MCH2022 Curated content

Signal: you were the chosen one!

Abacus 🧮
rysiek
This is a rant about how moving ecosystems are not a good reason for centralizing a crucial service, how stickers are no substitute for a desktop client that does not crash, and how effectively shutting out less popular OS platforms is just not cool.
In his seminal work ["The ecosystem is moving"](https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/), Moxie Marlinspike laid out clearly the reasons why it's impossible to do what [Matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)), or [the Fediverse](https://fediverse.party/), or for that matter the Web, have done: create a dynamic, quickly-evolving ecosystem without centralizing it. For years, as a person responsible for information security of at-risk reporters and their sources, I have been advocating Signal as a secure Internet messaging service. And with good reasons. Criticizing a security-sensitive tool like Signal is tricky, as it might be misconstrued as a call to abandon it, and move to alternatives that might be in fact worse. But here, at a hacker conference and with little risk of causing confusion and diverting users towards less secure platforms, can we please have an honest conversation about Signal's problems? And how 5 years after that blogpost, moxie's centralization has not solved them?.. There are good reasons to exert a level of control over what connects to a communication network. But effectively shutting out a community of developers that would love to implement Signal clients [for](https://gitlab.com/rubdos/whisperfish) [less](https://open-store.io/app/textsecure.nanuc) [popular](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8505) [OSes](https://forums.puri.sm/t/how-can-you-install-signal-on-the-librem-5/10244) (many of which happen to attract the kind of infosec-aware crowd that used to be the core pushers of Signal) is not a good outcome. Opening up more on the client side and providing some form of independent client development program (starting with a stable API) would already help a ton. Even if it's just the desktop client that gets re-written in something that is not in essence a packaged browser [trailing it's upstream on security patches](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22239791). Finally, we need to talk federation. Does it make moving fast and breaking things more difficult? Yes, yes it does, and that can be a good thing. It also makes the resulting federated service more resilient (one [service provider experiencing issues](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/signal-users-globally-experiencing-issues-company-working-on-a-fix-1759524-2021-01-15) does not bring the whole network down). And, it lets others innovate without being locked out.

Additional information

Type Short Talk
Language English

More sessions

7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Elger "Stitch" Jonker
Abacus 🧮
⚠️ Warning! This talk may contain hackers. There may be hackers in the room. There may be hackers surrounding the room. There may be hackers recording this. There may be hackers listening in. There may be hackers that exfiltrate data. There may be hackers wearing shirts. There may be hackers carrying spying devices. OH NO! There are hackers EVERYWHERE! What can we do now, except having a party?
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
SETUP, de Transmissie & Rodrigo Ferreira
Abacus 🧮
What do big tech, synthesizers, the crucifixion and Matthäus Passion have in common? Find the answer in the tech performance The Silicon Passion. We’ve all embraced big tech —but is it a warm hug or a strangulation? Bear witness to a debate of biblical proportions between tech nerds, technology and its users. In The Silicon Passion SETUP, in collaboration with de Transmissie (David Schwarz en Derk Stenvers) and Rodrigo Ferreira, is looking for a way out of the pit that technology has ...
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Clairvoyance 🔮
Lightning talks are a 5 to 10 minute quick talk on an interesting subject. They can be with or without slides, and with or without proper preparation. if you weren't accepted in the main CfP, this is also a great opportunity to give an abridged version of your talk. These sessions will be available to sign up to later on, with details on the wiki: https://wiki.mch2022.org/Static:Lightning_Talks
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Kliment
Hardware Hacking Area 🤖
In this workshop, we will learn how to assemble tiny parts on circuit boards by building an electronic touch-activated purring kitten. Anyone can do it. Yes, even you who never touched anything electronic before. Takes 120mins, 20€/kit, avoid caffeine immediately before. Max 10 participants per session, sign up on PAPER at the Hardware Hacking Area.
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Mikko Hypponen
Abacus 🧮
This is a submission for a keynote talk at MCH2022. The Internet is both a familiar, comfortable place as well as a bottomless rabbit hole you can lose yourself in. The Internet has always been like this from its inception, the difference now is the scale and consequences are almost immeasurable - and it tests the limits of human imagination. When you look into the mirror of the Internet what you see reflected back depends on what you are looking for. It has become largely a reflection of ...
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson
Battery 🔋
Have you ever forgotten a passphrase or lost a hardware token? Lost access to enough Bitcoin to buy a pizza or two? Encryption is fundamental to securing our liberties, but key and password management remain difficult even for professionals, let alone the general public. This talk presents Passcrow, an Open Source project attempting to address one of crypto's largest usability issues: password and key recovery in a decentralized environment.
7/22/22
MCH2022 Curated content
Battery 🔋
Thanks to DNSSEC and DANE, it is possible to automatically verify user@domain.name identities by checking with domain.name servers. The real problem however, is integration with existing protocols, instead of inventing something completely new and perhaps web-only. The purpose of our work on Realm Crossover mechanisms has been to design generic solutions that extend many different application protocols, without changing their protocol specs.