6 ms·

Talk – Smart, Private Messaging

42 points by szimpl 12y ago

pzxc 12y ago
If they really took our privacy seriously, they'd have a retention period of zero instead of 24 hours.
- gregbarbosa 12y ago
  I think the reasoning they are shooting for 24 is because their application seems to be based around contextual conversation. Having a retention period of zero pretty much eliminates context. Apps like Snapchat, deleting the message as soon as it's viewed, wouldn't work when you want to apply a ton of context in the conversation. Too often I'm having a "conversation" on Snapchat but it's more like small snippets of text and a lot of me questioning what the other person said a few hours ago.
  - schrodinger 12y ago
    They're referring to retention on the server, not the phone I believe. The phone could store the message indefinitely even if the server didn't. The server just needs to hold it long enough for your device (devices?) to download it.
- paulgb 12y ago
  If they really took privacy seriously they wouldn't be able to decipher the message even as it passed through their servers. There are already apps that make end-to-end encryption user friendly (Telegram comes to mind).
  - klinquist 12y ago
    Supposedly Apple can't decipher iMessages: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how-secure-imessage-really-is/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how-...
    - x1798DE 12y ago
      >When someone starts an iMessage conversation with you, they fetch your public key(s) from Apple’s servers. Before that message leaves the sender’s device, it’s encrypted into something that only your device knows how to decrypt. From the article, that's the part where Apple could MITM the communication, because public keys retrieved from Apple would be automatically trusted. They can just silently inject an extra public key for which they have the private key. That said, it seems like the protocol at least has forward secrecy, meaning that if they didn't inject a bad key when the message was sent, there's not much they can do later to decrypt the message (unless they have a backdoor that allows them to force your phone to send them its private key)
  - LeoPanthera 12y ago
    Even iMessage uses end-to-end encryption. It's a pretty poor sign if it's less secure than the service already built into the phone. (And yeah I know iMessage isn't open source and so this is difficult to verify, but "Talk" isn't open either. Apple published a big PDF about how they do encryption - if this were proved to be false it would destroy all trust in Apple forever, so I believe what they say.) Big PDF: http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1... (See page 20) tl;dr: "Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
    - paulgb 12y ago
      Interesting, did not know that. Apple is still in a position to MITM the transaction if they wanted though (Telegram provides a key visualization that can be compared offline to prevent this)
      - mahyarm 12y ago
        Unless telegram changed their protocol recently, it's a fundementally flawed design. Telegram can also MITM you with their design too.
howeyc 12y ago
Maybe I don't understand, but why even have messages retained on the server at all? Couldn't the local app keep them stored on the phone? Also, does anyone know if they're encrypted at all. In this day and age isn't that a requirement for them to be considered private?
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "Maybe I don't understand, but why even have messages retained on the server at all? Couldn't the local app keep them stored on the phone?" People use multiple devices. People get new devices.
- schrodinger 12y ago
  What if the other phone is off at the time? You kind of need a server to act as a buffer. No reason why it couldn't be client side encrypted though... iMessage does that.
  - lttlrck 12y ago
    the sender can do that.
    - thenipper 12y ago
      What if the sender is offline when the receiver signs back on? Does the message not get sent?
      - Spearchucker 12y ago
        You'd use a basic store/forward protocol. Sender sends message to a zero-knowledge server. If the sender has no network the encrypted message is stored locally, on the client device until the server can be reached. Similarly, the recipient polls the server for new messages only when online. Any messages accumulated by the server since the last sync are downloaded. That's the easy part. More interesting is the key exchange that needs to take place between sender and recipient for them to exchange messages securely. The idea being that both parties each create a public/private key pair for each other, and then use each others public key to encrypt the symmetric key that decrypts messages. Straight-forward enough. The problem here is when you want to exchange messages with Bob, you need to know that you have the real Bob's public key, and not an imposter's key. While an in-person, meatspace exchange will give you the assurance you need, that's not always practical. Here's a bit more detail on how you might engineer the key exchange: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needham-Schroeder_protocol http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needham-Schroeder_protocol
