He’s on the internet it has to be true

I'm overwhelmed by the evidence, the proof, the facts, and the logic that the OP has presented to support his assertion.

Waiting on the Alex Jones/Q story to be posted that has convinced the OP enough to join and post in GD.

It doesn't.  The encryption itself is relatively secure. Meaning it takes a lot of effort to beat it.  

If the feds have easy access it would be through an exploit or built in back door, which any system can have.  The feds don't have their own math, they do have more money and manpower to throw at finding exploits, zero days and twisting arms to have such things put into software.

This post is enough to discount you as a know-nothing.

There is precisely nothing that is more secure about communications done on an old phone than ones done via Signal.

I dunno. DES, 3DES, MD5, and SHA1 (and a slew of other crypto) was unbreakable too. You still using 3DES, right?
Stop with the sillyness. ;)

I didn't say trust me bro, I said do your own thing. Sorry that's too much for you.

Then why call out Signal in particular.   If everything is crap just say "Everything is crap".

Greetings fellow enthusiast.

This is correct.

Even if Signal has vulnerabilities, it is unlikely to be with the encryption itself, and far more likely to be with the implementation.

OP's claim that consumer grade encryption is broken by the government is bullshit.

Does anybody think that there isn't some security researcher somewhere sending specific and threatening Signal messages back and forth between two devices just to see if anybody comes knocking?

It's not a branch of mathematics.  It's NIST being directed by law to consult the NSA before setting encryptions standards.

Yeah, go back to landlines, right Fed?

I'd put money on people being stupid, and using signal to talk about dumb stuff to people they don't even know, because "It's Encrypted"
The people behind signal are smart and privacy motivated.  The people downloading and using it without understanding basic opsec are not going to have the results they desire.

You are not paying attention to what's going on.
Millions of people have abandoned WhatsApp (for many reasons) and jumping to Signal.
The Fed gave no info on how they obtained such data that warranted their Nat Terror warning.

I not 100% what you are asking. The Fed basically taps backbone lines and can scrub that data very very fast.
Abilene (internet-2) is magnitudes faster than your everyday internet. ;)
The datacenter in Utah is full of qubit computing!

I mean, does it really matter if the device the app is installed on in the first place is compromised?

Everyone thinks they're safe because they installed some app which promises its app is the most secure - but they overlook the device its installed on.

The poster that said the only surefire way is to get off the internet is correct. In this case, the only surefire way is to stop communicating over devices completely compromised by three letter agencies, and carriers that are complicit with them.

That sounds like something a lot of guys I know would do, "just because."  

Looked it up, and it seems like Ross Ulbrich (Silk Road dude) was using a laptop in a library, and a couple cops/agents pretended to be a couple fighting in order to distract him, close the distance, and arrest him before he could lock the system.  

Enter the XKCD comic about the unbreakable encryption meeting the $5 pipe wrench.

Good afternoon fellow firearms enthusiast!

Are you excited about the proposed, 3.2% federal pay raise?

One of these statements is bullshit.

Welcome friend and fellow enthusiast. I take great pleasure in welcoming you to our great 2nd amendment themed site. It is here where you can share your knowledge of firearms, ammunition, training, survival, culinary, and general life skills. This site consists of people from all walks of life: doctors, lawyers, cops,
writers, race car guys, pilots, firearm instructors, dentists, TV personalities, teachers, firemen, military, retirees, lawmakers, porn stars, Kia mechanics and Trolls.

So please accept my warm wishes, bountiful blessings and happy thoughts. Enjoy your stay, share your wisdom and take some wisdom with you.
Sincerely, your brother in arms.

I don't think that's true for everybody. I mean, some of the stuff my wife thinks up and tells me definitely seems to be encrypted.

You missing the point.

1st off, it's illegal to spy.
2nd, people believe the available public encryption is unbreakable, it's not.
3rd, the Fed is ramping up rhetoric so when it acts for no good reason, at least they warned you ahead of time.

Using encryption is like protecting your gun collection with a keyed doorknob on that hollow wood door. All it does is slow things down and offers no real protection. ;)

Sure. If you never communicate with anybody, you'll never have your communications intercepted.

But, if you're going to communicate, properly implemented encryption is pretty fucking safe.

Signal may have vulnerabilities (although with it being FOSS, it's likely that any would be discovered by security researchers). But claiming that all encryption is broken is bullshit.

Attached File

Elon Musk likes Signal.  

Last semester I applied for a software internship working on Tesla’s autopilot programs. There’s so much mystique around Tesla these days. Around Elon Musk. And let me tell you, he doesn’t have time for any of that in person. He’s a busy man, and an important one.

The competition for one of his internships is one of the toughest in today’s job market, and that’s saying something. I was doing technical interviews over the phone for weeks. One day, an interviewer called in the morning and grilled me for so long that I just straight up skipped one of my classes!

Sacrifices. Elon appreciates those.

