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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • There is no downside to nested encryption, except of course the performance overhead. But this only really makes sense if each layer has an independent key and each layer uses an algorithm from a different family. Improper key reuse weakens the scheme.

    For symmetric cryptography like AES the benefit is dubious. It is far more likely that the content is decrypted because the key was acquired independently than that AES would be broken.

    However, there absolutely is a benefit for asymmetric crypto and key agreement schemes. This is how current Post-Quantum Cryptography schemes work, because:

    • commonly used algorithm families like RSA and Elliptic-Cuve will be broken as soon as a sufficiently large quantum computer exist
    • proposed PQC algorithms are comparatively immature, and some of them will be broken in the near future

    Nesting one algorithm from each family gives us the best of both worlds, at a performance overhead: conventional asymmetric cryptography give us temporary security in the near future, and the second PQC layer gives us a chance at long-term security.


  • Domains mit Unicode/Sonderzeichen sind doof.

    Aus Gründen der Sicherheit und Kompatibilität werden Domain-Namen mit nicht-ASCII Zeichen tatsächlich via Punycode notiert, der echte Domain-Name ist dann xn--irgendwas. Zum Beispiel,

    dömäin.example
    =
    xn--dmin-moa0i.example
    

    Das sieht einfach doof aus wenn der Browser letzteres anzeigt, egal ob dein Link jetzt schöne Sonderzeichen haben könnte.

    Das Browser das machen ist extrem wichtig zur Vermeidung von “Homograph”-Angriffen, bei der Phisher eine Domain registrieren die so ähnlich aussieht wie irgendwas bekanntes, aber in Wirklichkeit Sonderzeichen benutzt. Wann Browser Unicode oder Punycode anzeigen unterscheidet sich nach verschiedenen Heuristiken. Der einzige zuverlässige Ansatz für Domains die immer gleich angezeigt werden ist ASCII.


  • For a project like Signal, there are competing aspects of security:

    • privacy and anonymity: keep as little identifiable information around as possible. This can be a life or death thing under repressive governments.

    • safety and anti-abuse: reliably block bad actors such as spammers, and make it possible for users to reliably block specific people (e.g. a creepy stalker). This is really important for Signal to have a chance at mass appeal (which in turn makes it less suspicious to have Signal installed).

    Phone number verification is the state of the art approach to make it more expensive for bad actors to create thousands of burner accounts, at the cost of preventing fully anonymous participation (depending on the difficulty of getting a prepaid SIM in your country).

    Signal points out that sending verification SMS is actually one of its largest cost centers, currently accounting for 6M USD out of their 14M USD infrastructure budget: https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/

    I’m sure they would be thrilled if there were cheaper anti-abuse measures.


  • This article is ahistoric and unnecessarily conspirational.

    Signal and its predecessors like TextSecure have been run by different companies/organizations:

    • Whisper Systems
    • Open Whisper Systems
    • Signal Technology Foundation (and its subsidiary Signal Messenger LLC)

    Open Whisper Systems received about 3M USD total from the US government via the Open Technology Fund for the purpose of technology development … during 2013 to 2016. Source: archive of the OTF website: https://web.archive.org/web/20221015073552/https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/open-whisper-systems/

    The Signal Foundation (founded 2018) was started by an 105M USD interest free loan from Brian Acton, known for co-founding WhatsApp and selling it to Facebook (now Meta).

    So important key insights:

    • It doesn’t seem like the Signal Foundation received US government funding. (Though I haven’t checked financial statements.)
    • The US government funding seems to be a thing of the fairly distant past (2016). The article makes it sound like the funding was just pulled this year.
    • The US government funding was small compared to Signal’s current annual budget. It was not small at the time, but now Signal regularly makes more from licensing its technology than it regularly received from the US government. According to ProPublica, Signals financial statements for 2022 indicate revenue of about 26M USD

  • Lade-Funktionen wo es Probleme geben konnte gab es tatsächlich, sind aber in unserer schönen neuen Lithium-Ionen und USB-C Welt ziemlich rar. Die Geräte verbinden sich per USB und verhandeln dann miteinander wie sie am besten laden werden.

    Nun ist eher dass Problem dass Ladegerät, Kabel, und Smartphone alle zueinander passen müssen weil sonst der kleinste gemeinsame Nenner aus USB 2.0 oder so genutzt wird: langsames Laden mit bis zu 7.5W oder 15W bei USB-C.

    Langsam laden ist nicht schlimm, ist sowieso viel besser für den Akku als irgendein Fast Charge.

    Für das schnelle Laden gibt es leider viele verschiedene Standards. Hersteller von Ladegeräten bewerben aber meist welche Smartphone-Modelle sie unterstützen. Die wichtigsten Standards sind:

    • QuickCharge, ein proprietäres Protokoll von Qualcom
    • USB Power Delivery (USB PD)

    Viele Hersteller haben QuickCharge kompatible Ladeprotokolle.