Would you rather use a piece of communications software which purported to be cryptographically secure, but wasn't, and not know it because no security researchers spent any effort attempting to prove that its crypto implementation was flawed?
Would you rather use a piece of communications software which purported to be cryptographically secure
..than communicate in plain text? Yes.
Where's the alternative? We can have Cryptocat shut down, which is what the author is suggesting, but then what are we (and by that I really mean people who currently use Cryptocat) going to do?
You would prefer to communicate in plaintext-equivalent where you think nobody can read it even though in fact everybody can over communicating in plaintext where you know everybody can read it?
I wouldn't prefer that, but I'm also not as convinced that Cryptocat is as "clearly broken" (i.e. plaintext is trivially recoverable) in its current state as a lot of people on here are. Most of the attacks that I've seen so far were against the group chat implementation, which, granted, is significant, but not against the primary component, the OTR chat.
I think it is somewhat naive to believe that any mechanism other than a one-time pad will absolutely keep your communications safe, and that it's a little dangerous to insinuate that Cryptocat leaks information about the plaintext but X or Y doesn't.
Where is the author suggesting that Cryptocat be shut down?
He makes the very valid point that advertising a insecure product as secure to people who need security but don't understand it is very wrong. He's asking that the advertising be corrected.
We're not worrying about your credit card getting ripped off - this software claims to solve life or death problems.
I don't disagree with the point that you shouldn't pretend, but literally no one is in a position to make absolute promises like that, yet everyone's doing it.
I'm not saying it's okay, but let's keep in mind that they say on their frontpage (http://crypto.cat) that you shouldn't trust it with your life. That's better than most security software marketing.
I have no answer. I don't think anyone can argue that the research is not valuable, but what would be more valuable is a peer-reviewed piece of software created by experts in this field so we would not even be having this discussion (re: telegram, cryptocat etc.)
OTR is as close to this as you'll get for IM at the moment, and even the most popular implementations like OTR for Pidgin (or Cryptocat!) haven't been vetted very thoroughly (not to mention Pidgin itself has a fairly spotted security track record.)
The people at heml.is are looking at implementing something like TextSecure as an IM, and its interface does look quite attractive, but it's a no-go as long as they're not open source (especially given that none of its authors are cryptographers), and thus can't receive a thorough review. (Actually getting qualified people to perform a review once it's open source is a challenge in itself, but perhaps people will spend more of their energy on that than writing blog posts saying they could do it better.)
Comments
Would you rather use a piece of communications software which purported to be cryptographically secure, but wasn't, and not know it because no security researchers spent any effort attempting to prove that its crypto implementation was flawed?
..than communicate in plain text? Yes.
Where's the alternative? We can have Cryptocat shut down, which is what the author is suggesting, but then what are we (and by that I really mean people who currently use Cryptocat) going to do?
So, let me put that a bit more clearly:
You would prefer to communicate in plaintext-equivalent where you think nobody can read it even though in fact everybody can over communicating in plaintext where you know everybody can read it?
I wouldn't prefer that, but I'm also not as convinced that Cryptocat is as "clearly broken" (i.e. plaintext is trivially recoverable) in its current state as a lot of people on here are. Most of the attacks that I've seen so far were against the group chat implementation, which, granted, is significant, but not against the primary component, the OTR chat.
I think it is somewhat naive to believe that any mechanism other than a one-time pad will absolutely keep your communications safe, and that it's a little dangerous to insinuate that Cryptocat leaks information about the plaintext but X or Y doesn't.
Where is the author suggesting that Cryptocat be shut down?
He makes the very valid point that advertising a insecure product as secure to people who need security but don't understand it is very wrong. He's asking that the advertising be corrected.
We're not worrying about your credit card getting ripped off - this software claims to solve life or death problems.
He wants it taken off the app stores.
I don't disagree with the point that you shouldn't pretend, but literally no one is in a position to make absolute promises like that, yet everyone's doing it.
I'm not saying it's okay, but let's keep in mind that they say on their frontpage (http://crypto.cat) that you shouldn't trust it with your life. That's better than most security software marketing.
Yeah, but they're not saying it on the app stores, hence wanting the text changed or the app removed.
I have no answer. I don't think anyone can argue that the research is not valuable, but what would be more valuable is a peer-reviewed piece of software created by experts in this field so we would not even be having this discussion (re: telegram, cryptocat etc.)
OTR is as close to this as you'll get for IM at the moment, and even the most popular implementations like OTR for Pidgin (or Cryptocat!) haven't been vetted very thoroughly (not to mention Pidgin itself has a fairly spotted security track record.)
The people at heml.is are looking at implementing something like TextSecure as an IM, and its interface does look quite attractive, but it's a no-go as long as they're not open source (especially given that none of its authors are cryptographers), and thus can't receive a thorough review. (Actually getting qualified people to perform a review once it's open source is a challenge in itself, but perhaps people will spend more of their energy on that than writing blog posts saying they could do it better.)