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0 pointsKliment9y ago0 comments

My main concern with GCM is that it's unavailable on fully open OS builds, so requiring it compromises the security of the device as a whole, rather than Signal in particular.

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tptacek9y ago

That's one of several things that are reasonable not to love about Signal. Criticism intended to urge Open Whisper Systems into changing their Signal policies are reasonable. A statement that someone would recommend less secure messaging solutions to investigative journalists is another --- something I find much harder to be supportive of.

strcat9y ago

There are alternatives with comparable or better security, but they tend to have other flaws. Most of the alternatives including Wire and Riot ALSO depend on GCM, otherwise they either lack push or force ridiculously bad battery life. They also have bad UX since they don't ask the user for a battery optimization exception permission, so the user would have to somehow know it's required or they'll break after a while in the background.

Conversations / OMEMO is a great Android messaging client, but it's ONLY available for Android and a desktop client (Gajim OMEMO plugin). It can use OTR (which it marks as less secure) but there isn't even a decent iOS OTR client anyway. ChatSecure iOS will probably get OMEMO and push support along with becoming a more decent client but it's going slowly. Until that happens, Conversations is problematic because there isn't a decent way to talk to iOS users.

nextos9y ago

Nobody is saying Signal has less secure cryptography than others. But being able to run it in CopperheadOS without loading microg would make the whole setup much more secure. And one cannot dissociate both things.

md_9y ago

What confuses me about the post is that the author does not make it clear if he recommends that journalists run CopperheadOS. It sounds like he does not recommend this, but rather opposes Signal's dependency on Play on general principals.

But if his journalists are using Android or iOS anyway, there's no practical advantage in Signal not depending on GCM or the Play Store, and some real disadvantages (like less secure updates). So the whole complaint seems like rather contrived to me.

(I would contest the claim that running a massive, not-practically-auditable open source OS is actually any more secure than running iOS or Android+Play Services, but whatever.)

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tortasaur9y ago

GCM is available on fully open OS builds. The microG project implements a fully open stand-in for GCM.

droopybuns9y ago

There are no fully open OS builds that are Android.

Osomocombb is the closest we've ever gotten.

jaboutboul9y ago

Use iOS

jhasse9y ago

Parent is concerned about one part of their OS not being open-source. iOS is closed-source.

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