Thread 106570204

is Briar secure? People often talk about
>Signal
>Session
>SimpleX
as "secure IM apps" but no one really mentions Briar. Is there anything that makes it unusable for normal communication?

>>106570204 (OP)
I use it everyday, but only with people I know in real life since your id is generated from phone-specific information. Also no file transfers just yet, save for low quality recompressed images. For a text messenger, it don't get much better than Briar.

>>106570204 (OP)
There's no "secure IM apps" nor else, unless you exactly know how it works and what it does at each moment, down to the metal itself. Everything that claims to be secure should be treated as false advertising.

There were some issues with its encryption, but AFAIK they were fixed in 2023. Haven't seen much criticism of it since then other than from the GrapheneOS project. They never got into detail so I don't know why they don't recommended it in its current iteration. You can't really go wrong with the 3 you mentioned though.

>>106570271
>nothing is secure
how do you encrypt shit then?
>You can't really go wrong with the 3 you mentioned though.
SimpleX looks really rough and unstable desu

>>106570297
forgot to quote >>106570273

>>106570271
This is irrational. Under those standards, you cannot trust anything or anybody for any reason. There aren't any obvious backdoors in the code and I have yet to hear about anybody being de-anonymized because of Briar itself malfunctioning.

>>106570273
Anything centralized is pozzed.

>>106570204 (OP)
I think the reason for that is because it is not really meant to be used by normies. Briar runs over the Tor network is generally marketed as a tool used by activists and journalists.

I don't think that it will ever become popular the same way Signal did amongst privacy enthusiasts simply because it is limited in it's functionality (text only) and it also presents itself as a "Tor messenger" that is made for people who seek privacy above all else without care for basic functionality like push notifications, proper file sharing, video etc. It also isn't available on iOS so that's one big market from which the app is missing.

All in all, best we can do is hope it gets more popular since I believe that it's the only proper decentralized messaging platform right now.
>inb4 XMPP gets mentioned
I don't believe that XMPP messaging clients will ever get popular. Most people don't even know what XMPP is.

>>106570204 (OP)
>is Briar secure?
>p2p
into the trash it goes, p2p is godsent for glowies as it makes their job dramatically easier to link users between themselves and to conduct behavior/timing analysis.
p2p only use case is to download movie and world of warcraft udpates, anything else is honeypot.
a server in moldavia or ouzbhekistan is infinitely more secure/private than any p2p shitness that leak users ip for no good reason, my contacts have 0 legitimate reason to know my ip, why the fuck would I leak it? a no-log third-party in mutt hostile country is better, that's what criminals and glowies alike are doing to run botnet, psyops and covert operation, they don't use p2p for this, taht tells you all you need to know about it.
>Signal
the only one worth using because it's only one used by glowies and criminals and the only one you may be able to convince one or two people to use.

>>106570204 (OP)
I love the idea of a super secure messenger but I simply don't have anyone to talk to.

>>106570297
>>106570323
I mean from a security POV. UX and centralization are different issues. Although I think session tackles them both pretty well. But anti crypto people will probably think otherwise. It just makes an attack on the network very expensive and mostly infeasible so I do think its a good solution. Briar's approach is interesting as well, but not as robust as session IMO.

>>106570376
>But anti crypto people will probably think otherwise. It just makes an attack on the network very expensive and mostly infeasible so I do think its a good solution
as a Monero purist I find PoS (or whatever the fuck they are doing) to be cancerous
>>106570356
>>p2p
>into the trash it goes
it's Tor'd

>>106570376
Any app that shills crypto currency as an important aspect of said app is an automatic red flag and should never be trusted with vital personal information. You don't need crypto technology made for retards to have a decentralized messaging experience that's end-to-end encrypted. The team behind Session are quite literally introducing new features and locking them behind a crypto token and acting like there's no other alternative. The whole project seems like an attempt to shill their crypto bs and I won't have any of it.

>>106570271
You can unplug your ethernet cable and encrypt things there. Buy a fresh USB stick (use only once) and put the ciphertext on another computer.
>>106570356
It's p2p over tor onion services, though this is more of a nitpick since a correlation can still be done by just collecting huge amounts of internet metadata logs.

>>106570411
Proof of Stake is the only way to verifiably steal the attacker's money. It takes ages to add enough stake and they lose their money, so attacking is pointless.
I guess you could theoretically do something where you intentionally make it possible to build an ASIC for a mining algorithm, then switch the mining algorithm once an attack happens and thus effectively destroying all of the ASICs the attacker purchased. This seems more tenuous however.

>>106570250
>your id is generated from phone-specific information.
your id is complete random

>>106570449
>Proof of Stake

>>106570792
You sure about that?

>>106570848
he shure