Matrix.org Breaks Federation: Users Can't Decrypt Messages from Other Servers
github.com
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Users with accounts on matrix.org can communicate among themselves but cannot decrypt messages from users with accounts on any other servers. The error 'unable to decrypt message' appears in Element, and 'message could not be decrypted due to missing key' in Nheko.
Meanwhile, there are no key exchange problems between users on any other servers.
In other words, matrix.org has isolated itself, forcing everyone else (those who set up their own servers or registered on small company servers, for example) to create accounts on matrix.org to avoid losing contact with the majority of people on the network.
The developers are silent as spies: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/issues/2483
Although the problem has been observed at least since the end of July.
The problem was tested on different clients (both on PC and Android), in various operating systems, with different servers, under VPN and without, with different residentional providers. The /discardsession command was tried — it's definitely not something that broke on my end personally.
I believe that amid the fight against end-to-end encryption in England, Germany, and France, authorities have simply approached them and asked to create a walled garden to prevent people from spreading across uncontrolled servers.
Until just now: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.org/issues/2483#issueco...
> In other words, matrix.org has isolated itself, forcing everyone else (those who set up their own servers or registered on small company servers, for example) to create accounts on matrix.org to avoid losing contact with the majority of people on the network.
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration don't you think?
> authorities have simply approached them and asked to create a walled garden to prevent people from spreading across uncontrolled servers.
That is quite an allegation, do you have any further evidence for this?
> Users with accounts on matrix.org can communicate among themselves but cannot decrypt messages from users with accounts on any other servers.
And my experience agrees with parent that
> I cannot replicate this
My matrix.org public account works fine to decrypt, read, send messages on a non-matrix.org server that is federated with and has other users from other federated servers.
Props to Arathorn for jumping all over this like it's hot!
If this were broken as described, it would be a big deal I guess. Logs/evidence would be needed, though.
The reason that bug has been ignored is because it (like the comment above) is completely unactionable: there are no details of which server is failing to federate, or examples of failed requests, etc.
No servers have been explicitly defederated from matrix.org, and when federation breaks it is 99% because the recipient server is badly administered or overloaded and is emitting errors, causing matrix.org to mark it down.
Meanwhile, we’re not aware of patterns of federation problems currently.
So: if you want us to help - rather than ranting about conspiracy theories, please give us some details to investigate and fix.
Then it would be obvious that the most likely authority fighting against end-to-end encryption is Russia itself -- with no need to approach matrix, when they can simply block access to the relevant key-exchange endpoints at a network level.