their website where the devs were arguing in favor of this and all the reasons were IMHO stupid. I think someone wanted to tank signal. Got tired of funding it probably. It was too good to be true with no obvious business model so always thought the day would come, and it did. Too bad, it was very good at what it did.
I think someone wanted to tank signal. Got tired of funding it probably.
This take doesn’t make any sense. Signal is funded by a non-profit and has tons of money that allows them to not worry about funding in the near feature. There is nobody to “get tired of funding” them.
You should try Beeper too.
I’d never heard of that until now, looks amazing!
Beeper is truly fucking amazing.
SimpleX looks intriguing
It’s great, I’m migrating all my contacts to it. AGPL, no phone number or identifier, decentralized, official lemmy community, fast development pace, …
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I’ve posted this previously, but I’ll repost again because I think its important people are aware when making a decision on a secure messenger.
======== Original Post: https://lemmy.ml/comment/1615043
Sessions developers dropped Signal’s Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and deniability
[]security features. Personally I would not trust a product that drops an end-user security feature for the sake of making the developer’s life easier[].Using existing long-term keypairs in place of the Signal protocol massively simplifies 1-1 messaging.
For those unaware, PFS protects your data/messages from future exploits and breaches. With PFS, each message’s encryption is isolated, preventing compromise of current and past interactions
[].A simple example to illustrate why PFS is beneficial. Lets assume any 3 letter agency is collecting all Signal/Session messages - on top of the tons of data they’re already capturing. The great thing is that your messages are encrypted, they can’t see anything - YAY - but they’re storing them basically forever.
Two ways they may be able to compromise your privacy and view ALL your messages:
-
A flaw is discovered that allows them to crack/brute force the encryption in weeks instead of years/decades/eternity. If you were using Sessions, because you use the same key for every message, they now have access to everything you’ve ever said. If you were using Signal, they have access to that one message and need to spend considerable resources trying to crack every other message.
-
Your phone is compromised and they take your encryption keys. If you were using Sessions, this again gives them access to your entire message history. If you were using Signal, because the keys are always rotating (known as ephemeral) they can only use them to unlock the most recent received messages.
It’s important to state that both cases above only really matter if you delete your messages after a certain time. Otherwise, yes, all they have to do is take your phone and get access to your entire message history - which is why ephemeral messaging (i.e. auto deleting messages after a certain time) is crucial if you suspect you may be targeted.
[]https://getsession.org/blog/session-protocol-explained[]https://getsession.org/blog/session-protocol-technical-information-
this rocks actually. I’ve kinda wanted this for a while
I’m not leaving Signal until someone implements keeping data at rest encrypted on both ends and requires multi factor unlock (bio+pin is my choice).
So sick of E2E clients that leave the data in plaintext on the devices and then back it up in plaintext to the cloud.
Does Signal back up in plaintext in the cloud? (If so that doesn’t sound like E2E encryption… unless the ‘ends’ are uh… also constituted as the cloud itself which is… defeating the purpose).
Where do the pub/ private keys live, exactly, tbh. (Assuming it is asymmetric encryption that they use?)
No, signal does not do cloud backups. The keys live on the end users devices.
Signal doesn’t store any of your chats at all. They’re all on-device by design
Hm… If they’re not being stored on the cloud, that means offline users would never receive messages, unless Signal is purely P2P. I haven’t looked at the project, or the source, but I find it hard to believe – you can’t really do user lookups without some sort of middleware in the cloud.
You’re right, Signal is not P2P. The way Signals messaging pipeline works is like this - note I’m oversimplifying it for accessibility.
Sending a message to
Bob- You press
Send. - The message is encrypted on your device with a key that can only be unlocked by
Bob. - The message is then “sealed” so that there’s only a “deliver to” field visible (not a “from”).
- The “deliver to” field is addressed with a hashed/salted label for
Bob- this means Signal’s server can see its a unique user, but not what their name is. - The message is finally sent to Signal’s servers.
- Your message sits on Signals servers until it can be delivered to the intended recipient.
you can’t really do user lookups without some sort of middleware in the cloud.
