mosiacmango

@ mosiacmango @lemm.ee

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3 yr. ago

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack
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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago
So your stance is that Google is applying self designed malware to its own services to violate its own policies to harvest data that could bring intense legal, financial and reputational harm to it as an org it was ever discovered?
Seems far fetched.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

You have the key, not the provider. They are explicit about this in the implementation.

They can only read the messages before encryption if they are backdooring all android phones in an act of global sabotage. Pretty high consequences for soke low stakes data.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

E2EE means a 3rd party cant extract anything in the messages at all, by definition.

If they are doing the above, it's not E2EE, and they are liable for massive legal damages.

2y ago

S.F. tech founder says 84-hour workweek approach is ‘because I’m San Franciscan’

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

Thats below market for a 40hr week in San Francisco for a software dev. From levels.fyi, which allows people to confirm their employment anonymously:

The average Software Engineer salary range in San Francisco Bay Area, CA is from $195,000 to $350,000. Last updated: 12/3/2024

Town is wildly overpriced, and hes paying about 1/4th what he should be for 84 hrs/week.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

Thank you. I had trouble running down a list.

I do consider Signal to be a more trustworthy org than Google clearly, but find this quibbling about them "maybe putting a super secret backdoor in the e2ee they use to compete with iMessage" to be pretty clear FUD.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

Not that I can find. Can you post Signals most recent independent audit?

Many of these orgs don't post public audits like this. Its not common, even for the open source players like Signal.

What we do have is a megacorp stating its technical implementation extremely explicitly for a well defined security protocol, for a service meant to directly compete with iMessage. If they are violating that, it opens them up to huge legal liability and reputational harm. Neither of these is worth data mining this specific service.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

That's a different threat model that verges on "most astonishing corporate espinoage in human history and greatest threat to corporate personhood" possible for Google. It would require thousands if not tens of thousands of Google employees coordinating in utter secrecy to commit an unheard of crime that would be punishable by death in many circumstances.

If they have backdoored all android phones and are actively exploting them in nefarious ways not explained in their various TOS, then they are exposing themselves to ungodly amounts of legal and regulatory risks.

I expect no board of directors wants a trillion dollars of company worth to evaporate overnight, and would likely not be okay backdooring literally billions of phones from just a fiduciary standpoint.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

Its a specific, technical phrase that means one thing only, and yes, googles RCS meets that standard:

https://support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en

How end-to-end encryption works

When you use the Google Messages app to send end-to-end encrypted messages, all chats, including their text and any files or media, are encrypted as the data travels between devices. Encryption converts data into scrambled text. The unreadable text can only be decoded with a secret key.

The secret key is a number that’s:

Created on your device and the device you message. It exists only on these two devices.

Not shared with Google, anyone else, or other devices.

Generated again for each message.

Deleted from the sender's device when the encrypted message is created, and deleted from the receiver's device when the message is decrypted.

Neither Google or other third parties can read end-to-end encrypted messages because they don’t have the key.

They have more technical information here if you want to deep dive about the literal implementation.

You shouldn't trust any corporation, but needless FUD detracts from their actual issues.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

The messages are signed by cryptographic keys on the users phones that never leave the device. They are not decryptable in any way by google or anyone else. Thats the very nature of E2EE.

How end-to-end encryption works

When you use the Google Messages app to send end-to-end encrypted messages, all chats, including their text and any files or media, are encrypted as the data travels between devices. Encryption converts data into scrambled text. The unreadable text can only be decoded with a secret key.

The secret key is a number that’s:

Created on your device and the device you message. It exists only on these two devices.

Not shared with Google, anyone else, or other devices.

Generated again for each message.

Deleted from the sender's device when the encrypted message is created, and deleted from the receiver's device when the message is decrypted.

Neither Google or other third parties can read end-to-end encrypted messages because they don’t have the key.

They cant fuck with it, at all, by design. That's the whole point. Even if they created "archived" messages to datamine, all they would have is the noise.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

This part is likely, but not what we are talking about. Who you know and how you interact with them is separate from the fact that the content of the messages is not decryptable by anyone but the participants, by design. There is no "quasi" end to end. Its an either/or situation.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

Thats a different tech. End to end is cut and dry how it works. If you do anything to data mine it, it's not end to end anymore.

Only the users involved in end to end can access the data in that chat. Everyone else sees encrypted data, i.e noise. If there are any backdoors or any methods to pull data out, you can't bill it as end to end.

2y ago

U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack

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mosiacmango @lemm.ee 2y ago

End to end is end to end. Its either "the devices sign the messages with keys that never leave the the device so no 3rd party can ever compromise them" or it's not.

Signal is a more trustworthy org, but google isn't going to fuck around with this service to make money. They make their money off you by keeping you in the google ecosystem and data harvesting elsewhere.