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Comment by wereHamster | Hacker News Reader

> Google's Anil Sabharwal told technology news site The Verge that "RCS continues to be a carrier-owned service", which means that messages can still be legally intercepted.

No thanks. We should push toward services which offer end-to-end encryption.

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For a global standard, unfortunately this is a nonstarter. I personally agree that e2e encryption is the only communications policy I'll be satisfied with, but unfortunately there are MANY countries where text messaging globally is a protected class of communication that must be accessible to law enforcement.

That's the difference between this being a SERVICE and STANDARD.

The RCS standard has to work even in those countries that forbid e2e encryption for this sort of comms. Even if it's a minority of countries, I think it would be very difficult to convince carriers in more liberal societies to adopt the standard if it means they won't be able to interoperate with carriers in those more restricted countries.

Progress is incremental; the RCS standard, while imperfect, adds a bunch of really desirable features that will help interoperability between platforms and services globally.

Apps that integrate with RCS could still offer e2e within their applications; think how iOS does both iMessage (encrypted) and SMS (unencrypted) within the same app. It's just a major improvement to SMS.

I wonder why the Signal protocol could not be the SMS replacement. And it is already widely used.

Each company wants to earn by using your data, and Signal doesnt allow that (but it can be backdoored). No company like google, apple, microsoft,... is going to give you application where they cant intercept the content.

Apple's iMessage is end-to-end encrypted

You can receive messages on multiple devices. So it would be easy for Apple to simply add a new device without showing you.

What’s your point?

The question at hand is whether any major company would allow consumers to send messages the company can’t harvest for data. The answer is yes. Apple does.

Are you saying they don’t? —That they actually have backdoored their E2E messaging app already?

If you are just saying that it’s not entirely impossible for them to do backdoor, I don’t see what bearing that has on the discussion.

Why backdoor the messaging app, when you can just add a new device.

Apple does, but as far as trust goes, they are on the same level as WhatsApp (also E2E).

WhatsApp is part of Facebook. Claiming Apple is on the same level as a Facebook-owned entity is absurd. Apple can’t see who your contacts are (it’s encrypted in iCloud) but Facebook can.

So Apple delivers your messages via magic? You are logged in from one endpoint. So Apple knows that you are you. It does also know who your other chat partner is. At some point there is a transmission of data from A to B. I don't see a way to hide the metadata if the data is transmitted through Apples network. If it's P2P, then yes.

From: https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how...

You’ve actually got one set of keys for each device you add to iCloud, and each iMessage is encrypted independently for each device. So if you have two devices — say, an iPad and an iPhone — each message sent to you is actually encrypted (AES-128) and stored on Apple’s servers twice. Once for each device. When you pull down a message, it’s specifically encrypted for the device you’re on.

Yes. This does not contradict the parent post.

Why is this being downvoted? Is there something that guarantees visibility of unknown devices linked to an iCloud-account?

Because it's missing the point that a sibling makes.

Not true. They would have to have access to your iCloud credentials and you would have to confirm the new device from one of your old devices.

Or they could push out a (targeted) software update that lets them do that silently. I don’t think they would, but they could.

I don't think there's any messaging platform in the world that's immune to this kind of an attack. So singling out Apple is pointless in that context.

Agreed. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16903916.

Your comment is close to hitting the weak point: you have to trust Apple. If you can’t, then this single / multiple devices detail doesn’t matter: they could find a million ways to silently subvert the encryption in a closed source app on a closed source OS. But if you can, then waxing on details doesn’t matter either: you trust them, so you trust them.

The thing is: it is valid to trust a company to keep their explicit word. That’s a different issue from trusting a company who never explicitly said they wouldn’t listen to your data: companies can be held liable for these sorts of public statements. If Facebook silently (knowingly) subverts Whatsapp E2E, they’re in trouble. But reading regular Facebook messages for ads? Storing them plain text? They never said they wouldn’t.

This is why Apple explicitly stating they E2E iMessage is a data point with value. It is valid to trust Apple more now, simply because they’ve upped the stakes for themselves.

Compare this to a bar bet: someone makes a claim, I am sceptical. They say, honest! Still sceptical. They say ok, bet you £300. I suddenly am much more inclined to believe them. No money changed hands :)

Whenever a new device (AppleID/phone number) is associated with Messages/iMessage, a notification appears on other devices saying something like "Your phone number is now being used for iMessage on <device>", along with some more text. Apple also sends an email about that to the email address associated with the iCloud account. So I don't understand what you mean by "it would be easy for Apple to simply add a new device without showing you". If that refers to Apple circumventing this kind of warning for specific users for some reason, then I guess other popular messaging platforms/apps cannot be trusted either.

Stop believing the marketing, they can say message is end to end encrypted even if they encrypt it twice, once with apple key and once with "end" key (actually it is more complicated, but for the sake of this debate it is good enough, for a simple algorithm, check bellow)

Before you start downvoting spree, read this:

For Apple: https://mashable.com/2013/10/17/apple-nsa-imessage

http://bgr.com/2015/08/06/iphone-fbi-imessage-facetime-backd...

https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-n...

