Hacker News

Registration without a phone number on Signal will use zero-knowledge proofs

79 points by Cider9986 5 hours ago | 40 comments

ggm 2 hours ago

For those who missed it, unrelated to this specific ZKP thing the release cycle also now permits Android tablets without a SIM to be first-class adjunct devices without using wierd tricks or alternate clients. It may permit them to be the initiation/sign-on device, which would invoke the ZKP, but the point for me as an existing phone number denominated user, the point is I can be on my tablet with true signal now. Nothing against molly, wanted it in the base.

Cider9986 11 minutes ago

Here's an article saying that: https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-allows-android-phones-to...

opengrass 2 hours ago

You can already do that without being a trusted device.

ggm 58 minutes ago

For the longest time, you couldn't. It wasn't until this release I realised that had changed. If it changed before, it wasn't well communicated to me as an Android signal user. I was on beeper and then molly precisely because there was so little traction on changing this. You could install signal fine, but you couldn't QR code or secret phrase mesh it with your android handset. Oddly, iPad meshed fine with iPhone or Android, and OSX desktop likewise. Just Android tablet which didn't.

Do you think this changed in over 18 months? I think it changed in under 18 months.

purpleidea 2 hours ago

Signal needs to release all the infra automation code behind their backend. How they setup and manage it all should not be secret. It also makes it easy to rebuild if for some reason they are compromised. They've ghosted multiple people about this question. There's no reason a 501(c)(3) shouldn't release it.

s0ss 2 hours ago

I’m not sure their tax status is the justification your argument needs.

Cider9986 32 minutes ago

I'm curious about the cost because you can buy a phone number for Signal for ~10 cents (spammers likely get them cheaper). I would still buy it because you don't have to worry about losing your number or something.

opengrass 2 hours ago

Per the commits, this will require a purchase with Google Play Billing to mitigate spam while keeping the SMS verification option.

Cider9986 2 hours ago

It says something about Play Billing being used specifically to mitigate spam?

I understand using play payments initially but hopefully eventually there's a way to buy an account without going through google.

opengrass 54 minutes ago

Add ability to pay for a signal login.

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/7da3357b5...

Cider9986 35 minutes ago

Ah, I thought you meant using google play to do the payments to prevent spam unrelated to the cost. I know they are costing something.

wolvoleo 33 minutes ago

Ugh wtf so I need a Google account on Android? That's not going to happen.

For an org that pretends to care about privacy you'd imagine there'd be a way to avoid, you know, the biggest privacy invader on the planet.

Just allow monero payments or something. Alongside Google play for the sheep that want to use that.

Cider9986 30 minutes ago

Hopefully they eventually make a way to pay without it.

genrader 21 minutes ago

You wouldn't believe the spam if they did that

Cider9986 14 minutes ago

Why? Just raise the prices if they get more spam on non-google payments.

I've literally registered a Signal account on one of the free SMS sites floating around. Why would spammers choose the payment route over phone numbers? They would just choose the one that's cheaper.

thin_carapace 23 minutes ago

googles obligation to hand out all account linked info notwithstanding, one may still create google accounts without associating a phone number, by doing so on old android versions. signal does however explicitly force credit card info here, thus providing direct individual traceability ..

mmooss 2 hours ago

What about their built-in cryptocurrency? It's a perfect use for it. They could require payment post-install yet before message can be sent.

drum55 34 minutes ago

I've literally never seen anybody mention it, much less use it since it was announced.

Cider9986 2 hours ago

Nobody uses that and I think it was pre-mined. They should have implemented Monero but the UX isn't there. Maybe a Monero light wallet server run by Signal.

They probably avoided Monero to not attract the additional scrutiny. They don't even accept donations in Monero.

wolvoleo 26 minutes ago

I always thought they didn't want monero because they were pushing their own crypto thingy. Which indeed nobody uses.

ynniv 2 hours ago

you can't wave your hands, say "zero knowledge", and be private. this is too little information to be useful

teravor 30 minutes ago

usually, the implication of ZKP is that you buy coupons and claim them without attribution. in this coupon scenario the ZKP can just be a blind signature scheme.

however signal has an obscene fondness for TEEs (secure enclaves) so they may actually be doing something stupid here which will require trust beyond the ZKP.

rkagerer 2 hours ago

Lots of discussion at that link, but what's the bottom line? Can you register without a phone number yet?