ceejayoz 12y ago
Given Path's history... nope. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4286090/path-is-spamming-address-books-with-unwanted-texts-and-robocalls http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4286090/path-is-spamming-a...
dmix 12y ago
"Deleted from our server" assumes the user has no understanding of data forensics. We really need TextSecure on iOS soon to stop the proliferation of all of these silly privacy apps. There needs to be a strong cross-platform alternative.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  How about Wickr? https://www.mywickr.com/ https://www.mywickr.com/
  - 0xeeeeeeee 12y ago
    TextSecure is very open about the crypto protocol and provides details that independent researchers can evaluate. It's also made by a well-known expert that we trust to do it right. Wickr is pretty shady about their protocol. They also make me uneasy because they use the term "military-grade encryption" a couple times on their site. This is a pretty common snake-oil security term...so it makes me uneasy since the protocol details are nowhere to be found.
- jmuguy 12y ago
  Here here, I go through a range of emotions each time I see a new messaging app and they always end with me checking the WhisperSystems blog.
  - yeleti 12y ago
    True, i remember the whispersystems fanboys trolling all over the telegram.org founders.
johnchristopher 12y ago
I don't understand why the new chat protocols and clients focus solely on mobile (phone?) platforms. Why aren't there more desktop clients ?
- _august 12y ago
  Absolutely. All the messaging platforms I regularly use have a way to use them on the desktop. Facebook, Google Hangouts, Google Voice and Telegram.
- yoshyosh 12y ago
  Next time you are out, check out what most people are doing on their phones. SMS dominates usage so much. Most people don't use desktop chat outside of tech
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    I don't own a smartphone and I use SMS a lot. But I barely use online chat system nowadays (MSN/AIM used to be the rage within my peers circle but it's now gone and fb chat or g+hangout didn't replace it).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
humpolec 12y ago
Any plans to support XMPP, or is this another closed platform?
- azinman2 12y ago
  Do you even need to ask? :)
dchuk 12y ago
Does Path have any interest at all in making money so they can, ya know, become a real business? Or are they just another participant in the big-VC social network app ponzi scheme?
- eswat 12y ago
  I addressed this in another comment, but the ability to message businesses that they are rolling out in the summer would be their gateway to actually making money (businesses want to hear feedback about themselves but there aren’t many solutions that address this well yet).
  - jljljl 12y ago
    Don't businesses already get a lot of this through Twitter, Facebook, Get Satisfaction, and other sources?
    - eswat 12y ago
      This is all public though. Given Path is a "private" social network then if businesses can resolve issues without getting into a public mess, talking to the customer in a private tunnel in a sense, it’s easier to diffuse situations.
  - dchuk 12y ago
    Huh? Isn't Path all about small private social networks? What the heck does business feedback have to do with anything?
    - eswat 12y ago
      Path acquired a company that deals only in business feedback and say they’re rolling out their tech - even if they don’t plainly say it - in the summer (check the bottom of the talk page). Just because they’re dealing with private social networks now doesn’t mean they can’t tap into another market, especially now when the private social network thing doesn’t seem to be working out for them. http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto
skrebbel 12y ago
Does anyone know the reasoning behind this? Off the feature list, it seems like it has little more to offer than Whatsapp, and easy worse platform support..
- eswat 12y ago
  They also acquired TalkTo, a startup that lets you chat to business. The ability to talk to your friends using Talk is just a trojan horse to connecting you with businesses later on, where real money would be made. http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto
neil1 12y ago
The app's restaurants messaging comes from a startup path acquired, talkto.
Globz 12y ago
Id rather use Yo.
cabalamat 12y ago
> We take your privacy seriously. That's a funny way of spelling "we will give all your data to the NSA". If they really cared about my privacy, then their app would encrypt the data on the way out and automatically decrypt it by the receiver, so that any information on their servers would be unreadable. Oh and their app would also be open source.

