What do you think about Session as a potential replacement for Signal? (getsession.org)
from zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml to privacy@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 14:28
https://lemmy.ml/post/26405514

Especially for the less tech-savvy among us?

#privacy

threaded - newest

jet@hackertalks.com on 24 Feb 14:49 next collapse

Really bad idea, session copied signal, stripped out forward secrecy, and uses centralized file transfer servers.

eylenburg.github.io/im_comparison.htm

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 14:55 collapse

This link has a helpful graphic, thank you! šŸ™‚šŸ‘

lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works on 24 Feb 15:00 next collapse

Thereā€™s nothing about Signal that requires savvines.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 15:06 collapse

They probably meant tech-savviness compared to other Signal alternatives.

Although even then XMPP with modern clients is simple enough for my mom to use, so I donā€™t entirely buy the ā€œcomplicationā€ argument either.

jet@hackertalks.com on 24 Feb 15:28 collapse

is simple enough for my mom to use

The bar is so low. I just had to visit somebody today to help them fix their computer. There was dirt on the fingerprint reader, and they forgot their password. I told them their password was their user name. I.e. hunter / hunter and it didnā€™t workā€¦ (I chose this because of their modest tech experience)

They were using hunter / Hunter instead.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 15:52 collapse

Idk, I meant my personal experience. She doesnā€™t see much difference between ease of use of her XMPP client compared to, say, Whatsapp.

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 15:04 next collapse

I think that SimpleX is more innovative and ground-breaking than Session.

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 15:15 next collapse

Grr! Ok, but damned if I could get that to work! It seems like you canā€™t use the desktop and mobile client at the same time! You have to scan a QR code to switch between them! And it has issues with firewalls and VPNs! Old and clueless here, maybe part of the problem. šŸ™

jet@hackertalks.com on 24 Feb 15:26 next collapse

No issues with fireballs and VPNs for me.

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 17:10 collapse

I didnā€™t have an issue with fireballs either, thankfully, because I made my saving throws before they got to me.šŸ”„šŸ˜‰

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 15:38 next collapse

Yes SimpleX isnā€™t mature from a UX perspective and that is due to itā€™s innovative approach. If you need to have device sync and donā€™t want Signal, Session could be a better optioon to you.

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 17:05 collapse

Am I right tho about having to scan QR codes to go back and forth between desktop and mobile on SimpleX, or am I just šŸ˜µā€šŸ’«?

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 17:12 collapse

I donā€™t use SimpleX on my computers

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 18:25 collapse

I just have two identical but independent profiles. They also double as my remote copypaste buffer.

umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 17:25 next collapse

Use separate profile for different devices. Make a group when you chat with others.

irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 24 Feb 22:05 collapse

But itā€™s a difficult concept for the average person to not have an account, but everything is device oriented. Same problem with people not using gpg for email. Having to maintain a thing similar to a private key thatā€™s not memorizable like a username and password and back that up in case your device is lost. Is a big hurdle for many. And then additionally having to share a qr code or link through some external means for someone to connect with you rather than just telling them to download an app and enter your username HSS always been difficult.

So, IMHO, Signal has the best implementation possible with the level of usability that many nontechnical people expect in a chat application, even if itā€™s not the most secure. I am interested to see how SimpleX solves these issues in the future, though.

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 23:17 collapse

Of course it is, thatā€™s the innovating part of it ! My opinion was that I rather use SimpleX if I wanted to switch away from Signal, if not Iā€™ll simply use Signal not Session. But my threat model isnā€™t everyoneā€™s.

I think as people will be more educated on cryptography in there digital lives we will have better UX to the point of it not be as difficult as sending on e-mail in the late 80s. Innovation like Bitcoin, nostr, U2F, passkeys etcā€¦ will be more accessible over time. Today sending a message on Signal is infinity more easy, secure and private than the majority of e-mails of the 21th century.

irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 26 Feb 07:00 collapse

Yeah, I just meant people are used to decades of using meaningful usernames. Having to use a cryptographic key has traditionally made it very difficult to get enough people to adopt to make it worth adopting yourself as a technologically savvy person. I never would have used Facebook in a million years if it wasnā€™t for the fact that it was the only place I could get in touch with many people. Having to build your networks in-person is tedious for many people and sharing the codes securely through other means is cumbersome if you donā€™t have an existing method for sharing.

