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Comment by kristofferR | Hacker News Reader

A few friends of mine really really tried to switch from Hangouts to TextSecure, but we couldn't do it - it was just too painful, complicated and buggy. We're using Telegram now and it's at least way better than Hangouts and TextSecure on the user experience, even though it's less secure than TextSecure.

Are there any good secure messengers out there that truly works cross platform (iOS, Android and Web/Win/OSX)? It's a shame that something like Telegram seems to be the best right now, considering its dodgy security model.

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If your adversaries aren't nation-states, the mainstream chat applications (Facebook messages, Google Chat, and iMessage) all probably do a better job of protecting the integrity of their channel than Telegram does. If your enemies are capable enough to compromise Google Chat, you need to be using something without a dodgy security model.

This++.

Also, if they were nation-states you probably shouldn't post about it in a public forum either.

I'd only worry if you were a Google competitor using Google Chant/Hangouts. :p

I've not found textsecure to be buggy at all, can you explain your experience a bit more? My friends and I switched to it from surespot and love it. Its also a killer feature that it handles standard SMS as well. A single app for all messaging.

Also, wasn't telegram demonstrated to have awful crypto? Like basically pointless to use from an encryption standpoint?

I'm keeping an eye on the forthcoming Hemlis messenger which should have good crypto and launch on iOS/android and from the demo videos it has an awesome ui. However they're taking forever to launch the thing so who knows when it'll be out. Also it will need to be open sourced and audited before I trust it.

It suddenly, for no apparent reason at all, stops working until it is reinstalled. Messages are marked as being successfully sent, but they're not being received by the recipient. All my friends have the same issue.

Since it's only on Android I can't use it as the single app for all messaging. I certainly type much faster on my desktop keyboard than I do on my cell phone, so I need something with desktop support too. A lot of my friends also have iOS, which also is an issue.

Telegram's crypto is pretty weird, and potentially insecure - no doubt. However, it's the only messaging app I've found with good clients (superb in fact) on all platforms that has some level of encryption. I don't "need" (although I would certainly prefer) to be protected from targeted attacks, I need to be protected from mass surveillance.

> Since it's only on Android I can't use it as the single app for all messaging.

messaging is expected to be rolled into the Signal iOS app quite soon, as I understand it

It's been just soon for quite some time now.

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

+1 on the message loss issues. Even got to the point where I would lose incoming messages if I didn't catch them on the notification screen.

Hmmm, I have not experienced these disappearing messages, although, maybe I have and I don't know it. I wouldn't know if one of my messages didn't go through to the other party would I? I will have to check with my friends and compare their message history to mine next time I see one of them.

Also, yeah I am desperately waiting on a secure messaging app that is has good crypto, ios/android, AND desktop support. So far there isn't one that fills all those, so for now I'll settle for good crypto rather than platform support. From what I understand, multiple logins from devices using the same identity is really hard for good crypto? I'm not sure but that'd explain why all the top secure messaging apps don't do it. yet.

Being open source and audited also matters a lot to me.

We've noticed that some people have problems when they do weird stuff to their phones. We use GCM for delivery, so that can stop working with a custom gapps install, or a rooted firewall setup, or disabled background data for gcm. We have yet to receive a report where GCM stops working for people with completely stock installs. If that doesn't describe you, please file a bug so that we can help get things working.

For what it's worth, TextSecure also has delivery receipts now, so the sender can see what's happening with their message.

Just for the sake of having balanced anecdotes here for people who might be considering the switch to TS:

I recently started using TextSecure on my janky, crappy old Android phone and it is a _dream_. So far it has been strictly better that the native Android text app in every respect. The user experience is so different it's like night and day. Faster, lighter, quicker to load, better at sending messages while I'm in the subway with low signal, lets me keep typing the next text reliably while the old one is starting to send, etc. I could go on and on. I would use it just for the UX alone, even absent crypto.

I'm not in any way affiliated with TextSecure and frankly disagree quite strongly with some of Moxie's politics, but credit where credit is due. +1 very satisfied user.

It's inconvenient to use Telegram on many devices (e.g. desktop/mobile), because their "secret chats" are not synchronized between them (e.g. your friends have to keep two contacts "kristofferR – Mobile" and "kristofferR — Desktop", right?).

If you are not using "secret chats", their default chats are not end-to-end encrypted, so are not comparable to TextSecure.

