ramenu

joined 6 months ago
[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 0 points 5 months ago

Something at which even the original Signal fails. It has received criticism multiple times (1, 2) for not being verifiable whether it’s been tampered with by the app’s distributor, and also for having included properietary google services dependencies which dynamically load further code from the phone which is also a security issue. Worthy forks solve both of these.

That's unfortunate. I do hope that these forks don't go and start making extensive changes though, because that's where it becomes a problem.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

Again, having third party clients would not definitively mean the client is bad. Obviously, if it's a simple fork with hopefully small patches that are just UI changes, it's probably not going to harm the security model.

I should have phrased this better in my original post. When I was thinking about third party clients, Matrix and XMPP immediately came to my mind. Not very simple forks. So I'll phrase this better: "Having non-trivial third party clients is not good for security." What non-trivial means is left to interpretation though, I suppose.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 months ago (14 children)

When you use a client, you are relying on the client's crypto implementation to be correct. This is only one part of it and there's a lot more to it when it comes to hardening the program. Signal focuses on their desktop and mobile clients and they hire actual security professionals and cryptographers (unlike the charlatans in this thread) to implement it correctly.

Having third party clients would not definitively mean the client is bad, but it most likely would break the security model. Just take a look at Matrix's clients.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 months ago (18 children)

What? How is this a red flag? Having third party clients is not good for security.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

It's Proton. What do you expect?

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 months ago

"There are so many things you can do. Don’t accept doing nothing, be a stubborn fuck and do something to alleviate the sadness."

Good words to live by. :)

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Speaking of which, Debian users, how safe are distribution upgrades?

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

I know. And that's reasonable of course. I'm sure most of us would agree that proprietary blobs are bad. I'm optimistic that firmware will become more open in the future though.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

That's true. I didn't think about that. Thank you. :)

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

Sidenote: If you just want a nice web frontend for others to view your Git repositories, you can use cgit instead.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 32 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I'm not a fan of GrapheneOS, but the point they bring up here is valid. There is already proprietary firmware on your computer. There's no reason why you shouldn't be updating it to protect yourself from serious exploits. The FSF takes an ideological stance rather than a practical one, unfortunately.

[–] ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 months ago

In contrast to my experience, all the other search engines stink. Google is the only good one. But I suggest using a frontend like Araa if you want privacy.

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