getting hacked in just 20 minutes due to a basic misconfiguration is alarming!
But not surprising.
Not to mention TeleMessage violated the terms of the GPL. Signal is under gpl and I can’t find TeleMessage’s code anywhere.
Edit: it appears it is online somewhere just not in a github repo or anything
https://micahflee.com/heres-the-source-code-for-the-unofficial-signal-app-used-by-trump-officials/
violated the terms of the GPL
Well we don’t know that, the terms say that you need to make the source available to people who got the binary. Either ship them together or ship a written offer for obtaining the source with the binary. You do not have to make the source available to the public (but any of your customers later could).
To verify your claim we would have to get the binary from them, and check if source or an offer for it was included.
Edit: The above is true for GPL2, but it seems Signal is under GPL3, in which distribution of offers of source have been curtailed a bit compared to GPL2, if I’m reading Section 6 here right
I’m pretty sure that the licence also requires that you link to the source code. You can’t just have it up “somewhere” and just expect people to find it.
Yep. Relevant sentence bolded by me below
6d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
The requirement in the licence is that the source code or a link to it is distributed along with the binaries
“yeah my code is open source, it’s somewhere on this site I’m just not gonna tell you where it is.”
They sound staggeringly incompetent. And anyone who bought their software without any investigation into its quality also sounds staggeringly incompetent. Apparently there’s a lot of it going around.
In the 1980s the trend of the day was patriotism.
In the 1990s the trend of the day was being a rebel.
In the 2000s, there started to become a divide on what the trend ofthe day was. You were either pro patriotism/pro war…or, you were anti war/pro protesting. At least in the USA.
2010s the trend of the day was culture wars and division.
2020s, the trend of the day seems to be batshit lunacy and mindnumbing stupidity.
It’s 2025. We have 5 more years to go. And with trump having 4 more of those years, I expect no change there.
God I hope the 2030s bring some kind of sanity, unity, and enlightenment.
Or, barring that, I’d also settle for UFOs visiting earth and allowing humans to leave earth. I mean seriously. How bad could other planets be, right? I mean their species is clearly more advanced then ours. I figure humans had their shot. Now I’ll roll the dice and give these grey guys a shot, right? What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
And hey, if they’re the anal probe kind of aliens, that’s just a bonus…uhhhh…I mean…what? No no, I didn’t say that. I’m just some random straight dude looking to leave this planet with some grey dudes I just met.
Here’s a link to the original article (from the same author) on the platform you should actually subscribe to.
https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-uses-was-hacked/
404 has a partnership with Wired. They are both great publications; I subscribe to both. So reading this work on Wired supports 404
Big 404 fan, but “original” is misleading. “First article on this topic” is more accurate. OPs link is arguably more interesting.
You might enjoy the full blog post from the author:
Mmmm that’s the stuff.
The Wired article is not based on the 404 article. This one goes into detail about the mechanics of the hack.
Non-paywall: https://archive.is/qwonI
How is archive working in general? Did you create this copy benevolently because you are a subscriber, or did someone else do it? How do you find such link then? Thanks
Websites publish the full article so that search engines and news readers pick it up, but then hide it with JavaScript so humans can’t see it. The archive doesn’t run JavaScript so it doesn’t get the blocked version
Good that the most powerful people in the world use it then
works in almost exactly the same way as Signal, except that it also archives copies of all the messages passing through it, shattering all of its security guarantees.
Pretty sure Signal does that as well, which is not a security issue.
Signal uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE). The only copies of messages are on the sender’s and recipient’s devices.
Copies of messages are also known as archives.
Signal does not archive messages on server side
They weren’t talking about the server:
This app…works in almost exactly the same way as Signal, except that it also archives copies of all the messages passing through it, shattering all of its security guarantees.
Later in the article, it talks specifically about the server-side archives being stored in plain text. That’s why the hacker was able to access messages. This isn’t about the local copies on phones.
Yeah I didn’t read past the misinformation
Kinda seems like you’re the misinformation.
Maybe you should start reading up on stuff you don’t know about before adding nonsense to internet threads.
It’s why Molly has local database encryption.
That doesn’t really do anything. Attackers need local access to the device to get the database itself. Chances are, they’ll get the key right with it.
Molly encrypts it using a passphrase instead of a locally stored key for exactly that reason.
The only backup option I see for Signal is through Android, but it’s optional. There is no backup support for iOS or desktop.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Backup-and-Restore-Messages