See their blog post about Private Contact Discovery, they’ve spent a long time figuring out how to engineer a method to know as little as possible about you.
Thanks for the explanation.
- You press
All the data they have on any specific user is the account creation date, and the last online timestamp. They’ve already done loops around this topic in the DOJ.
And I thought it should be obvious that an online service doesn’t work if you’re offline
Yeah, but messengers, such as WhatsApp for instance, will send you missed messages once you’re back online. That’s what I was referring to.
Your link,
https://mastodon.social/@dansup/110836811082599292%20sup.%20is%20an%20open%20source%20encrypted%20fediverse%20instant%20messenger,%20similar%20to%20whatsapp,%20made%20by%20pixelfed.%20%20The%20beta%20will%20be%20launching%20later%20this%20month,%20and%20btw%20most%20fediverse%20accounts%20will%20work,%20not%20just%20Pixelfed%20%F0%9F%98%89is broken. I think you accidentally copied the body text as well. Cleaning up the link results in https://mastodon.social/@dansup/110836811082599292, which works fine.Thanks, fixed.
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Desktop fscking client, please. Not electron based would be nice, yes? QT is good.
ICQ-style or old Skype-style user directory would be wonderful too. VoIP is not something I’d care about, file transfers are.
This is cool.
Chill, you’re not the only one here.
VoIP in a mainstream messenger is something that most people use nowadays to avoid calling people from their SIM cards which costs them much.
Video calling too is something I personally use too especially on iMessage or Telegram.
I’m a software engineer, I appreciate some old school things that work perfectly well like ICQ or Vim or emacs or working only with shortcuts. But you know what’s also a shortcut? Not having to use 50 different messengers just because this one doesn’t have VoIP and I can’t bring my friends or my mom here but I can bring only my nerd friends”.
This is all business and target audience oriented. You are not the only target audience out there and especially when you don’t demand from a messenger to be able to have VoIP. Even Instagram has VoIP these days. A photo-video-media sharing app. Let alone a messenger.
Chill, you’re not the only one here.
We don’t take kindly to people who think they’re the only one here.
I talked about various audiences not just myself. The person I replied to talked as if the app was made for him explicitly. “VoIP is not something I’d care about, file transfers are” like this kind of talking is like bruh, the app is not made only for you.
yeah, the app is made for you and him. So doing the math we have a -1 “VoIP is not something I’d care about” and a +1 “Video calling too is something I personally use…” which results in 0% significance. So let’s just talk, voice our opinions, and chill.
No, the app is made for everybody who wants to use a messenger. Not just you and him. It’s supposed to be under the standards of the feddiverse.
The comments here are not a poll. Providing especially personal comments about a nerdy user like me and the guy I replied about “I would like it like ICQ” and such shit, would not help the creator make a good choice. Most people nowadays, especially zoomers, dont even know what ICQ is or how it works or how to even login to it. Most people, proven by ehm … the success of messenger, discord, whatsapp, telegram, viber, signal everything … want a messenger that provides what the mainstream messenger wants with most of the features that everybody provides and are mainstream used while having ease of access.
We should try to help the creator. Not misguide him. Again, the comments are not a poll, they’re supposed to help to make a constructive conversation. And when you talk as if the app is made only about yourself, you’re not really helping.
I’m not a fan of Pixelfed, or instaclones. But the idea of a messenger e2ee that works with all the fedi is such a awesome idea.
Why are you not a fan? I’m genuinely curious, as I’m vaguely evaluating such software.
Not OP but personally I just don’t like picture centric social media. Just not my thing.
I wonder, what 'works with the fediverse ’ could mean for a messenger and what could be features not already implemented by different messengers, like elements or the very signal.
From the side of the Messanger, it could implement stories from pixelfed and communities from Lemmy/mastodon/kbin etc.
I don’t know if anyone is asking for this, but Whatsapp has both, so someone must be using them, right?