Cider9986 31 minutes ago

Likely soon.

smalltorch 58 minutes ago

The commit history is kinda wild

victorbvieira 13 minutes ago

[flagged]

user3939382 2 hours ago

I don't trust Signal. The device OSes and hardware are opaque, chatty, not private or trustworthy, the network backbone is completely owned by dragnet surveillance, Dual_EC_DRBG flavored shenanigans, so how could an app running on top of this suddenly be trustworthy? Especially one that's super high profile which signals inside a dragnet "someone is working especially hard to make this secret".

bawolff 2 hours ago

Viewing any security thing as a binary is the wrong way to look at it. Figure out your adversaries, how much power they have and what they are willing to spend. Make your decisions from there.

I personally think signal is sufficient for the threats the average person is concerned about, but that is a decision each individual has to make for themselves.

420official 2 hours ago

Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not?

I concede that if you can't trust the device itself you can't trust anything running on it, but why have you resigned yourself to that? And how does that reflect on signal at all?

mmooss 2 hours ago

> Is it your expectation that E2E is broken by these "dragnet surveillance" networks? Surely not?

While I disagree with these critiques of Signal, the surveillance networks can capture metadata - who talks to who and when - without breaking E2E. The metadata is as valuable as the data.

I think Signal has a feature to protect users, but I can't imagine how it works if the attacker can see all parties' Internet connections.

atiq-ca 3 hours ago

Signal still uses proprietary blob and uses google/apple service for notifications. Use molly.im instead which has solved these problems.

Cider9986 2 hours ago

Molly is a security-hardened Signal client only on Android for people unfamiliar. They went through a period of not updating (there were no security updates during that time afaict), but now releases should happen faster on top of Signal.

In Molly there's three options. Google Play Services, WebSocket, and UnifiedPush.

I use the WebSocket and Molly has used >1% of battery since the last full charge so it doesn't seem like play services would improve battery but maybe if I had more apps depending on it..

Google and Apple can't see the notification content but they can see metadata. If you want metadata privacy you should use SimpleX instead anyway.

rkagerer 2 hours ago

If you're using WebSocket, how do Google and Apple see metadata? Can someone explain why it's so difficult to make a decent chat app divorced from their ecosystems?

Cider9986 2 hours ago

I'm talking about using play services or Apple's version. Signal falls back to a WebSocket if you don't have play services installed.

john01dav 2 hours ago

The native Signal android app delivers notifications just fine without Google play services on my degoogled android.

opan 2 hours ago

I was using Silence from F-Droid for a while back in the day because of these issues, but the lack of interop and needing to make everyone move again soured me on the whole thing. I would rather just get people on XMPP or Matrix and not use some sketchy phone-first app at all. For SMS I use Fossify Messages, which I think was a fork of QKSMS. I don't use SMS as primary or sensitive comms, only as needed. Same as email, basically, but less useful.

nosioptar 2 hours ago

I really liked silence. I stopped using it when f-droid said the source code was no longer available. Fossify messages is the best replacement I've found.

(I dont bother with encrypted messenging apps. I prefer to assume that anything I do on my phone is doubleplus unprivate. If I want privacy, I head over to my computer.)

Cider9986 29 minutes ago

GrapheneOS is more well-roundedly private than any desktop OS.

Competition is Qubes but that has usability issues and does not have good hardware security.

nosioptar 14 minutes ago

I'm not about to trust a google branded device. Even if the Graphene folks are on the up and up, google sure as hell isn't.

Cider9986 16 seconds ago

[delayed]

ranger_danger 3 hours ago

I tried it and it was fine while it worked, but eventually I had to go back to regular Signal because Molly's updates did not follow Signal's closely enough, and at some point the server code changed enough to where I was unable to use it for an unacceptable amount of time (after checking, it took them weeks to update). Something to keep in mind if you're not using a custom server.

blfr 2 hours ago

Maybe it's because I use Molly as a secondary device (my tablet) but I never had an issue where it didn't work for weeks.

throwaway35435 2 hours ago

[dead]