John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’ | Hacker News Reader

John McAfee releases secure anti-surveillance messaging app ‘Chadder’

chadder.im

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Or use TextSecure and RedPhone: https://whispersystems.org/ (https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/)

Isn't that Android only?

The iOS client will (hopefully) be released in the next few months.

Link: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-iOS

And on TextSecure you get:

- a protocol based off the highly vetted and trusted Off-The-Record protocol

- perfect forward secrecy, a very important thing in cryptography as you can drastically reduce the number of possible attacks in certain scenarios

- real cryptographers doing implementation and review of the software

- a good open source implementation of this cryptography

Don't get me wrong, I have a few irks about TextSecure with regards to the way the open source project is managed (see: their conflicts with F-Droid and such), but I really have to question why anyone would use some piece of crap cranked out for publicity (such as this or Heml.is) when there are solid options available which clearly offer superior security.

Some observations:

- This uses an external service 'scrambls' (https://scrambls.com/) which seems to do per-message symmetric key management. Therefore, the owners of this service can read all your messages.

- The thing which seems to be sent along with the ciphertext is an 'XID' which is sent to scrambls and exchanged for the raw AES message encryption key. There doesn't seem to be any binding to the recipient in this step(?)

- The encryption of messages is AES-CBC with PKCS#5 padding. There is no message integrity, so therefore this provides no confidentiality under CCA2.

In conclusion, this is the sort of thing you should expect from a secure messaging app. (TextSecure excepted.)

It's interesting how they know it's happening, but don't seem to understand the consequences.

In the video, they say that "the key and message can only be read by Sally."

Or look at this one, where they even visualize it: http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/05/03/the-design-behind-ch...

The architecture of the product features a unique web-based exchange of key transfer capabilities to facilitate completely encrypted messaging.

Having access to source is no guarantee of security or correctness (see Heartbleed) but relying on any of these secure messaging apps seems optimistic. Writing correct crypto code is hard and John McAfee's involvement offers no assurances.

Especially since his stint with the authoroties of Belize and his subsequent escape from said country... I thought it was a very entertaining story, but professional suicide for him.

Yes. And this is a college project that uploads all keys to their backend.

Free software is a prerequisite for software to be "anti-surveillance" and I see no indication that Chadder is free software.

Libre is a prerequisite, gratis isn't. This is an important distinction to make. While it is true that this software seems to be neither, it is important to note when we try to convince them to release it free, we mean libre and not necessarily gratis. (Although the two often go hand in hand.)

When people hear us complaining about it, they often think we want to avoid paying money for it. This is false, and a bad impression to give. That is the purpose behind making this distinction.

I'm pretty sure he meant free as in freedom. Even the FSF uses the term "free software".

Libre isn't prerequisite either. Access to buildable source is.

Doesn't libre require access to source code?

According to the free software definition [1], it's one of the essential freedoms:

>The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw

Absolutely, libre implies code.

Access to compilable code can happen in more ways than fully libre release though.

I think that is what the parent post to yours meant.

Absolutely not. Anything less than the 4 freedoms is unacceptable. If the program is discovered to be spying on its users and users are not allowed to modify and redistribute the source code then there is no way to fix the problem.

I mean free as in speech, of course. I didn't think that I'd have to explain what "free software" means here on HN.

So that's an iPhone screenshot on what appears to be a Nexus 4 without the navigation buttons with the android contact icons but there isn't even an iOS version yet. The first screenshot in the playstore shows the windows phone version and the second is the actual android version, what?

Why do people keep releasing messaging applications? These things rarely, if ever catch on.

Awaiting the inevitable HN thread about how Chadder is flawed.

Small investment, tiny chance of success, huge payoff iff successful. It is the lottery of applications.

Same reason people buy lottery tickets. Big winners motivate people to replicate their efforts cargo-cult style.

Remember the thousands of "pixel ad" sites following the Million Dollar Homepage?

Remember the thousands of Flappy Bird clones?

Prepare for more chat apps, because WhatsApp scored big.

McAfee ceased to be a brand that you'd want to be associated with a while ago, I wonder what they intend to achieve by attaching their reputation to his.

Toxic doesn't even begin to describe it, he's the IT world equivalent of a rogue.

One would presume because "he is/was a fugitive, so he really understands the need of that underrepresented user community".

The Alex Jones crowd always seem to have spare cash.

If the source code isn't available then any claims to being secure should be treated cautiously. For instance, how do we know that there aren't heartbleed-style errors in this anti-surveillance app?

I love open source, but we didn't know about heartbleed even with the sources available.

I think that it's rather because the source was available, we eventually found out about heartbleed.

Isn't McAfee back in the US? You can't trust crypto tools that are closed source form the US. The current state of laws make that impossible. [1] [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_act

I think the biggest problem here is that the application claims to be "anti-surveillance" yet it doesn't really solve the surveillance problem, namely meta-data.

If anything this application helps surveillance by filtering out the communication from "regular" communication.

We have had encrypted messaging for ages now. I cannot tell what's new here.

