[HN Gopher] The coming war on end-to-end encryption
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The coming war on end-to-end encryption
Author : EGreg
Score : 112 points
Date : 2023-04-21 17:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.qbix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.qbix.com)
| EGreg wrote:
| Author here. Happy to see this went viral.
|
| I have spent 12 years and 1 million dollars to date (no
| exaggeration, I worked jobs, architected trained / paid my
| developer team for years, we are now good friends) on a project
| to hopefully help people get a viable alternative to the Big
| Tech, and have choice where to host the infrastructure they
| typically expect from Facebook, Twitter, Telegram etc. It's open
| source and it's the only way you can make it expensive to
| backdoor everyone in bulk, or shut down a platform altogether:
|
| https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
|
| If you spend an afternoon playing with, I think you'll feel like
| you're discovering superpowers (like Batman or Iron man or
| something). It's free to use. We're launching
| https://qbix.com/ecosystem soon, with courses and certification
| so anyone who wants to learn, click on my profile and email me.
|
| Here is the philosophy behind why we built it:
| https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/
|
| And if you like what we do and you're thinking of supporting us
| with $100 or more, feel free to do it here... November 5 we are
| launching, until then you can voluntarily put a "no-obligation"
| contribution: https://wefunder.com/Qbix
| Karellen wrote:
| The thing I don't get is... won't bans on end-to-end encryption
| ban https?
|
| If I go to a website and ask for a web page over https, isn't the
| request and response between my device and the web server, an
| end-to-end encrypted message? Because the endpoints are my device
| and the web server.
|
| If I can't send my credit card details to a payment provider over
| an end-to-end encrypted channel, doesn't all commerce on the web
| just fall apart?
|
| How can a ban on end-to-end encrypted communication even fucking
| work?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| No.
|
| To be particular, "bans on e2e" are specifically targeting
| encryption between individuals on communications platforms.
|
| They won't and can't ban secure comms between a user and a site
| during a web session. But they want the messaging platforms to
| be able to reveal the plaintext of conversations to law
| enforcement.
|
| Of course "they" can't stop coded messages, or me sending
| encrypted messages via email or media platforms. They're just
| making it harder for non technical people (some of whom are
| criminals) to have privacy.
| evronm wrote:
| Really short answer: They want back doors to all this stuff,
| including your cc info. As long as only the "good guys have"
| this ability, what could go wrong?
| EGreg wrote:
| Well, HTTPS is not end-to-end. That latter term is reserved for
| encryption that encrypts _the messages between clients_ so
| servers can't parse them.
|
| When you have a centralized system like ICANN DNS, the
| governments know which IP addresses the domain points to. They
| can go and serve them National Security Letters or shake them
| down to install secret backdoors.
|
| WhatsApp and Facebook can lie to you that they're end-to-end
| encrypted. There is nothing stopping them from shipping custom
| updates. In facg they've been caught red-handed spying on both
| your video and audio. The only way you can be SURE an app isnt
| lying to you is with open source software, then you only have
| to trust the OS and browser (the Trusted Computing Base).
|
| (That is why I am a big fan of blockchain-based smart
| contaracts. But blockchains are slow, so the next best thing is
| hosting your business logic using open source software on
| servers you control.)
|
| Why do so many people trust Big Tech? Simple. We have no other
| choice!
|
| Where are the VIABLE AND USER FRIENDLY open source alternatives
| to Facebook, Twitter, Telegram backends?
|
| No one seems to have built anything better or more efficient
| than, say, Mastodon.
|
| Except us. It was a labor of love and cost me a million dollars
| to date: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
|
| PS: If you play with it for a afternoon, post your experience
| or email me. I would be thrilled to hear about your experience,
| good or bad. And of course use it for anything you want.
|
| I would be very happy to be proven wrong and see some more
| competitors being mentioned here, but if you do, make an honest
| assessment of how they compare! People need alternatives to the
| closed walled gardens, but having all these features working
| and up-to-date with browser tech is extremely hard:
| https://qbix.com/features.pdf
| nomel wrote:
| > Well, HTTPS is not end-to-end
|
| I'm not well versed for encryption, but isn't this a matter
| of perspective? If you're downloading a .midi file from a
| server, the other "end" is that server, isn't it? Will the
| forces pushing this make any nuanced distinction, outside of
| this?
| EGreg wrote:
| The "end" in end-to-end encryption for regular users is
| never a server.
|
| Servers are online 24/7 listening and can be found and
| raided and/or hacked by various forces.
|
| Clients are harder to locate. Especially if all you need to
| authenticate is a public/private keypair you generated.
|
| That is why governments are so frustrated with crypto.
| Karellen wrote:
| > The "end" in end-to-end encryption for regular users is
| never a server.