Just like HTTPS needs several layers to make it work and still relies on an untrustworthy and corruptible thing like DNS to verify the destination and itā€™s keys are the thing youā€™re expecting to connect to. Thereā€™s no secure way to share the route to your device electronically in a user-accountless system with no secure, trusted middleman translating names to addresses unless you do it in-person.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 15:09 next collapse

The main turnoff for me is that it is essentially impossible to selfhost - you use random nodes from the network, and to host such a node, you have to lock up a whole fortune (last time I looked I remember it being around $1500, mightā€™ve changed) in their own cryptocurrency. They do promise returns, but I am skeptical - where would they take so much money to guarantee compensation for everyone within a sane amount of time? They claim it is against a Sybil attack, but it seems to me that it would be a lot easier for a government/company to have more nodes in a situation when ā€œcompetitionā€ is reduced like this.

zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 15:18 collapse

Selfhosting is kind of hard and labor intensive for some of us; had a lot of trouble trying to set up NextCloud on my QNAP (if that counts as selfhosting), and finally gave up.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 15:53 collapse

Fair - I was referring to the fact that here it isnā€™t even an option.

Also, XMPP or Simplex are very easy to set up, Nextcloud is indeed more complicated.

adespoton@lemmy.ca on 24 Feb 15:34 next collapse

As a centralized system, nothing has been shown to improve on Signal yet. For decentralized systems, I havenā€™t seen anything better than Matrix yet? SimpleX is slightly more secure, but harder to spin up and easier to break.

Sessionā€¦ there have been multiple articles written on how it is flawed and untrustworthy.

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 15:41 next collapse

Matrix is not decentralized but rather federated and distributed. Also synapse (matrix sevrer) have poor performance, especially when you federate your instance to others.

Y5QcY2Cu9@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 26 Feb 01:47 collapse

What do you mean poor performance ?

My synapse used to run on a 5ā‚¬/mo VPS besides other stuff and ran fine and now runs on one of my on-premise servers (and not even my fastest, just some old ryzen 2700) with A BUNCH of other stuff besides it. Multiple users, a bunch of large federated rooms, bridges to other messengers ā€¦ And it just runs fine with 0 issues.

Are you talking about running a synapse server for like a thousand people or on absolute potato hardware or what is the issue ?

sonalder@lemmy.ml on 26 Feb 09:04 collapse

Iā€™m not running a Synapse server myself so I can only speak on behalf of people I know who are. From what they told me they love the matrix protocol but itā€™s not the same for the synapse implementation. A non-federated server can have somewhat great performance but a federated one was not worth it for them so they decided to switch to another alternative. They are not running for thousands of users more something like 40 I would say and while I donā€™t know their server specs, I assume itā€™s not a potato though.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 24 Feb 18:23 collapse

ā€œHarder to spin upā€? Hard disagree. Matrixā€™s main server implementation is very resource-heavy, and alternatives like Conduit are not full-featured (and broke in some ways for me when interacting with mateix dot org). Meanwhile Simplex servers are pretty light and aside from a couple errors in the documentation that took a while to figure out, it has been easier than Conduit. And unlike Matrix, it has never broken for me so far.

chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de on 24 Feb 16:08 next collapse

firstly , why do you want to replace Signal?

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 24 Feb 16:27 next collapse

It is a centralized weak point that US feds can easily extract meta data from to obtain your social network etc

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 23:34 next collapse

easily extract metadata

Thatā€™s a pretty big claim to make with zero additional information.

Since 2018, Signal has been encrypting the sender data with a key that isnā€™t known to the server. Messages do not contain unencrypted metadata. Iā€™m not sure how you expect the FBI to do this with the information available to the Signal servers.

sunzu2@thebrainbin.org on 24 Feb 23:39 next collapse

at role does the signal server play?

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 00:44 collapse

at role does the signal server play?

If this is a question that you need answered then Iā€™m not sure youā€™re qualified to declare that Signal is insecure.

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 25 Feb 07:00 collapse

I am pretty sure that if asked, the serverside protections can be circumvented - I think in one Github issue they even confessed that Sealed Sender is not bulletproof and is ā€œbest effortā€. I prefer to assume that if everything goes through a single server, and they know what and when each account does upon connecting - they can correlate the identities if they want to.

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 15:39 collapse

I am pretty sure that if asked, the serverside protections can be circumvented

No, they literally cannot. The entire protocol is open sourced and has been audited many times over.

One of the fundamental things you assume when designing a cryptosystem is that the communication link between two parties is monitored. The server mostly exists as a tool to frustrate efforts by attackers that have network dominance (i.e. secret police in oppressive regimes) by not allowing signals intelligence to extract a social graph. All this hypothetical attacker can see is that everyone talks to a server so they canā€™t know which two people are communicating.

The previous iteration, TextSecure, used SMS. Your cellular provider could easily know WHO you were talking to and WHEN each message was sent. So SMS was replaced with a server and the protocol was amended so that even the server has no way of gaining access to that information.