Has anyone even publicly discussed how to mitigate metadata collection? I don't recall any such discussion, but this also isn't really my area of interest.

I'd imagine a system that's completely a p2p mesh network. "Oh, hello, peer. I have 17 blocks for delivery on the network." Those 17 blocks might be pieces of messages for said peer; they might be destined for other nodes anywhere in the network; maybe they're noise. And don't forget to hand those blocks off to other nodes as well, because maliciously dumping blocks could be a thing...

Not really my topic either but I guess messaging via TOR or alike is the best solution.

Perhaps, but then I believe each participant in the messaging system would need to run a hidden service to receive messages. I think you may be onto something here.

Anyone care to explain how this is supposed to work? If Chadder don't store or transmit the key, how does the person I'm sending a message to have it?

The ambiguity in the way the video explained it makes me a bit suspicious.

I do not know what your objections are. It's pretty straight forward.

I guess it's something like:

For messages: AES

Key exchange: RSA

Alice and Bob both generates their own RSA keypair (the server do not have their private keys). Alice generates the AES key to be used with Bob, encrypts it using Bobs public RSA key and then sends it to him.. done

But then how does Alice know if she's talking to the right Bob and not some evil middle-man? In other words, she has to trust the server that it is giving her the correct public key.

Signing. I.e. Bob encrypts a dummy message or whatever with his private key.

How does Alice get Bobs public key, and how does she verify its authenticity?

It's actually not that straightforward:

- How is the problem of key distribution solved? How does Bob know that the key is in fact Alices and not Mallorys?

- The scheme you propose does not provide forward secrecy.

- (How) is authentication performed? Are signatures used; if so, are they non-repudiable or deniable?

Secure instant messaging is not a solved problem (at least not in the form of a practical, usable implementation).

Oh wow. It uses a very innovative REST key exchange protocol.

Encryption:

  * Messages are encrypted with AES 128 CBC
  * Random key for each message
  * The AES key is sent to the server, and exchanged for some key-id
  * They key id is prepended to the message

Decryption:

  * Split message into key id and encrypted part
  * Download key from server
  * Decrypt message

Edit: Decompile it to see for yourself

It's based on "scrambls", and they have a description of their protocol here:

https://developer.scrambls.com/bin/view/Main/P4ComponentInte...

Anything that claims to do 'APP X' with 'encryption' these days should not put itself out there without posting a full (and RECENT) security audit by an un-biased third party.

Otherwise, I'm going to assume you are still leaky as hell, make mistakes and have not cleaned up your code, etc.

And no, claiming you are 'open source' doesn't cover it (And I Don't even have to refer to Heartbleed here)

When is the iOS client going to be released? It's kind of interesting that this comes up on HN and at the same time a security leak [0] in the iOS email client is found.

[0] http://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/05/ios-7-email-attachment-e...

Do the phones have to be online at the same time in order to send the first key or does a Chadder server distribute the keys to each pair of users but simply not store the key after it's distribution?

Sorry if this question sounds ignorant, the details and best practices of encryption are way over my head.

Their server stores all the keys

https://developer.scrambls.com/bin/view/Main/P4ComponentInte...

Even if it's not directly relevant to the product in question but I always think it's a bit weird to promote a "secure" product and don't even have SSL enabled on your own website. It's not like it's expensive to get a simple certificate these days.

It doesn't ask you for any information. What would be the benefit of enabling SSL?

SSL is not only for secrecy, it provides integrity as well.

For example: You cannot be sure the links are valid. The javascript- and/or youtube iframe might be modified/malicious.

I'm confused. Does this app uses public key encryption? if so, how do I obtain the actual public keys of all my contacts? Do we have to personally meet and exchange the public keys?

They didn't even capitalize his last name properly:

    We are also very excited to announce our partnership
    with John Mcafee and Future Tense Central!

So the client is open source but the server and backend isn't, same as Telegram? What is the point? That and McAfee doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Where do you see the client sources?

See here: https://telegram.org/apps#source-code

I meant for Chadder.

Sorry, I assumed it was clients were open sources based on the article. Now that I looked it appears that is not the case. So ... it is safe because John McAfee?

wow, that's a distracting background. Also the video doesn't explain how the key exchange works, and isn't that the important/hard bit?

It's the Matrix

Only explanation they give is that it "uses encryption" and that should make the app trustworthy? Is this a joke?

Is the name McAfee supposed to be a plus ? Isn't he kinda crazy these days ? That's a red flag in my book.

If that's how they designed the website, I'm a little scared to download the app.

Also, no iOS?

I thought he is in prison? Or at least under investigation?

So how does it do that encryption? Through magic?

Nothing against John McAfee, I have no idea what happened in Belize, and he can probably have a wonderful career as a reality TV star or a similar effort.

But I wouldn't touch a security product he offers with a 20 foot pole. Literally I wouldn't even visit the site, let alone hover my mouse over the download link.

And no, not because of McAfee Antivirus, but despite it.

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