42 points by szimpl 12y ago

pzxc 12y ago

If they really took our privacy seriously, they'd have a retention period of zero instead of 24 hours.

gregbarbosa 12y ago
I think the reasoning they are shooting for 24 is because their application seems to be based around contextual conversation. Having a retention period of zero pretty much eliminates context. Apps like Snapchat, deleting the message as soon as it's viewed, wouldn't work when you want to apply a ton of context in the conversation. Too often I'm having a "conversation" on Snapchat but it's more like small snippets of text and a lot of me questioning what the other person said a few hours ago.
- schrodinger 12y ago
  They're referring to retention on the server, not the phone I believe. The phone could store the message indefinitely even if the server didn't. The server just needs to hold it long enough for your device (devices?) to download it.
paulgb 12y ago
If they really took privacy seriously they wouldn't be able to decipher the message even as it passed through their servers. There are already apps that make end-to-end encryption user friendly (Telegram comes to mind).
- klinquist 12y ago
  Supposedly Apple can't decipher iMessages: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how-secure-imessage-really-is/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/apple-explains-exactly-how-...
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    >When someone starts an iMessage conversation with you, they fetch your public key(s) from Apple’s servers. Before that message leaves the sender’s device, it’s encrypted into something that only your device knows how to decrypt. From the article, that's the part where Apple could MITM the communication, because public keys retrieved from Apple would be automatically trusted. They can just silently inject an extra public key for which they have the private key. That said, it seems like the protocol at least has forward secrecy, meaning that if they didn't inject a bad key when the message was sent, there's not much they can do later to decrypt the message (unless they have a backdoor that allows them to force your phone to send them its private key)
- LeoPanthera 12y ago
  Even iMessage uses end-to-end encryption. It's a pretty poor sign if it's less secure than the service already built into the phone. (And yeah I know iMessage isn't open source and so this is difficult to verify, but "Talk" isn't open either. Apple published a big PDF about how they do encryption - if this were proved to be false it would destroy all trust in Apple forever, so I believe what they say.) Big PDF: http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb1... (See page 20) tl;dr: "Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
  - paulgb 12y ago
    Interesting, did not know that. Apple is still in a position to MITM the transaction if they wanted though (Telegram provides a key visualization that can be compared offline to prevent this)
    - mahyarm 12y ago
      Unless telegram changed their protocol recently, it's a fundementally flawed design. Telegram can also MITM you with their design too.

howeyc 12y ago

Maybe I don't understand, but why even have messages retained on the server at all? Couldn't the local app keep them stored on the phone? Also, does anyone know if they're encrypted at all. In this day and age isn't that a requirement for them to be considered private?

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "Maybe I don't understand, but why even have messages retained on the server at all? Couldn't the local app keep them stored on the phone?" People use multiple devices. People get new devices.
schrodinger 12y ago
What if the other phone is off at the time? You kind of need a server to act as a buffer. No reason why it couldn't be client side encrypted though... iMessage does that.
- lttlrck 12y ago
  the sender can do that.
  - thenipper 12y ago
    What if the sender is offline when the receiver signs back on? Does the message not get sent?
    - Spearchucker 12y ago
      You'd use a basic store/forward protocol. Sender sends message to a zero-knowledge server. If the sender has no network the encrypted message is stored locally, on the client device until the server can be reached. Similarly, the recipient polls the server for new messages only when online. Any messages accumulated by the server since the last sync are downloaded. That's the easy part. More interesting is the key exchange that needs to take place between sender and recipient for them to exchange messages securely. The idea being that both parties each create a public/private key pair for each other, and then use each others public key to encrypt the symmetric key that decrypts messages. Straight-forward enough. The problem here is when you want to exchange messages with Bob, you need to know that you have the real Bob's public key, and not an imposter's key. While an in-person, meatspace exchange will give you the assurance you need, that's not always practical. Here's a bit more detail on how you might engineer the key exchange: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needham-Schroeder_protocol http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needham-Schroeder_protocol

ceejayoz 12y ago

Given Path's history... nope. http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4286090/path-is-spamming-address-books-with-unwanted-texts-and-robocalls http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4286090/path-is-spamming-a...