The sealed sender feature is something that the client does. It was best effort because, at the time, they still supported older clients and needed backwards compatibility. This is no longer the case.

doodledup@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 02:37 collapse

A bigger weak point is having weak encryption like Session has. Also, you cannot obtain metadata from Signal. Theyā€™ve gone to great length to prevent that. Signal servers donā€™t even know who is talking to whom.

eruchitanda@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 23:02 collapse

Because his grandma canā€™t type a password 30 characters long just to restore her messages.

They are so smart and still make some choices that are so, so, *so dumb*. ā€˜No history on a new PC for you, itā€™s a דfeatureדā€™. Seriously? cā€™mon.

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 23:21 collapse

History isnā€™t stored on the server so it canā€™t be automatically populated on a new device. That is a feature. The alternative, storing the messages on the server or having the means for one device to clone all of its messages to another device, would be insecure.

A 30 character long password is required in order to have enough bits of entropy so that the backed up messages are actually secure.

Grandma isnā€™t moving her data to a new PC without assistance, the person that is assisting her should be competent enough to operate Signal.

eruchitanda@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 00:24 collapse

Sure, so let me export my data from another PC or phone. If they wanted you to have message history, they would. So Iā€™ll respectfully disagree.

Why can she do WhatsApp but no Signal?

Itā€™s already needing to convince people to use Signal, why also making it hard for, letā€™s say, your grandma.

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 00:47 next collapse

Sure, so let me export my data from another PC or phone. If they wanted you to have message history, they would. So Iā€™ll respectfully disagree.

ā€¦miraheze.org/ā€¦/How_to_move_Signal_Desktop_messagā€¦

Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 25 Feb 04:37 collapse

I use Matrix and this is possible via several encryption keys. They just probably cba. How Matrix E2EE works

foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml on 24 Feb 16:13 next collapse

The real alternative to Signal for myself is SimpleX. The project is still in his beginning but itā€™s the best instant messaging we could have once polished finished

devfuuu@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 16:20 next collapse

Dear god, just donā€™t.

soatok.blog/2025/ā€¦/dont-use-session-signal-fork/

andrewth09@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 01:22 next collapse

As soon as I saw the furry reaction images, I knew this was going to be a detailed and informative blog post.

doodledup@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 02:35 next collapse
cjf@feddit.uk on 26 Feb 09:44 collapse

Wasnā€™t this the blog who also got a response from session asking for a PoC and then they replied with (paraphrasing) ā€œwell itā€™s not my job to provide oneā€?

So everything in that blog post is theoretical at best?

IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Feb 17:48 next collapse

Briar doesnā€™t even use a central server, all connections go through tor

Xanza@lemm.ee on 24 Feb 20:24 collapse

Briar doesnā€™t make sense to me because youā€™re trading a central server for a central serviceā€¦ If tor is down, you canā€™t message. Itā€™s the same POF as cellular, which is insane to me.

Umbrias@beehaw.org on 24 Feb 21:07 next collapse

tor is decentralized, if someoneā€™s tor server goes down you just go to another.

Xanza@lemm.ee on 24 Feb 21:14 collapse

Youā€™re missing the point. Of course tor is decentralized, but the tor protocol can be locked at which time you have no connectivity at allā€¦ Your super secure messenger doesnā€™t work. It makes no sense.

Umbrias@beehaw.org on 24 Feb 21:24 collapse

ā€œthe tor protocol can be lockedā€ ?

Xanza@lemm.ee on 24 Feb 21:32 collapse

Unless you obfuscate tor traffic, itā€™s trivial to block it via any number of IDS products. The entirety of public tor exit nodes are publicly available: check.torproject.org/torbulkexitlist

Hereā€™s tor exit node blocking in production with 14 lines of bashā€¦

Itā€™s significantly easier than youā€™ve obviously been led to believe. When it becomes not easy is when someone understands the protocol and understands how to circumvent these measures, but I can assure you that 99.8% of all tor users donā€™t fall within that categoryā€¦

Umbrias@beehaw.org on 24 Feb 22:26 next collapse

oh sure, but you can get around these blocks and this sort of block is ultimately always a possibility short of building your own network infrastructure. and as blocks like that become more common it becomes more common to circumvent them too.

ā€œsignificantly harder than youve been lead to believeā€, no, you just werent clear in your description of the problem. if your problem with tor is ā€œgovernments can play whack-a-mole blocking ips and trafficā€ there is no technology which doesnt have that as a downside.