At long last I made it to the final round. It’s true what they say-- he interviews everybody who will ever work for him. They flew me out to the Fremont factory in California, and my hands started shaking as soon as I stepped into the building.

I was led into a conference room. And there he was. Elon Musk, in the flesh.

We exchanged pleasantries. Our tone was light, but Elon’s eyes never left mine. I could tell what he was doing. He was sizing me up. Testing the waters. Seeing if I would crack under the pressure.

Ever so slowly, we meandered closer to actual interview territory. “So your resume mentions app development. Tell me about that.”

I had to stop a smile from breaking out onto my face. Oh, wow, Elon Musk read my resume!

“So I, uh, had to spend a little time getting used to Swift, but--”

Elon cut me off. “You an iOS fan?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Here. Gimme a sec.” Elon disappeared from the conference room.

I let out a shaky breath and collapsed into my chair. Was I doing great? Poorly? Incredibly poorly? I’d heard the stories. Engineers fired after screaming rages, careers snuffed out in seconds. Oh, god, he wasn’t coming back with security, was he? He was only gone for a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours.

The door crashed open. I sat back up, ramrod straight. Here came Elon, and there was something in his hands. It was a jet-black container, shiny and spherical. Except that it wasn’t a sphere, exactly. There was a dent near the top, and it flared inwards towards the bottom. What did that remind me of...?

Elon unscrewed the top and gently tapped some of the container’s contents onto the table. A whitish dust spilled out. He took his credit card out of his wallet and started chopping the pile into lines.

My eyes bugged out of my head. Elon glanced up.

“Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s not coke. Take a look! You don’t have to worry.”

He slid the open container over to me and got back to his work. I picked it up. The stuff inside was a light gray, so he was right. It probably wasn’t coke. But what the hell was it?

I heard a guttural snort, and I almost dropped the container before setting it down. Elon reared up from his desk with fire in his eyes. “Woah! Still kicks.”

He had a rolled-up dollar bill in one hand, and he shoved it into my face. “Your turn.”

“Hang on. What...what’s happening? What is this?”

Elon looked at me like I was an idiot. “What do you think it is? Guess. I went and got this because you mentioned iOS. I want you to guess.”

Then it hit me. That container. It wasn’t just a sphere, and it wasn’t just an apple.

It was an apple-shaped urn.

“Oh my God, are you snorting Steve Jobs’ ashes?”

Elon did another line and clapped his hands. “Fantastic, man! Not a lot of people even know he was cremated. I knew I had a good feeling about you.”

This was a prank. It had to be. This all had to be one big, bizarre test, so I figured I would play along. “Security wasn’t that tight around his grave, huh?”

“Nope,” said Elon, too calmly. “Security at Alta Mesa’s a joke. Couple of months ago I just stayed until midnight, dug them out myself.”

Elon dipped a finger into the jar and rubbed his gums. “You know I met him once? Steve. He was such an asshole. He hated me. My companies. Well, look who’s laughing now.” He smiled at me, then coughed. A grey, powdery cloud billowed into the air. I tried not to breathe.

“Steve’s grave was unmarked,” he continued. “But that wasn’t a problem. I could smell him.”

Elon’s eyes started to unfocus. “I could smell the animus that drove his soul. The energy. And, soon, it will be mine.”

Nobody spoke for a while.

“It will all be mine,” whispered Elon, and it was like I wasn’t even in the room.

He blinked. “Anyways. You want a hit?”

For the first time in what felt like forever I felt like I was allowed to speak. “...No, man, I’m good.”

There’s no way I can do this. I fought back the urge to gag. That’s a human being floating in the air right now. There have to be laws against that kind of thing, right? And even if there weren’t, this feels so deeply, deeply wrong. I might have to talk to the authorities after this. After all, I still have my character, my convictions--

“Listen.” Elon clapped a hand on my shoulder. “One little bump, and you’re walking out that door with a job.”

Anyways, I start next quarter.

To move lots of data real fast , use internet-2 (you can't use internet-2 btw).
To scrub and chomp on data real fast, use qubit computing (crypto miners know about this, so why not you?)

Back doors for the Fed are passe, there's no need to back door into any one device. They can collect all the data and then easily cherry pick out the data streams of interest, and then feed that to the qubit scrubbers, which can decrypt very fast!

The Fed can also catalog all internet traffic, and archive it. Storage space is no issue. The internet as you know it is limited in ability to transmit data, it can only produce so much data for any given time period, and the Fed can easily take it all in.

Break out the one time pads!

Fuck feds with rusty barbed wire right in the ass

This is abject horseshit. You keep saying it like it's fact, without providing any proof.

I'm rating this thread "troll".

Not sure how I'm not paying attention, I'm trying to get you to explain why you are making these statements and frankly just understand it better.

There is metadata that you can discern quite easily without the app having been compromised... Group of malcontents (based on previous history) + Signal app usage + traveling to or congregating in the same area (cell tower triangulation) = "some shit is going down".