|
| Why not? Are servers not communication endpoints?
| wrs wrote:
| With that definition of "end", "end-to-end encryption"
| isn't different from just plain "encryption". The
| significance of the phrase is that you don't leak
| anything outside the _ultimate_ ends of the
| communication, including to servers in the middle.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The significance of the phrase is that you don't leak
| anything outside the ultimate ends of the communication,
| including to servers in the middle.
|
| Correct, but when you're viewing a web page (as opposed
| to using the web for peer-to-peer communications), that
| webserver _is_ the ultimate end of the communication.
| nomel wrote:
| I've found our problem. It appears the meaning has
| (apparently?) changed around 2014. Many search results
| you can find, including from IBM, and EFF, use the "old"
| (our) definition.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-
| end_encryption#Etymolog...
|
| > The term "end-to-end encryption" originally only meant
| that the communication is never decrypted during its
| transport from the sender to the receiver.
|
| > ...
|
| > Later, around 2014, the meaning of "end-to-end
| encryption" started to evolve when WhatsApp encrypted a
| portion of its network. ...
|
| But, I don't have confidence that the policy makers will
| make this distinction.
| EGreg wrote:
| For the reason I just told you -- they can be compromised
| much more easily, and are typically run by a party which
| isn't fully aligned with your interests and those of the
| other participants in your conversation.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So what if I run my own server with a private guestbook.
| Is https not end to end encryption in that scenario?
|
| I realize your point, that in most circumstances https is
| not being used as end to end encryption. But it can be,
| so wouldn't it also be attacked in this war?
| EGreg wrote:
| Well, HTTPS with certificate chains without backdoors by
| a government is already technically illegal in some parts
| of the world.
|
| But as I said, our definitions need to be useful. If the
| goal is for individuals to safeguard their conversations
| from prying eyes, then HTTPS is not the way to do it.
| Hence the government is likely to start with end to end
| encryption of the sort I have been emphasizing. With
| servers, they already have the tools... they can even
| IMPERSONATE YOU in Australia now and post as you.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| >When you have a centralized system like ICANN DNS, the
| governments know which IP addresses the domain points to.
| They can go and serve them National Security Letters or shake
| them down to install secret backdoors.
|
| HN opinions on CloudFlare aside, CloudFlare Tunnels mean DNS
| records point at CloudFlare servers, and the IP address of
| the origin server isn't discoverable via DNS. Sure, it's a
| court order away from being figured out even with dynamic IPs
| and historical logs with ISPs, but it's an interesting
| thought.
|
| Qbix certainly looks very interesting. How have you guys been
| around for ten years and flown under the radar?
| EGreg wrote:
| I'd like to say it was all part of a secret plan to not
| draw attention to ourselves until we were ready. But it
| wasn't.
|
| The sad truth is, we were always low on money and
| bootstrapping. We spent a lot of time building, and very
| little time pitching.
|
| We pitched about 10 VCs total in this whole time. I
| remember being at an event where Reid Hoffman spoke, he
| said he pitched 99 VCs before he got investment.
|
| But we spent zero on marketing and PR, and 11 million
| people in 100 countries downloaded our Groups app. But the
| app is not that interesting, people don't understand that
| most of our users are community leaders.
|
| What people don't get is that in this space, you need ALL
| THE FEATURES that Big Tech platforms offer before people
| will switch. It simply took us 10-12 years to get to this
| point. I picked a hard problem, but a very rewarding one in
| the end.
|
| Look, MySQL and NGinX took 10 years before VCs funded them.
| But to be fair, they grew a lot whereas Qbix didn't. Maybe
| I and my team simply suck at making things viral. But I
| believe this year will change that.
|
| Networking is hard. I'm a guy who came from an immigrant
| family in Brooklyn. I never moved to the West Coast. We
| applied to HN with Qbix every other year since 2011. Never
| even got invited to the interview.
|
| Now, I personally know Noam Chomsky, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew
| Yang, Tim Berners-Les (see the photo at
| https://wefunder.com/Qbix), the Rohingya Project guys,
| Queen Diambi of a tribe in the Congo, the hed of United
| Nations Capital Development Fund, the head of CoinDesk, and
| many more randomly assorted people I met over the years.
| But it took years.
|
| And I still don't know very good VCs. And many VCs still
| look at our open source project as "too big". They prefer
| to invest in small feature companies, which we can now spin
| off from our accelerator.
|
| If you want to introduce me, I'm very happy to take a
| meeting and demo on Zoom.
|
| And if you want to support it, just go to
| https://wefunder.com/Qbix and kick in $100 or something. We
| are gearing up launch the 5th of November this year -- and
| you'll definitely not forget that :)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Well, HTTPS is not end-to-end.
|
| Sure it is. It's just that the "ends" in this case are your
| browser and the web server.
