Let me edit in one more relevant info:
I don’t use it, but my contacts may or may not use it.
For those who don’t know, Beeper is an app that aims to unite all your messaging apps into one. To do this, it makes use of Matrix, bridging all those services together. So far, so cool.
However, since different services often use different encryption protocols, messages between those services and Matrix have to be decrypted on Beepers’ servers, before being re-encrypted with the protocol of the recipient.
They are completely open and transparent about this (which I can very much respect), and state that chats on their servers are encrypted, so they can’t read them.
Still though, decrypting mid-transit kinda throws the whole end-to-end part out of the window.
Some might say that everyone needs to decide for themselves if that’s a problem. But the issue with that is that if you decide to use Beeper, you also decide that every person you chat with is okay with it. Not very cool in my book.
That’s where the question asking for independant audits comes in, because I certainly don’t have the expertise to look at their code. If everything is safe from attackers, then cool.
But me for example, I switched to Signal specifically for verifiable and proper End-to-End Encryption, so chatting with someone who uses Signal through Beeper kinda defeats the point.
Because, how does Beeper even get what they need to decrypt a message I send to a Beeper user?
I don’t consent to a third party decrypting my messages, simply because one of my contacts uses their service. That is fundamentally wrong in my opinion.
What are your thoughts on this?
Is this about message content security or privacy?
I would love to have more insights on Beeper actual privacy. But one think to keep in mind is that they are subject to Cloud Act.
Specifically for OP: since you post on this privacy focused community but also are not very clear with your intent, I just want to remind that Signal is not the best messaging app when it comes to privacy, especially because of its close relation to CIA
Okay, you gotta explain that a bit further.
Yes, Signal is based in the US and as such, is subject to US laws. Not great, I don’t love that.
However, since they are fully open source, it was independently audited and verified several times that their encryption is solid, and the only data they can see is when an account was created, and when it was last online.
That’s all they can hand over to law enforcement.
For my intent with this post, I just want to raise the general issue I see with this app, and read what other people think of it.
Nope only the message content is encrypted. So what they have unencrypted is of course your personal information (phone number etc), all your contacts, and the list of all messages sent (datetime, and contact or contacts). This enable them to have a great social map that evolves after each message sent
And that is if the encryption remain unbroken. Don’t forget that the NSA has a history of placing backdors in cryptography schemes (like that mathematically flawed key based on a weak elliptic curve, standardized and approved by the NSA after they found their exploit)
As far as I know, even the user profiles are encrypted. They’ve been using Sealed Sender for a while now.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of Signal being based in the US, but they go to great lenghts to limit what they know about their users. Private Contact Discovery being another great addition.
Signal isn’t the perfect, 100% secure, private and anonymous messenger that we’d love in our privacy bubble here, but it’s currently the best we have to reach the general public, and make private messaging as accessible as possible.
I think that’s a fair statement.
Thank you for that info and the link I’ll go into that. Just to summarize, if you have the knowledge and time: this is at-rest encryption? I’m not sure how it could be end-to-end encryption and at the same time enable to start new conversations with other Signal users / discovery based on name / phone number
I’m still fairly new to how all those things work, so I don’t have that knowledge, sadly. But since it’s all open source, their claims can be put to the test by people who do.
Though after some research, there actually haven’t been as many audits as I thought, so I think it’s important for me to mention that.
Ok thank you so much. What I would like to point at in the difference between having an end-to-end encryption between two recipients and at-rest encryption for information owned by Signal (in this example), is the purpose of those two different things. E2E encryption means only the two agents at each end have the mathematical possibility to decrypt the info: this is privacy by design. At-rest encryption on Signal servers of different things is a security layer meant to protect users’ privacy against attackers, but Signal have the means to decrypt it, and they would do it in the normal usage of the service. This would also mean they can (and have to) transmit decrypted information to whatever agency demand them to
Thank you for the explanation, that clarifies a few things for me.
If Signal was based in the EU, and finally moved away from phone numbers as the identifier like they talked about years ago, that would be just perfect.
Not sure about decentralization though. Being centralized means they have full control over the service and can ensure that everything runs exactly as securely and privately as they want for their users. (Which is also where my rant about Matrix bridges comes in)
It also means you have to trust them not to fuck around, though as long as the project is fully open-source, that alone should hold them to their proclaimed standards.
How do they have a close relationship with the CIA?
You can find this online easily. Some of the things are: they’ve been funded by the Open Technology Fund, created for Radio Free Asia, which is a program by the CIA. The fund is now financed by the US Congress
Matrix is generally a platform good at violating your data. In order to make it pro privacy, a lot of extra work needs to be done.
Beeper is… A huge step in the wrong direction. It needs to decrypt your data across multiple services to offer it to you, and all that data gets smashed onto the same servers. Sounds like the opposite of privacy
Well this is not particular to Beeper, that’s always the case when using Matrix + Bridges for third parties right? Even though they are the main mainteners of a good part of the existing bridges
Yes, Beeper is basically Matrix + bridges. The one way you could make this private is to do the decrypting (and the bridging) yourself, but then you’d have to figure out how to run (and lock down) a web server, preferably on your own property.
There are good Matrix-based projects, BTW. One of them is Convene, which is a web client focused on making ad-hoc, E2EE, self-destructing rooms like back when CryptoCat originally came on the scene.