Xanza@lemm.ee on 24 Feb 23:10 collapse

but you can get around these blocks

They create a better ad, so they create a better adblock, which forces them to discover anti-adblock methods, which forces adblockerā€™s to adapt, which forces anti-adblockerā€™s to adapt, ad infinitum.

This isnā€™t anything new. Of course you can circumvent these blocks, but they can always adapt to make them useful again. Itā€™s not a good argument at all.

Umbrias@beehaw.org on 24 Feb 23:23 collapse

Yes, i point out whackamole in my comment. Itā€™s a completely useless critique of tor/briar because there is no alternative which cannot also be critiqued like this, and there can never be.

you might as well say ā€œwell the problem with keyboards is that someone needs to ship it to you.ā€

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 25 Feb 07:12 collapse

Bridges are trivial to use tho. And even if they get blocked too actively, a lot of people in such censored regions have a VPN anyway (although I still donā€™t have an understanding whether a VPN decreases Torā€™s security if used like this.

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 23:17 collapse

TOR isnā€™t a centralized service, itā€™s a distributed network.

Xanza@lemm.ee on 24 Feb 23:45 collapse

Itā€™s also a specific procol, which can absolutely be blocked. I donā€™t know where this notion that itā€™s impossible to block tor because it was designed to be censorship resistant came from, but you can absolutely stop people from using it.

Itā€™s not even that hard and thereā€™s nothing end users can do about it if they donā€™t know how to circumvent itā€¦

FauxLiving@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 00:40 next collapse

Being able to be blocked is a completely different thing than being centralized service.

[ā€¦] thereā€™s nothing end users can do about it if they donā€™t know how to circumvent itā€¦

I mean, if users donā€™t know how to circumvent something, by definition there is nothing that they can do about it.

However, unless this hypothetical censoring country is blocking all encrypted network traffic it is trivial to access TOR via a VPN or an SSH tunnel

EngineerGaming@feddit.nl on 25 Feb 07:02 collapse

It can be blocked, but blocking bridges is a constant whack-a-mole (especially now that they have Webtunnel which, while apparently not as robust as some dedicated obfuscation solutions, is still a noticeable improvement). My bigger problem with Briar is that both recipients have to be online to message, or you have to set up a ā€œmailboxā€.

ThugLaTaupe@lemmy.world on 24 Feb 22:16 next collapse

What do you think about OLVID?

doodledup@lemmy.world on 25 Feb 02:38 next collapse

Donā€™t use Session! Itā€™s not secure with the recent changes!

lemmus@szmer.info on 25 Feb 09:57 next collapse

I used to think session is a way to go, but nowā€¦well simplex is literally all you need for communication with anyone

Hirom@beehaw.org on 25 Feb 11:03 next collapse

First impression: why another messaging system?

It may be fine, but what does it bring that Signal/Briar/Matrix/XMPP+Omemo doesnā€™t have? Does it use existing standard protocol or encryption thatā€™s compatible with other messengers, to avoid fragmentation?

bishbosh@lemm.ee on 26 Feb 00:43 collapse

I think it has tor routing by default, so different in that way?

Hirom@beehaw.org on 26 Feb 09:19 collapse

Briar use Tor by default as well for Internet connections, so I donā€™t think Session is unique in that way. And both appear decentralized.

A difference is that Briar is Android-only, whereas session is available on more platforms sourceforge.net/ā€¦/Briar-vs-Session-vs-Signal/

Itā€™s good that people are working on privacy-preserving tools. But I wish theyā€™d coordinate to avoid fragmentation. Work on common/standard messenging protocols, so that people can talk to each other even using different software.

Currently it feels like going back to the 1990s-2000s, with ICQ/AIM/MSNM being all incompatible, and every single one being unable to communicate with a large fraction of your contacts.

bishbosh@lemm.ee on 26 Feb 23:36 collapse

Fair, Iā€™ve never used Briar, so I was mostly responding to the others. I complete agree though, the fact that there are so many is super frustrating.

hanrahan@slrpnk.net on 25 Feb 11:56 next collapse

Session is an Australian conpany afaik. The entire app reeks of entrapment. Australian laws are all about no privacy for you.

grehund@beehaw.org on 25 Feb 12:04 collapse

They recently relocated to Switzerland, after the AFP visited an employee, unannounced, at their home.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 25 Feb 12:20 collapse

what in the fucking dystopia are they doing.

grehund@beehaw.org on 25 Feb 12:07 next collapse

You can easily re-roll usernames in Signal, and profiles in SimpleX. I couldnā€™t find an equivalent feature in Session.

pineapple@lemmy.ml on 25 Feb 22:06 collapse

Not sure, Iā€™ve never used session but I think less tech savvy people would want to use signal because it is similar to Whatsapp, which they are used to.