dmix 12y ago

"Deleted from our server" assumes the user has no understanding of data forensics. We really need TextSecure on iOS soon to stop the proliferation of all of these silly privacy apps. There needs to be a strong cross-platform alternative.

wlesieutre 12y ago
How about Wickr? https://www.mywickr.com/ https://www.mywickr.com/
- 0xeeeeeeee 12y ago
  TextSecure is very open about the crypto protocol and provides details that independent researchers can evaluate. It's also made by a well-known expert that we trust to do it right. Wickr is pretty shady about their protocol. They also make me uneasy because they use the term "military-grade encryption" a couple times on their site. This is a pretty common snake-oil security term...so it makes me uneasy since the protocol details are nowhere to be found.
jmuguy 12y ago
Here here, I go through a range of emotions each time I see a new messaging app and they always end with me checking the WhisperSystems blog.
- yeleti 12y ago
  True, i remember the whispersystems fanboys trolling all over the telegram.org founders.

johnchristopher 12y ago

I don't understand why the new chat protocols and clients focus solely on mobile (phone?) platforms. Why aren't there more desktop clients ?

_august 12y ago
Absolutely. All the messaging platforms I regularly use have a way to use them on the desktop. Facebook, Google Hangouts, Google Voice and Telegram.
yoshyosh 12y ago
Next time you are out, check out what most people are doing on their phones. SMS dominates usage so much. Most people don't use desktop chat outside of tech
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  I don't own a smartphone and I use SMS a lot. But I barely use online chat system nowadays (MSN/AIM used to be the rage within my peers circle but it's now gone and fb chat or g+hangout didn't replace it).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

humpolec 12y ago

Any plans to support XMPP, or is this another closed platform?

azinman2 12y ago
Do you even need to ask? :)

dchuk 12y ago

Does Path have any interest at all in making money so they can, ya know, become a real business? Or are they just another participant in the big-VC social network app ponzi scheme?

eswat 12y ago
I addressed this in another comment, but the ability to message businesses that they are rolling out in the summer would be their gateway to actually making money (businesses want to hear feedback about themselves but there aren’t many solutions that address this well yet).
- jljljl 12y ago
  Don't businesses already get a lot of this through Twitter, Facebook, Get Satisfaction, and other sources?
  - eswat 12y ago
    This is all public though. Given Path is a "private" social network then if businesses can resolve issues without getting into a public mess, talking to the customer in a private tunnel in a sense, it’s easier to diffuse situations.
- dchuk 12y ago
  Huh? Isn't Path all about small private social networks? What the heck does business feedback have to do with anything?
  - eswat 12y ago
    Path acquired a company that deals only in business feedback and say they’re rolling out their tech - even if they don’t plainly say it - in the summer (check the bottom of the talk page). Just because they’re dealing with private social networks now doesn’t mean they can’t tap into another market, especially now when the private social network thing doesn’t seem to be working out for them. http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto

skrebbel 12y ago

Does anyone know the reasoning behind this? Off the feature list, it seems like it has little more to offer than Whatsapp, and easy worse platform support..

eswat 12y ago
They also acquired TalkTo, a startup that lets you chat to business. The ability to talk to your friends using Talk is just a trojan horse to connecting you with businesses later on, where real money would be made. http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto http://blog.path.com/post/89363978092/path-talkto

neil1 12y ago

The app's restaurants messaging comes from a startup path acquired, talkto.

Globz 12y ago

Id rather use Yo.

cabalamat 12y ago

> We take your privacy seriously. That's a funny way of spelling "we will give all your data to the NSA". If they really cared about my privacy, then their app would encrypt the data on the way out and automatically decrypt it by the receiver, so that any information on their servers would be unreadable. Oh and their app would also be open source.