Kik Messenger Insecure
secure.grepular.com
secure.grepular.com
Besides that, I don't quite understand what separates this from any other IM platform..?
It is important to understand that albeit it's not proper https, this is still an encrypted connection that will make eavesdropping impossible. Being signed by an actual authority is only necessary to ensure the website we're talking to is actually secure.grepular.com, and not a man-in-the-middle that would intercept our queries and forge answers. "Unfortunately", both ideas of security and authentication are part of https, and having one without the other is going to pop big scary messages.
This sort of https is still more secure than plain http.
His point about transmitting the password in plain sight is a very good one. Firesheep showed how bad it is to transmit your cookies in plaintext, but sending your login/pass is even worse.
Invalidly signed HTTPS is only slightly more secure than HTTP. Let's look at the open WiFi scenario. If you login to ServiceX over HTTPS but ignore certificate warnings, I can just mount a man-in-the-middle attack and relay all your traffic to ServiceX. It's more involved than just sniffing your cookies, but its still quite practical.
The only place where ignoring certificates is OK is if you know that an attacker can _read_ your network, but cannot write anything to it.
In the case of someone attacking you on WiFi, that self-signed certificate wasn't issued by the site owner. It was issued by the attacker. If you happily ignore warnings, your browser will just setup a "secure" connection to the attacker. Then the attacker just creates another HTTPS connection to your actual destination, and proxies the content back and forth.
Now, if the attacker can only read packets, then yes, the actual encryption is still secure. But in many places where an attacker can sniff (WiFi, on your Ethernet), they can also inject.
There are lots of problems with CAs and the crappy verification that goes into most certificates. But having a CA cert for SSL still significantly raises the bar and limits the extent of an attack. (If one did get a signed cert for PayPal or Facebook, they couldn't just go and publish it in a program like Firesheep, as it'd get revoked pretty quickly.)
If you want to install cacert.org's root certificate in your browser, visit here: https://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3
Kik.com has over a million users transmitting login credentials and private conversations. secure.grepular.com doesn't.
If it's a self signed certificate, how can you tell between a certificate self signed by the website owner and a certificate self signed by the eavesdropper?
If this guy wants to use SSL he should do it properly.
See https://cacert.org/ and install their root if you think the CA model is broken and should be free.
"Besides that, I don't quite understand what separates this from any other IM platform..?"
GTalk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, ICQ and Skype all encrypt your login details. Kik doesn't
GTalk, ICQ and Skype all encrypt your actual conversations. Kik doesn't.
All of the above mentioned IM services have publicly stated that they don't log IM conversations. Kik hasn't.
The reason Blackberry users don't switch to iOS or Android is that their employer mandates Blackberry. I would much rather use my Android phone for work, but RIM's marketing worked, and I can't. (Think about how insecure our company's intellectual property would become if I could join a conference call with a headset that didn't have 128-bit encryption!)
The stuff that's locked down is not what bothers me about a Blackberry. It's the core functionality; the hardware keyboard is harder to use than a software keyboard (because there is no autocorrect), and "push email" is much slower than IMAP on my Android phone.
The worst feature is the keylock -- it doesn't work. Unlocking involves pressing a key, which is why the keylock exists anyway. The thing makes a ton of calls in my pocket, often to 911.
May I ask what model you are using? I'm currently using a 9700 and other than the fact that I miss a few apps I had on my iPhone, I actually do find this phone pretty good where smartphones are concerned.
I blame Exchange for the slow push mail. It always takes forever to notify the desktop client of a new message. (But the Blackberry is still slower. I have often read and responded to a message before my Blackberry alerts me of "new mail".)
And yet - a million people seem to have done better than I. Dubious...
"Here’s where things get interesting. If it can build its community, Kik has a lot of new territory to cover if it wants to. It can layer on functionality as it sees fit. For example, it can let you take pictures, and show friends what you’re seeing. It can then let you stream the music you’re listening to, directly from your phone over your friend’s phone. The same can be done for video. And it can be done over any device. While none of this is available right now with the app, Livingston demonstrated this advanced streaming technology to me, so it’s clear he can turn it on at pretty much any time.
During the demo of all this, we sat hundreds of miles away from each other, but he was able to remotely take over the Chrome browser (with my permission, of course) on my MacBook. He then played music over it — all while remotely operating this from his phone. All I did was enter a code that he gave me so that my browser knew to pair with the phone and allow the stream. (A QR code can be used, too.)
It’s pretty cool. Basically, Kik’s technology lets you wirelessly “sling” any content on your phone to any device running on any software. This hasn’t been done before, as far as I know. Sure, AppleTV lets you stream iTunes content to the TV, but it’s a closed garden. You can’t run Apple content on other devices. Kik’s technology allows you to stream pretty much any content on any device with a browser, whether it’s a basic PC, or even a PS3, Wii or a Windows Media Center device.
It’s heady to think of the future of this application. I can scan my surroundings with the camera on my Droid, Blackberry or iPhone with merely a cellular connection, and then stream it to my friend’s phone. Or I can go to my friend’s home and stream an HD move from my phone onto his TV."
from : http://venturebeat.com/2010/11/03/kik-messenger-sees-explosi...
It's also promised on their blog: http://www.kik.com/blog/2010/11/zero-to-a-million-in-15-days...
That should have been on the home page. This "free real-time texting" thing makes no sense to me. Doesn't virtually everyone with a modern smartphone have free real-time texting?
But being able to stream live TV from my Media Center box to my phone would be cool.
At least in the US, the cell companies charge a pretty penny for text messages.
What explains their virality? Maybe the S-D-R thing is good enough for an initial hook?