this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2021
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Since it doesn't have any encryption the only advantage I see is the fact that it's open source and that there won't be (hopefully) any data collection, but conversations will still be completely unencrypted, which is not that great. Nothing tells me that whenever this revolt's userbase grows in size, they won't start collecting data, including every message previously sent. Encryption exists so you don't have to trust anyone to keep your messages safe, I hope they implement some sort of e2ee protocol at least for DMs
The issue is that it isn't really possible to build E2EE in web apps securely...
Matrix/Element does it pretty okay. Not perfect, but better than no E2EE.
It's much less than perfect.
E2EE in the browser is a bad idea, this blog post explains why. It's simply not doable properly without significantly reducing the security of the encryption.
That blog post is not about Element and doesn't include any of the ways Element stores data and sets up encryption. Basically they're just saying 'there's no sane defaults and websites want to spy on you', which I totally agree to, but which still misses the point. It is doable, it's just not done well. To just send everything in plaintext is definitely not the solution here.
If you're considering E2EE you're already considering that the server cannot be trusted (AKA it wants to spy on you).
It's not about defaults, it's about the fact that you're doing crypto to protect yourself from the server, using code that the server just sent you.
This is the key point of the post:
If you're serious about security, the only good way to do it is to not do it at all. It really pisses me off that even password manager don't care.
By "not doing it at all" I mean redirect people towards full blown apps that can do proper crypto.
Ah, yes, makes sense. Solutions to this may be to use client applications, local storage in browsers or checksumming.
There are still many issues with that. This stackoverflow discussion shows that it is not really possible to do. Some of the points are irrelevant, but the general takeway is that local storage, caches and all are not designed for security but for performance.
The thing is that the browser is absolutely not designed for this kinds of uses.
This post specifically says that browser crypto can be great to protect the interest of the website owner... well if you self-host your own Element or e2ee encrypted xmpp webclient you are the owner of the website.
The entire argument against javascript and webapps is always serverly distorted by all sort of false assumptions and compared to random binary only apps downloaded and run on MS Windows, I would take a modern browser and webapp in most cases.
That's 0.01% of the general population, and even here, I guess very few people self-host their email or Matrix or XMPP. And it still doesn't protect you against someone breaking the TLS connection between you and your server. This is a serious security concern, there have been multiple cases of certificate authorities issuing bad certificates.
I mostly agree, but because proprietary, windows only apps are not generally designed with security as the number 1 concern. For FLOSS apps that do highly value security (like Matrix), this is not an acceptable compromise to me. Signal doesn't have a web client for this exact reason. As I said in another comment, even password managers don't care about this issue, which is really disappointing.
You don't need to self host email, Matrix or XMPP to use E2EE. I meant self hosting the web clients.
HSTS, Certificate Pinning, …
Every communication method suffers from this, it's not exclusive to web-based communication.
Yeah, Open Source software down to the OS itself is important for security. But even then, who audits their own software? It's probably 0.01% of the 0.01% of the general population you mentioned.
Nobody does that
HSTS is great but doesn't protect you against maliciously issued certificates, and Certificate pinning is deprecated on the Web.
That's why you stick to software under high scrutiny and highly visible for security sensible stuff, and avoid using software with a broken security model for sensible stuff.
So, like Element? scnr
More like Signal
E2EE is planned. The app stills in alpha or public beta, idk
It's meant to be for large groups, isn't it? Why would the threat model of discord users require each of 120 users to keep their chats secret from the server?
For the same reason facebook is one of the biggest companies in the world. Having access to thousands of users' chat history is very useful for ad personalization and could be worth a lot of money. To fight this decentalization and encryption are crucial, you can't trust that they will never use that data for advertisement purposes, maybe introduced in a privacy police change. Solid encryption algorithms are feasable for smaller groups, but as I said, at least DMs could be encrypted
I suppose it would prevent automation on some level indeed, but ironically I feel like this is nothing to do with the threat model.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that chats in discord are used for ad targeting. There privacy policy is actually not that bad. The only issue is that it's not open source so they might get bought in the future by someone that changes that. Their app also uses facebook's SDK, so it does collect some data, but not the chat history.
Also, if you use it to talk to random people and have no way of checking identities/keys, E2EE doesn't serve any purpose...
A proprietary centralized chat service is a bad thing, regardless of privacy policy. Revolt is already superior to Discord on that front.
I said in my comment that the fact that they're not FLOSS is an issue.
Not everything that isn't FLOSS is a conspiracy to get your data, similarly not everything that is FLOSS takes proper care of your data. FLOSS is a good thing, but it's not the only thing that can protect you. There are laws, and they can't put anything in their privacy policy and not respect it.
We can convince people to use the better FLOSS alternative without having to make unfounded claims, this kind of thing only makes us look like tinfoil hat nutjobs. That's not who we are (or at least, who I am), and I'm not going to support claims without a shred of evidence.
I think we may be on the same page, then.
This is why I think framing free software as a privacy issue is inherently flawed. Free software is a good thing because it gives you control over your technology. The fact that free software is generally more privacy respecting is probably a side effect of that, but some proprietary software companies at least nominally claim to respect privacy too. Discord can have the best privacy policy in the world, and actually stand by it, and I would still denounce it because it is a locked-down proprietary silo platform.
This is technically true, in that a free software license is not a magical ward against bugs or spyware, but in cases where a free software project becomes spyware - such as Audacity - a spyware-free fork often pops up soon after. This is why I value the four freedoms of the free software movement.
I agree, but claiming that it uses it's users chat history for selling advertisement is absolutely unfounded and is not valid criticism.
I agree with you that FLOSS doesn't mean automatically better and there is no reason to wear a tinfoil hat. You ultimately have to trust someone if you don't inspect the source code yourself. I was just saying that being revol centralized and having access to every information isn't the best design for a discord privacy-respecting alternative, but they do have a good privacy policy, so if you trust they respect it (atm no reason to doubt that) then it will be surely better than discord. Discord does collect chat history though. On discord privacy policy:
They don't say that they sell said information for advertisement (even if they send some data to third parties) and I don't have seen any report about them getting caught doing that, I'm sorry I assumed. But I admit I get a bit carried away with doubts about companies who offer closed source software to a very large userbase. If there is a chance of making more money, they usually take it.
We're on the same page. FLOSS and decentralized/standardized is pretty much always better.
I understand that it's easy to make the assumption. Discord is one of the very few software of the kind that doesn't use data for advertisement according to their privacy policy. The data is there though, and the fact that they don't allow users to easily delete it is concerning. But the fact that its used for advertisement is false, which initially surprised me.
Re-reading my comments I realise I might have been unnecessarily aggressive sorry.
I agree that encrypting a group chat beyond a small group of trusted individuals is pointless. It's nice to have the option, though.