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| Eight years ago I took a whack at building a fully open source
| end-to-end encryption system. This is what I came up with at the
| time:
|
| https://github.com/Spark-Innovations/SC4
|
| It's a bit dated at this point. It doesn't have a ratchet. I did
| implement one, but never got around to integrating it:
|
| https://github.com/rongarret/ratchet-js
|
| I also had an MVP iOS app which was never launched.
|
| The reason I gave up on the project was that no one seemed to be
| interested. I spent several years looking for customers and
| collaborators and basically found nothing. The conclusion I came
| to is that a lot of people complain about the impending end of
| E2EE but very few people are actually willing to do anything
| about it except whine.
| rt4mn wrote:
| > The conclusion I came to is that a lot of people complain
| about the impending end of E2EE but very few people are
| actually willing to do anything about it except whine.
|
| The connection between E2EE and privacy is to ephemeral to make
| that kind of judgment. If you live in the united states or
| similar country with a strong rule of law, the idea of paying
| for or using a specific E2EE app is functionally like asking
| somone to pay for free speech.
|
| And even if it was more clear, privacy is like free speech in
| that you cant really measure enthusiasm for it in that way.
| Free speech and privacy are fundimental values that people dont
| want to pay for (for good reason!). But that does not mean they
| dont care.
|
| People really do care about these things. And many many people
| will change how they vote and how they engage in civic action
| based on these principals. But asking someone to change how
| they live/communicate with others requires more then an
| intelectual "which party / candidate should I vote for?" kind
| of thing. For most people you need emotional investment for
| someone to overcome switching costs based on _nothing_ but
| ethical / political principal.
|
| As long as the _harm_ to losing these core rights remains
| abstract you wont be to measure how much they care with metrics
| like that. Its a value that is too ephemeral and disconnected
| from day-to-day life to measure with a stick like "who will
| use this app".
|
| But people can and do donate to groups like the EFF, and vote
| with their actual votes on this stuff. People really do care.
| Just like how people really do care about honesty, free speech,
| candor, trust, and other values of that sort. its just, you
| know, hard to measure.
| bdominy wrote:
| I agree that people generally don't concern themselves too much
| with how their information is protected. Most people simply
| assume that it already is or that they can't really do much
| about it without giving up a lot of convenience. However, I
| have noticed in specific cases, people do pay attention. In my
| case, I'm protecting contact information while sharing with
| others and most people think it is a great use of e2ee.
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| What is it? Seams like it's an implementation of ecc,but does
| what? A p2p chat? ::Shrugs:: I'm not sure the failure to adopt
| your one elusive product speaks for the entire pop.
| anthk wrote:
| -Delayed personal comms: EMail+GPG
|
| -Realtime chat: Tox. You have it for Android at F-droid and Qtox
| for PC/Linux/Mac.
|
| -Delayed 1-to-many comms: NNTP+I2PD
|
| -Realtime, 1-to-many comms: IRC+I2PD
| webdoodle wrote:
| The coming war? It's been a protracted war since the 1980's. The
| NSA and the FBI have been hazing, threatening, infiltrating, and
| backdooring end-to-end encryption since the early days of PGP.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > backdooring
|
| Name one attempt besides Dual_EC_DRBG. Also could you explain
| why that one took NIST 8 years to say "don't use it".
| cracked-behem wrote:
| Nice! I worked on something that seems similar to this
| (https://redact.ws). Unfortunately there are a lot of challenges
| with adoption that seem difficult to overcome. One of the big
| challenges is that most people do not understand the nuances of
| privacy and encryption, and they aren't willing to jump through
| hoops to protect their data.
| EGreg wrote:
| I like the intent of this! My main question is, how do we know
| redact.ws won't suddenly serve different Javascript one day, to
| certain clients, which send unencrypted payloads somewhere?
| cracked-behem wrote:
| The redact server is an open source application that runs
| locally on the client.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This is fascinating, I was thinking about doing something in a
| similar space. Does past tense "worked" mean you're not still
| working on it?
| cracked-behem wrote:
| Not actively. It's open source so feel free to poke around
| our code and docs, and you can find a contact form on the
| site as well if you want to chat.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| This would be really great if there were an integration for
| dart/flutter. The fact that the API is implemented with such
| elderly stacks is kind of concerning
| EGreg wrote:
| That's an interesting point. I'm the chief architect of the
| company so I can speak to this, and happy to discuss / explore
| alternatives. But keep in mind we don't have deep pockets, it
| took me 10 years of scraping by and paying my developers who
| have their families to support, just to get this far! (If you
| like mwhat we do and you're thinking of supporting us with $100
| or more, feel free here: https://wefunder.com/Qbix)
|
| Wordpress powers 40% of all websites in the world. It's written
| in PHP. Facebook has chosen PHP as well and has helped PHP to
| new heights of performance. PHP 8 with Swoole or simply AmPHP
| now outperforms Node.js for instance, in terms of efficiency.