For WhatsApp: https://tobi.rocks/

(encrypt data with random key with symmetric encryption algorythm (AES,...), which is then encrypted and stored with the mesage twice. Once encrypted with recipient public key (asymmetric: RSA,ECC) and once encrypted with apple public key. This way you can say that you are having end to end encryption while you can still read everything and you can also use all the nice words in marketing material, AES, end2end, RSA/ECC,...).

That article does not say that Apple is encrypting the per-message key with an Apple public key (alongside the device-specific keys), just that it could. Yes, there are many ways Apple could bypass its own E2E encryption, but we haven’t seen any evidence that it is or has.

Well, the point of E2E encryption is that you cant bypass it. That only the recipient is able to read it. Believe me that if I start making e2e encryption, no one will bypass it and I doubt the engineers at Apple are not able to do it, unless instructed otherwise.

I will tell you another case: Skype. It had a p2p protocol, highly encrypted and obfuscated, also the application was armored. The communication wasn't going through Skype servers but directly between devices. Once Microsoft bought it, the next version was using Microsoft servers and p2p was gone. Interesting, right?

I'd be curious to hear a proposal on how Apple could implement an E2E encrypted messaging service in a way that it would be impossible for them to circumvent it in the future via a software update. I suspect it's not possible, and therefore, either you accept some trust in Apple and take their model as "good enough" or you don't trust them at all (meaning you don't use iOS or macOS). There are, of course, lots of people that do that. But for most the population of iOS users, I think the iMessage model is very much good enough.

> I'd be curious to hear a proposal on how Apple could implement an E2E encrypted messaging service in a way that it would be impossible for them to circumvent it in the future via a software update.

Open source. And for really impossible also open hardware.

How would anyone validate what exactly is running on the servers at any point in time so that you can trust it every single second? At some point, it comes down to trusting someone or the other.

Sure, but it's better if I don't have to trust Apple but let's say Mozilla IMHO.

E2E currently nicely converges with Apples business and brand.

This is overly pessimistic. Some companies do that sort of thing, but as consumers we have to look carefully and investigate companies to find one's that dont, and that we trust. Somebody already mentioned apple's e2e product, and Google doesn't stop anybody from using signal, or others. I don't think consumers will make the best choices if they think they're choosing the lesser of many evils.

Signal or something that is a direct derivative of Signal, and can be implemented by anyone other than carriers... Almost like XMPP but I guess not XMPP? XMPP with Signal for E2E somehow?

That's pretty much WhatsApp. They use their own weird "Fun" version of XMPP with Signal's Noise protocol.

But they don't federate. Which I think is a pretty clear example of why not having one true solution isn't a technical problem, it's a political problem. Companies don't want to make it easy to compete with their products.

They also demand complete access to your whole contacts list.

Yeah but the difference here is this app is intended to be installed by default on phones which would have a larger userbase if done right. To be honest I never use Android's default messaging app it always felt horrible, until Signal I would always use third party alternatives which had more customization capabilities.

>XMPP with Signal for E2E somehow?

That's a well developed thing already:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO

Common OMEMO supporting XMPP clients are Conversations[1] for Android, ChatSecure[2] for iOS and Gajim[3] for the desktop.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_(software)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatSecure

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajim

You can see the OMEMO status of the various XMPP clients here:

* https://omemo.top/

Call me cynical, but I don't think Google wants to fight this fight. While I admire that they backed out of China instead of complying, if anyone has the deep pockets and influence to make such changes, it's Google.

Look at what's happening to Telegram with Russia; I don't think Google is interested in participating in such a battle. They want just to have a simple messaging app and to have a compelling competitive messaging app to WhatsApp et. al. (They don't care about Messages since it's locked to iOS devices)

But to do Encryption, that means taking a stand against many big governments controlling some big markets. I don't see Google as ready to fight with the likes of Russia, China, Turkey, etc. If they just hand over the keys, what good is the E2E encryption?

End-to-end encryption works only because WhatsApp (or iMessage or whichever other service) servers store everyone's public keys: https://stratechery.com/2018/open-closed-and-privacy/

Open, secure, usable by ordinary people: choose two.

Insecure, open, usable: Google Chat

Secure, centralised, usable: WhatsApp

Secure, open, poor UX: PGP.

If you're building a consumer-grade service, rather than a niche service usable only by security geeks, and you're arguing for end-to-end encryption, then you're knowingly or unknowingly arguing for centralisation and against interoperability.

> No thanks. We should push toward services which offer end-to-end encryption.

Agreed but I feel like there is some confusion here - this sounds more like a extension to SMS to make it less crummy.

Good secure solutions already exist, we should push for people to actually use them.

Is there anything specific to RCS that stops Google from implementing end-to-end encryption in their client?

I don't want my chat messages routed through some foreign jurisdiction, encrypted or not, so carrier-owned sounds good to me.

I've heard that RCS technically supports end-to-end encryption, but it won't be enabled by carriers due to their legal obligation to provide legal intercepts.

Though it will feature client-server encryption, so at least in this respect it's more secure than SMS.

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