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   Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 10-Apr-2025 05:33:10 JST Matt Blaze

   If you were wondering how my day is going, I'm still being yelled at by Signal groupies who are mad at me for saying the app lacks special features for protecting classified information.

   • feld likes this.
   • Rich Felker and GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 10-Apr-2025 05:33:25 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     For the record:

     - The *cryptography* in Signal is probably fine; a practical attack would be a big surprise.

     - Signal lacks specific features required for classified systems, such as security labels, certified identities, revocation, etc.

     - Signal runs on uncontrolled, insecure platforms connected to the Internet, rendering it unsuitable for classified even if it had the above features.

     - Adding classified features to Signal would make it unusable for most purposes for which it's intended.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 10-Apr-2025 05:33:35 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     I'm not dunking on Signal here (though there *are* some features and usability quirks I dislike). It's probably the best designed and implemented secure messaging platform *for general use* that we've got. I use and rely on Signal quite a bit myself.

     But it's simply not designed for, or suitable for, classified national security communications.

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Thursday, 10-Apr-2025 05:33:53 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     I should also note that when I say the cryptography in Signal is “probably fine; a practical attack would be a big surprise”, that’s about the best we can say about almost all cryptography used in the real world. No strong (not dependent on unproven assumptions) security proofs for much of anything you’d actually want to use.