Don't even have to have a crack to do that.

I did not sidetrack my post, others did.
The Fed issued a oddball Nat Terror Warning w/o any info on how they obtained such info.
Signal employees themselves have been publicly stating that they are worried the app may be used for bad reasons (with so many users joining), which of course it is.
The Fed warning comes from them spying on the Signal app data flows.
Why doesn't any of the press folks ask the Press Sec where the Fed got the info to throw out a Nat Terror warning notice? Bet ya they will be hush-hush about it, other than "we read the internet". How many places online are plotting anything of meaningful significance in open forums? NONE is the answer. But hey, if there was the Press Sec would tell us, right?

If it's not public open places then it has to be spied on data, there is no other way.

No worries, I'll get into the Tech forums soon.
Just wanted to throw out this warning to those who use Signal app.

First, he shows Signal as an Android only app. I'll have to break it to my iPhone that it's not an iPhone. Some list.

Second, it actually shows Signal as a pretty good option if I read it right, so what's the problem?

Scrub means to delete data. "Hillary had her minions scrub 30,000 emails off of her computer."
Scrape means to collect data. "The Eff Bee Eye scraped thousands of pedo pics off of Hunter's laptop and did nothing with them."


I think you mean they are scraping data, not scrubbing data.

Yeah. I'm calling bullshit.

Its far far easier to compromise a device than a well implemented forward secure AES256 scheme.

Why even fuck with the transport side of an encrypted system when you can compromise a device and just grab screen shots of everything when the signal app opens?

Let the device and owner do the decryption then snag everything.

There are no reports of the signal system itself being compromised. Even cellebrite needed physical access to a device and then only managed to decrypt messages stored on that device, they could have just unlocked it and opened the app.

If the feds target you, yep, they are probably going to see everything. But not because apps like signal aren't secure, its because your device isn't secure.  

Build a device that is truly secure and you'll make all kinds of waves.

Greetings fellow enthusiest.

Yikes. All encryption is vulnerable !
You don't understand crypto, do you.

Two people sending oddball messages will appear to be oddball, AI can detect that. A risk assessment is done and then mitigated if need be. If you wanted to fuzz the Fed you would need to coordinate a boat load of people communicating with red flag info, which even if just BS would likely have a bunch of people explaining to a judge that they were just "testing the system" to see if it was really secured. Such test could be done, but it would probably leak prior to actual test, thereby making such test invalid.

I've started training pigeons.....it's going to be the next communication boom.

Has this warning been posted in the public domain or are we left to get through second hand accounts?

Pretty sure anyone with a few brain cells who's perused an issue or two of 2600 realized a long time ago the inherent risk factors of believing a comm system to be secure.

The NSA spends $10 billion a year on something more than just padding corporate coffers.

Copper is still very prevalent as residential service. It will get digitized not far from your phone though.
In general, there is no "landlines" any longer.

Attached File



yeah, you're gonna have to lay out some actual credentials before I start listening to what you have to say buddy


OK I caught up to my own post now


I want to understand EXACTLY what you're saying here...

your allegation is that the feds are sniffing signal messages off the network and decrypting them

that's a yes or no answer

All the encryption in the world won’t help you if they have an informant in your chat.

But lets get real.  They don’t need an informant, they dont need to break encryption.  They will fake any comms necessary to justify whatever crackdown or whatever else they want to justify.

When you let unverified people into your group this happens. I’m in 2 organizational level signal groups that quite honestly if I was in charge I’d have never let me in.

This has nothing to do with the Signal app itself.

And NO, properly implemented has no context here. With qubit computing you can zip through brute forcing elliptic curve junk faster than you can blink. There are several brute forcing techniques which dramatically decrease the time needs for a convergence hit. Technique + qubit power means very fast at doing things.

Discovered vulns? The only useful vulns are non-disclosed zero days. Heartbleed was one of many, was a vuln for a very long time, was also being exploited for a very long time. Another is recent sudo in Linux. It's been a un-disclosed zero day for a very long time, and when exploited will still go undetected.

Anyways, my warning holds true. Stay safe.

So basically you're saying apps like Signal aren't secure and the feds have broken the encryption because they issued a terror alert with no publicly released chatter.

Gotcha.

Scrubbing doesn’t mean what you think it means.

LOL

I guess we're going to get a bunch of new members now telling us why we shouldn't use encryption.

This is largely it. Right now people are being very stupid and just leaving blanket invites out in the public letting anyone in then being surprised when things aren't as secure as they imagined.

Emotional today?

They will also retain 5k troops in DC area. Militarizing it. That too must bug you, as it does most Americans. But hey, the commies there in DC need to protect themselves from The People, so how else can they do it. Understandable absurd and ironic I guess, but that explains what commie's do.

My point was, the Fed is heavily spying again, so keep the crazy chatter off the internet. Trusting "encryption" is a fools game.