As from the side of every other fediverse app, I think it could be a good way of implementing DM functionality without developing and maintaining it for every single app. Maybe. I don’t know really, depends on how it’s developed/implemented
so this is basically fb messenger but it works with twitter, YouTube and reddit (their federated alternatives mastodon peertube lemmy) and is e2ee!
super cool!
Great news that it will work across the fediverse. I’d love to try pixelfed for example, but its got too much of a walled garden thing going on since nobody I know uses it.
I just uninstalled Pixelfed. Mostly because the app is absolutely garbage on Android, and the developer made it look like an iOS app.
The app is just so dead. I’m happy to revisit later, but as for now I’ll stick with posting my stuff on Mastodon and Lemmy.
Fedilab works great for me.
Sadly it doesn’t look so much like an iOS app, more like a bad Instagram clone 😕
Honestly, I don’t hate that Idea much bcoz I think it will help users switching from IG to PixelFed.
Nice. This sounds like a federated signal messanger? Why not using matrix or xmpp? 🤨
Can you use matrix with a lemmy or mastodon account?
No, right now you need two separate accounts but you could combine them if you wanted to
I have no idea what the fediverse brings to an E2EE IM app. They seem like contradictory concepts.
no walls?
All existing messengers have “no walls” if you consider they all transfer data via TCP/IP. Except the wall is the encryption/higher level protocol. Now just replace TCP/IP with federated servers. Different messengers will be unable to communicate with each other because they’d need to implement the same encryption.
If you’re able to standardize the encryption then things can interoperate if it’s fediverse based or not.
According to this post, Signal can federate, but chooses not to. In another post, it’s said that Matrix is based off Signal.
So, one way to look at it announcement is “you will be able send Signal/Matrix messages from your fediverse instance of choice”, I believe
Kind of surreal seeing my own Mastodon post linked, damn.
If you’re curious about the details I refer to, there’s an indepth article on lwn.net regarding this from 2016 here: https://lwn.net/Articles/687294/
That article was very informative, thanks!
Huh. I wonder what they mean by “bad user UX”. I was expecting concerns about encryption or privacy, not UX. I already use Signal, so it would be a positive for me if they federate.
To be a bit more precise, Signal is against federation from two angles:
-
Innovation: Signal values absolute control over the protocol so that they can more rapidly implement UX experiences scene in other modern messaging apps. It also eliminates malicious or outdated servers changing the UX between users. Ultimately folks won’t blame the servers, they’ll blame the app, and stop using it.
-
No rope for users: They seem pretty confident that the Apple-style of software and UX is right— if a user can change stuff enough to break it, they will. For secure messaging, they’d rather users have fewer choices to be sure it is secure.
-
“you will be able send Signal/Matrix messages from your fediverse instance of choice”
While no details are clear, it’ll definitely not be this. Matrix has it’s own implementation which isn’t compatible with signal (megolm or something like that), and I really don’t think dansup will be making it matrix compatible. It’ll probably be its own thing.
Oh, that’s a shame. It’s one of the bummers of instant messaging, everything seems to be incompatible with everything
Signal has been the basis of basically every private messenger since it’s inception. They may have since forked but they’re almost all based loosely on it’s concepts.
Yeah … I read it as well.
This announcement does not mean that the services (signal, matrix, etc) will be integrated. At one point there’ll be a bridge for matrix. But like google, all of them need to implements MLS at one point. Maybe then they’ll be able to communicate
How is this different than something like Matrix? I’m probably just not understanding something…
This is meant to work with the ActivityPub fediverse ie. Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, Pixelfed etc. and you would be able to use your current lemmy.world account for messaging.
But why is that such a great benefit? We already have a myriad accounts for different services/platforms; would this be merely a marginal improvement over the current situation?
One of the most used feature of Facebook and Instagram is their messenger. It’s much easier for people to use the same account they use for social media to communicate with each other. A direct messaging feature within fediverse would augment the current ecosystem and make more people transition away from big corporations
I see, makes sense. So if I get it correctly, the idea is to make it easier for new people to join the fediverse, and not so much to improve the experience for those of us already here (although it seems that is also a goal).
