Hi Mark, Thanks fir the note. Saw the interesting note from you on Skype - full disclaimer one of the cofounders is my friend Jaan. Btw I had dinner with Tom inAsiacrypt 2006 , if I recollect our conversation correctly- what he said was there we no “obvious “ flaws and he smiled :)
Fully agree with you on your sentiments Anish On Sat, 22 May 2021 at 05:32, Mark Seiden <[email protected]> wrote: > this subject came up briefly at the silk meet, which i was happy to attend. > > several points should be made: > > 1. some people expressed concern with installed base of particular apps > among the > people they want to talk with. > > of course, this number starts at 0 for any new app. also low installed > base might have some > advantages in obscurity or just “not being worth the trouble”. yet. > remember macs did not > suffer malware for many years because the installed base was > insignificant, even though > in a financially favorable demographic. > > for me, secret or sensitive conversations happen among very few people, > and it should be > that way. (the best way to keep a secret is to not share it.) > > so you don’t have to persuade a lot of people to install a new app if the > purpose > of it is to have some assurance that, say, two of you are speaking > privately. > > the biggest problem with multiparty conversations is that the main points > of vulnerability > are the endpoints (either being compromised, or logging the content) > rather than the > communication security. > > (for some, such as skype, the key management is enough of a problem now > that it > isn’t trustworthy by my reckoning.) > > 2. open source apps are likely to be more secure, since it’s easier to > verify design and > find design and implementation errors. (of course, if a developer has > evil intent, > they can distribute a version of the app that isn’t the same as what’s in > the source. > eventually it will be found that the distributed version doesn’t build > from the source > and then there will be some ’splaining to do.) > > closed source apps sometimes have audits done. > > but remember that skype originally, as written in Estonia, was audited by > Tom Berson, an > eminent cryptographer, who gave it a clean bill of health. > > But then a Chinese version was built as a jv and operated by tom.com > which turned > it into a surveillance app. > > and then skype was bought by microsoft, who centralized the key management > on their key servers rather than having the keys generated on the > endpoints. > > (and, nonetheless, skype continued to feature berson’s years old > report on their web site as “proof of security” long after it was > applicable to what > their code actually did.) > > 3. here’s a semi-journalistic report on vice which points to some serious > issues on > whatsapp and telegram: > > https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4qjd/whatsapp-data-security-issues < > https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4qjd/whatsapp-data-security-issues> > > and an actual technical report by dimetrenko and schneider about problems > in > contact discovery is summarized and pointed to by > > https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-09/tud-pms091520.php > > > cheers, > > m. > > > > > > > -- Anish Mohammed https://calendly.com/zeroknowledge
