The Signal bridge reliability issues could probably be resolved with some development time and enough people running bridges and submitting feedback.
The security architecture is fine IF (and only if) everyone runs their own personal Signal bridge. This is a critical point because if the bridge is run by someone else, they can see all your Signal messages. As a server admin, I don't want that! It goes against my philosophy and puts my users at risk if the server were ever to be compromised.
It might be possible to give a Matrix bridge your Signal API key so it can fetch encrypted messages from Signal's centralized server, wrap that ciphertext in a Matrix message, have each of the clients decrypt the Matrix message to get the Signal ciphertext, and then decrypt the Signal ciphertext. This would require major changes to the bridge, and to the clients, and optionally changes to the protocol to inform the clients that this message is a wrapped Signal message so it can make it appear from the correct sender (who doesn't have a Matrix account).
So it's similar to the Lightning Network in many ways. As long as everyone maintains their own server, it's great. If you're not running your own server... it gets a lot more tricky and requires a lot more development.
I'm just not interested in putting in that amount of effort. It'd be hard to even pay me enough to do that (I'd say you couldn't pay me enough, but if someone threw a stupid amount on money in my face, I'd probably agree to it). If a team wants to give it a go, I'd be happy to consult for them. For free.
I do think it'd be a huge step forward to have an open protocol that could tie together all these e2ee messengers (Briar, Signal, SimpleX, Session, Tox, Secure Scuttlebutt, Wire, Matrix, etc.). It'd be a giant leap forward even if it's just bridging Matrix to each of these other systems (and not allowing crazy stuff like a single message going from Signal -> Matrix -> Briar to allow Signal users to talk to people on Briar).
Dr. Hax
npub16v…meqha
2024-08-13 07:42:19
in reply to nevent1q…q64c
Author Public Key
npub16v82nr4xt62nlydtj0mtxr49r6enc5r0sl2f7cq2zwdw7q92j5gs8meqhaPublished at
2024-08-13 07:42:19Event JSON
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"content": "The Signal bridge reliability issues could probably be resolved with some development time and enough people running bridges and submitting feedback.\n\nThe security architecture is fine IF (and only if) everyone runs their own personal Signal bridge. This is a critical point because if the bridge is run by someone else, they can see all your Signal messages. As a server admin, I don't want that! It goes against my philosophy and puts my users at risk if the server were ever to be compromised.\n\nIt might be possible to give a Matrix bridge your Signal API key so it can fetch encrypted messages from Signal's centralized server, wrap that ciphertext in a Matrix message, have each of the clients decrypt the Matrix message to get the Signal ciphertext, and then decrypt the Signal ciphertext. This would require major changes to the bridge, and to the clients, and optionally changes to the protocol to inform the clients that this message is a wrapped Signal message so it can make it appear from the correct sender (who doesn't have a Matrix account).\n\nSo it's similar to the Lightning Network in many ways. As long as everyone maintains their own server, it's great. If you're not running your own server... it gets a lot more tricky and requires a lot more development.\n\nI'm just not interested in putting in that amount of effort. It'd be hard to even pay me enough to do that (I'd say you couldn't pay me enough, but if someone threw a stupid amount on money in my face, I'd probably agree to it). If a team wants to give it a go, I'd be happy to consult for them. For free.\n\nI do think it'd be a huge step forward to have an open protocol that could tie together all these e2ee messengers (Briar, Signal, SimpleX, Session, Tox, Secure Scuttlebutt, Wire, Matrix, etc.). It'd be a giant leap forward even if it's just bridging Matrix to each of these other systems (and not allowing crazy stuff like a single message going from Signal -\u003e Matrix -\u003e Briar to allow Signal users to talk to people on Briar).",
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