Signal under fire for storing encryption keys in plaintext on desktop app
Signal under fire for storing encryption keys in plaintext on desktop app
Popular encrypted messaging app Signal is facing criticism over a security issue in its desktop application. Researchers and app users are raising
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While it would certainly be nice to see this addressed, I don't recall Signal ever claiming their desktop app provided encryption at rest. I would also think that anyone worried about that level of privacy would be using disappearing messages and/or regularly wiping their history.
That said, this is just one of the many reasons why whole disk encryption should be the default for all mainstream operating systems today, and why per-app permissions and storage are increasingly important too.
Full disk encryption doesn't help with this threat model at all. A rogue program running on the same machine can still access all the files.
It does help greatly in general though, because all of your data will be encrypted when the device is at rest. Theft and B&Es will no longer present a risk to your privacy.
Per-app permissions address this specific threat model directly. Containerized apps, such as those provided by Flatpak can ensure that apps remain sandboxed and unable to access data without explicit authorization.
Does encrypting your disks change something for the end user in day to day usage? I'm honest, I've never used encrypted disks in my life.
Whole disk encryption wouldn't change your daily usage, no. It just means that when you boot your PC you have to enter your passphrase. And if your device becomes unbootable for whatever reason, and you want to access your drive, you'll just have to decrypt it first to be able to read it/write to it, e.g. if you want to rescue files from a bricked computer. But there's no reason not to encrypt your drive. I can't think of any downsides.
If any part of the data gets corrupted you lose the whole thing. Recovery tools can't work with partially corrupted encrypted data.
I don't think that's a big deal with Signal data. You can log back into your account, you'd just lose your messages. idk how most people use Signal but I have disappearing messages on for everything anyway, and if a message is that important to you then back it up.
No, the average user will never know the difference. I couldn't tell you exactly what the current performance impact is for hardware encryption, but it's likely around 1-4% depending on the platform (I use LUKS under Linux).
For gamers, it's likely a 1-5 FPS loss, depending on your hardware, which is negligible in my experience. I play mostly first and third person shooter-style games at 1440p/120hz, targeting 60-90 FPS, and there's no noticeable impact (Ryzen 5600 / RX 6800XT).
If it has to go to disk for immediate loading of assets while playing a video game you're losing more than 1-5 fps
Maybe, but not every frame while you're playing. No game is loading gigs of data every frame. That would be the only way most encryption algorithms would slow you down.
You're more likely going to get stuttering or asset streaming issues which are going to have more impact than losing a few fps.
Yeah was thinking about that (edited to add immediate) -- games are certainly background loading nowadays but the stuff needed is intended to be in ram by the time it's needed, afaik.
Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of variables there. I can only say that in my experience, I noticed zero impact to gaming performance when I started encrypting everything about 10 years ago. No stuttering or noticeable frame loss. It was a seamless experience and brings real peace of mind knowing that our financial info, photos, and other sensitive files are safely locked away.
For sure I'm just saying i'd guess that's because at play time you're loading everything into ram. For bulk loading I would encryption perf follows the general use case.
(Tldr encryption shouldn't matter for games)
For gamers, it’s likely a 1-5 FPS loss
I highly doubt it... would love to see some hard data on that. Most algorithms used for disk encryption these days are already faster than RAM, and most games are not reading gigabytes/sec from the disk every frame during gameplay for this to ever matter.
It's transparent for end user basically, but protects the laptop at least when outside and if someone steals the computer. As long as it was properly shutdown.
Define properly shut down. Do your thieves usually ask first?
I think they're just referring to an outdated concept of OSes with non-journaling filesystems that can cause data corruption if the disk is shut off abruptly, which in theory could corrupt the entire disk at once if it was encrypted at a device level. But FDE was never used in the time of such filesystems anyways.
If you suspend the laptop when moving locations instead of shutting down or hibernating to disk then disk encryption is useless.
Most operating systems will require your desktop password upon resume, and most thieves are low-functioning drug users who are not about to go Hacker Man on your laptop. They will most likely just wipe the system and install something else; if they can even figure that out.
It depends on how you set it up. I think the default in some cases (like Windows Bitlocker) is to store the key in TPM, so everything becomes transparent to the user at that point, although many disagree with this method for privacy/security reasons.
The other method is to provide a password or keyfile during bootup, which does change something for the end user somewhat.
Exactly.
I'll admit to being lazy and not enabling encryption on my Windows laptops. But if I deployed something for someone, it would be encrypted.
I don’t recall Signal ever claiming their desktop app provided encryption at rest.
I'm not sure if they've claimed that, but it does that using SQLCipher.