Disclaimer: not a cryptographer by any means.

I think "basically pointless" is when there's a known vulnerability that renders the encryption pointless. I think Telegram's more like "bad-smelling and while no exact vulnerabilities are known (since no one cared to audit), it's probably dangerous."

Just trying to be fair.

I think you're probably right there. Here are moxie's comments on it: http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/

And here's a thorough trashing of their crypto: http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta...

I'm not a cryptographer either, so I can't comment on how accurate that last link is, but I tend to trust moxie, and if he thinks it stinks, well.....

The constant silent failure to either send or receive texts. I can send my father textsecure messages but any he sends to me disappear in the ether somewhere

> I've not found textsecure to be buggy at all

I've had all sorts of issues with the push messaging causing some crazy infuriating problems... had to disable it on my end and on friends phones too. Also had some oddness where two friends with identical handsets - one couldn't set TextSecure as the incoming SMS client even though the other could...

It's great, I rave about it and try and talk everyone I know into using it, but there are some odd issues occasionally...

My uneducated opinion is that this has to do with all the junk layered on top of Android by the phone manufacturer. I've got a Nexus 4 (old flagship, vanilla Android) and TextSecure has not given me an iota of trouble.

I tend to agree. My vanilla nexus devices haven't had any problems at all (except for the push bits)... In fact, virgin android in general is extremely swish and pleasant to use.

What's buggy about textsecure?

Genuinely interested, never had issues with it so far.

How strange! The only issue I've seen has been to do with changing handset and needing to re-associate a phone number with a new key. There's a menu option for that which was quite well hidden.

I shall watch out for new issues as the iOS version gains functionality.

Were you using SMS or push (GCM) transport?

Non-related to TextSecure, I've tried to use GCM to send notifications about faulty servers and found it quite unreliable. It seem to work fine when the phone's on and has a good WiFi connection, but seem to lose messages in real-life conditions. Not to the extent to completely stop working, just a packet loss, though.

I've had a lot of issues with MSS not being received.

Mine almost never can properly receive MMS messages. Either I just don't get them or it can't download the attached image. It also has problems getting group messages. I've switched back to the stock messaging app.

I've been using Threema [1] without any issues, and it works on Android and iOS. The user experience is on par with WhatsApp, I would say. The source is not available, so you must be willing to take their claims at face value [2].

[1] https://threema.ch/en/

[2] https://threema.ch/press-files/cryptography_whitepaper.pdf

> Are there any good secure messengers out there that truly works cross platform (iOS, Android and Web/Win/OSX)? It's a shame that something like Telegram seems to be the best right now, considering its dodgy security model.

XMPP+OTR has been supported on major platforms for years (and for decades without OTR). It offers all the features the above Telegram/TextSecure/etc offer, and is descentralized, so you don't rely on some arbitrary third-party.

That piqued my interest. Do you have recommendations for an open-source XMPP+OTR client for Android?

imho there is only 'secure' and 'insecure'. Less secure == insecure.

It depends on the threat profile. Something can be "secure from a MITM on the coffee shop wifi" without necessarily being "secure from a directed attack by the NSA".

For any practical security scheme, you do have to make some assumptions about the limitations of your adversary's capabilities. In the extreme case of "attacker has ability to read contents from memory on the end user's machine at will," I'm not aware of any secure cryptographic solution short of memorizing the key and performing all encryption/decryption by hand.

To add to this, there is a time component as well. If your data only needs to be secure for 20 years, it has a different threat profile than one that needs to be secure for 200 years. Then the question becomes "20 years for who?". The safe industry, as an example, thinks about their security problems in this manner.

Not really. There's only "insecure" and "less insecure".

"Secure" just means that no one has figured out how to break it yet, or that you don't care if the people who can break it do so.

Perfectly implemented one-time pads are secure.

But they're insanely hard to implement perfectly.

I use it with some friends. No issues.

Pro tip: to use TextSecure and RedPhone with Google Voice, enter your Google Voice number, let the SMS validation time out and then retry the validation by phone call.

OTR on XMPP is alright. I use ChatSecure on Android, Pidgin/Adium on Linux/Mac. It has some issues with multiple devices being logged on at once, but that's alright.

I use Telegram too, because it is easy to use, secure, and you can use it even in Windows 7. If we don't have internet we switch to Babel Full, which works both on Android and iOS.

You mean INsecure: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegra...

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