oo I got pinged when you wrote my name (I think?). Good to know that’s how that works. I agree that as it stands we’re nowhere close to proper encryption on DMs - we shouldn’t even try to be implementing half-measures as a stand-in. I would guess that the best option would be to put a warning above DMs saying “this isn’t encrypted, the instance owner can read what you write, if you want encrypted conversation use e.g. Matrix or Signal”. I know that there’s a slot for a Matrix username on my Lemmy profile, so there might even be some potential for integration there.
On the topic of “everyone has their own requirements”, Soatok actually says the following in their article:
The answer is simple: I do not trust Megolm, the protocol designed for Matrix.
Megolm has benefited from amateur review for four years. Non-cryptographers will confuse this observation with the proposition that Matrix has benefited from peer review for four years. Those are two different propositions.
In fact, the first time someone with cryptography expertise bothered to look at Matrix for more than a glance, they found critical vulnerabilities in its design. These are the kinds of vulnerabilities that are not easily mitigated, and should be kept in mind when designing a new protocol.
Most (all?) of these vulnerabilities have since been fixed, but it goes to show that even a titan like Matrix still cannot be trusted to handle perfect encryption.
It looks like Soatok’s proposal has been stalled on their github (probably because they got busy with something else in the meantime).
Not sure if this will ping correctly since their handle is from mastodon but @[email protected] if you care to share any thoughts on this topic (E2EE DMs w/ ActivityPub) since your blog post was referenced. I’m not even close to being good at cryptography so forgive anything stupid I said
Edit: Actually it looks like the language I proposed is already there:
completely agreed wrt your reply. encryption is serious business and I am pretty sure that physicists will eventually discover a fundamental law of the universe already known to mathematicians - “never roll your own”.
having said that, we do have examples of state of the art trustless key distribution and encryption frameworks that are believe to be robust. adapting a suitable fedi e2ee framework is likely quite some time away, but I think it is something that should be on the radar and gently agitated for - at least to keep the underlying activitypub protocol agnostic to it during continued buildout.
anyone reading this thread and interested in possible federated e2ee should take a look at the excellent article that you highlighted. it starts a thought process and gives an entry point for contribution and collaboration. again, thanks for sharing, it was a great read.
oo I got pinged when you wrote my name (I think?). Good to know that’s how that works. I agree that as it stands we’re nowhere close to proper encryption on DMs - we shouldn’t even try to be implementing half-measures as a stand-in. I would guess that the best option would be to put a warning above DMs saying “this isn’t encrypted, the instance owner can read what you write, if you want encrypted conversation use e.g. Matrix or Signal”. I know that there’s a slot for a Matrix username on my Lemmy profile, so there might even be some potential for integration there.
On the topic of “everyone has their own requirements”, Soatok actually says the following in their article:
Most (all?) of these vulnerabilities have since been fixed, but it goes to show that even a titan like Matrix still cannot be trusted to handle perfect encryption.
It looks like Soatok’s proposal has been stalled on their github (probably because they got busy with something else in the meantime).
Not sure if this will ping correctly since their handle is from mastodon but @[email protected] if you care to share any thoughts on this topic (E2EE DMs w/ ActivityPub) since your blog post was referenced. I’m not even close to being good at cryptography so forgive anything stupid I said
Edit: Actually it looks like the language I proposed is already there:
completely agreed wrt your reply. encryption is serious business and I am pretty sure that physicists will eventually discover a fundamental law of the universe already known to mathematicians - “never roll your own”.
having said that, we do have examples of state of the art trustless key distribution and encryption frameworks that are believe to be robust. adapting a suitable fedi e2ee framework is likely quite some time away, but I think it is something that should be on the radar and gently agitated for - at least to keep the underlying activitypub protocol agnostic to it during continued buildout.
anyone reading this thread and interested in possible federated e2ee should take a look at the excellent article that you highlighted. it starts a thought process and gives an entry point for contribution and collaboration. again, thanks for sharing, it was a great read.