| But plain old PHP code through php-fpm with enough instances
| can approach 50% of that with no custom coding.
|
| PHP is the most widely deployed runtime for Web2 hosting, and
| EVM is the most widely deployed runtime for Web3 smart
| contracts. We always strived to target the most widely
| supported platforms, so people could find many hosts, or set up
| their own easily.
|
| We will be carefully building out https://qbix.com/ecosystem to
| support hosting in a variety of environments, including with
| _poor and nonexistent internet on commodity computers and wifi
| mesh networks_. We work with groups that range from the
| Rohingya Project to the Forward Party. We often need high-speed
| low-latency multimedia to be available locally, eg for
| educational purposes or planning a dinner.
|
| So why not go with a rock-solid, tried and true platform, and
| maintain backward compatibility? We purposely avoid even the
| latest ECMAScript or PHP 8 syntax, to make sure that Qbix can
| run anywhere, same as Wordpress.
|
| PS: Just like Discourse (another open source project we have
| integrated with and whose community we are friends with) our
| entire platform can be used as a headless REST API, so nothing
| is stopping you from building a front end for it in Flutter or
| React Native or the newest kid on the block: MAUI from
| Microsoft. We bet the company on HTML like Zuckerberg did in
| 2014 and we stuck with it. You don't need to even install an
| app these days -- just go to a site like https://intercoin.app
| or https://yang2020.app and use it. Put it on your home screen
| to get notifications in iOS 16. Use a ContactPicker to invite
| friends privately. Having said that, we do support Cordova
| natively out of the box. Sometimes the old ways are best :)
| EGreg wrote:
| If anyone is wondering what a solution can look like, which can
| strike a balance between privacy and social good, the end of the
| article links to another one:
| https://community.qbix.com/t/balancing-privacy-and-accountab...
| atomicbeanie wrote:
| Any dumbing down of end-to-end encryption will hand Russia and
| China nuclear powered hacking tools for our economy,
| infrastructure and digital integrity. With near peer wars
| ongoing, I would relegate this stuff to a noise filter. The US
| DoD cannot afford encryption to be dumbed down. And they seem to
| understand that.
|
| These initiatives will always exist because there will always be
| people that do not understand what encryption is and what it
| provides. But lots of smart people understand the consequences
| would be catastrophic, and rapid. We cannot eliminate dumb
| politically-motivated ideas.
| UpToTheSky wrote:
| Is the world becoming more and more Orwellian?
|
| Is this a long term trend?
|
| It got pretty much unnoticed on HN, that Europe recently voted to
| make all crypto payments illegal unless the seller collects the
| personal data of the buyer. Independent of the amount. So there
| will be a track record of _everything_ bought via crypto.
|
| Is it only a matter of time until cash is going away globally,
| and states have access to _everything_ their people buy?
|
| Regarding end-2-end encryption: It does not prevent a government
| from reading your messages anyhow. They could instruct Meta (or
| whichever company is in control of the app you use) to send them
| the the messages you write directly from your phone. Or from the
| phone of the receiver. Or to send them the private key from your
| phone. They could also ask Apple or Google to do so, since those
| have acceess to everything on your phone.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >Regarding end-2-end encryption: It does not prevent a
| government from reading your messages anyhow
|
| Yes, e2e in principle does. You are arguing that e2e on
| _specific platforms_ could be wiretapped by government order,
| which is feasible.
|
| I correct this because it's important to be technically correct
| when discussing this in public. E2e the technology is not
| broken.
| waboremo wrote:
| Everything can already be tracked via crypto, that procedure of
| attributing a name to it just makes the process easier.
|
| Additionally, everything you do buy is already tracked. Even
| with cash.
|
| But unlike naysayers, these things already encroaching on our
| lives gives us even more reason to push for stronger E2E
| support as a default. Assuming it's done properly, and not "I
| just need to ask Google for the keys".
| normaler wrote:
| If I buy crypto and posess it in my own wallet afterwards I can
| usw it however. Atleast with monero.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| How will you anonymously collect the groceries you
| anonymously bought?
| [deleted]
| notch898c wrote:
| [flagged]
| nomel wrote:
| I think it would be much more likely that a startup comes
| along and makes the transaction tracking efficient, like with
| a trusted payment app, than finding some way around Orwellian
| government motives.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| Sufficiently advanced satire? Or genuine proposal? Either
| way, I like it.
| notch898c wrote:
| [flagged]
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Yes, because computers and world leaders are getting more
| powerful and everyday citizens are becoming less so.
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