Let me edit in one more relevant info:
I don’t use it, but my contacts may or may not use it.
For those who don’t know, Beeper is an app that aims to unite all your messaging apps into one. To do this, it makes use of Matrix, bridging all those services together. So far, so cool.
However, since different services often use different encryption protocols, messages between those services and Matrix have to be decrypted on Beepers’ servers, before being re-encrypted with the protocol of the recipient.
They are completely open and transparent about this (which I can very much respect), and state that chats on their servers are encrypted, so they can’t read them.
Still though, decrypting mid-transit kinda throws the whole end-to-end part out of the window.
Some might say that everyone needs to decide for themselves if that’s a problem. But the issue with that is that if you decide to use Beeper, you also decide that every person you chat with is okay with it. Not very cool in my book.
That’s where the question asking for independant audits comes in, because I certainly don’t have the expertise to look at their code. If everything is safe from attackers, then cool.
But me for example, I switched to Signal specifically for verifiable and proper End-to-End Encryption, so chatting with someone who uses Signal through Beeper kinda defeats the point.
Because, how does Beeper even get what they need to decrypt a message I send to a Beeper user?
I don’t consent to a third party decrypting my messages, simply because one of my contacts uses their service. That is fundamentally wrong in my opinion.
What are your thoughts on this?
So, I’m self hosting basically this. I have a matrix server that is publicly accessible but I’m the only user on it. I’m also self hosting a handful of bridges, signal being one of them. I’ve played with the WhatsApp bridge, and I’m using an SMS/MMS bridge.
It’s basically a man in the middle for all your chat apps. The Signal bridge software will login to your signal account and have full access to everything. The bridge works by watching all the decrypted messages and posting them to a matrix room. The matrix room may or may not be encrypted. This means you need to put a lot of faith into the bridge code and the people hosting the matrix server. The SMS/MMS bridge I use doesn’t even support encrypted matrix rooms.
I personally would never use beeper. Even if I couldn’t selfhost, I would not trust one person/company with centralized access to all my messages. I’m sure they have good intentions and would never do anything to abuse their position but I won’t put anyone there.
I mean, I love the idea behind it. And Matrix bridges aren’t anything new either, Beeper just aims to make it easier to set up.
And with the Digital Markets Act pushing for interoperability, big services will have to decide on one protocol to use, so messages between those services should be truly e2ee then.
But what really irks me is that someone can just set this up, and now there’s a gap in the encryption that’s supposed to be end-to-end, without me ever knowing or having given my consent.
Guy behind Beeper fucked Pebble smartwatch users and developers on his way out.
So when Beeper isn’t making enough money and he sells it… Will you trust who he sells it to to keep it secure instead of aiming to use data for ads or some shit?
I won’t.
I don’t trust the whole thing in the first place, for the reasons outlined in my maybe too elaborate rambling.
Beeper is just a reskinned Element messenger. The devs behind it are also the ones who built all the bridges everyone uses.
Beeper users who message other Matrix/Beeper users it should be fully e2ee as it’d be no different from using Element or another Matrix client.
But, it would be nice to get more clarification at a high-level as to how they handle the message relaying.
They state that they open-sourced the privacy-critical portions of their codebase for people to look at.
But idk, I think the entire codebase is privacy-critical when it comes to private messaging.
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I’m just hearing about Beeper for the first time, but if what you say is true then OP’s concern is valid. Bridges have to decrypt to re-encrypt; what’s more, they have to ~hold your credentials~ hold a token to be able to act on your behalf.
I just did some reading about this, and you can self-host bridges and use end-to-bridge encryption, in which case Beeper will not have access to the unencrypted messages. But if you use Beeper-hosted bridges, then they have access to unencrypted messages.
Edit @tulir is the lead architect. Tulir wrote gomuks, and most of the existing bridges. It gives me more confidence in the endeavour; it bothers me that the sign-up requires a phone #. That’s going to be a non-starter for me, personally.
Interesting, when I signed up I didn’t need a phone number, just email. Lmk if you’d like an invite code (if that’s even necessary anymore?)
Is this about message content security or privacy?
I would love to have more insights on Beeper actual privacy. But one think to keep in mind is that they are subject to Cloud Act.
Specifically for OP: since you post on this privacy focused community but also are not very clear with your intent, I just want to remind that Signal is not the best messaging app when it comes to privacy, especially because of its close relation to CIA
How do they have a close relationship with the CIA?
You can find this online easily. Some of the things are: they’ve been funded by the Open Technology Fund, created for Radio Free Asia, which is a program by the CIA. The fund is now financed by the US Congress
Okay, you gotta explain that a bit further.
Yes, Signal is based in the US and as such, is subject to US laws. Not great, I don’t love that.
However, since they are fully open source, it was independently audited and verified several times that their encryption is solid, and the only data they can see is when an account was created, and when it was last online.
That’s all they can hand over to law enforcement.
For my intent with this post, I just want to raise the general issue I see with this app, and read what other people think of it.
Nope only the message content is encrypted. So what they have unencrypted is of course your personal information (phone number etc), all your contacts, and the list of all messages sent (datetime, and contact or contacts). This enable them to have a great social map that evolves after each message sent
And that is if the encryption remain unbroken. Don’t forget that the NSA has a history of placing backdors in cryptography schemes (like that mathematically flawed key based on a weak elliptic curve, standardized and approved by the NSA after they found their exploit)
As far as I know, even the user profiles are encrypted. They’ve been using Sealed Sender for a while now.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of Signal being based in the US, but they go to great lenghts to limit what they know about their users. Private Contact Discovery being another great addition.
Signal isn’t the perfect, 100% secure, private and anonymous messenger that we’d love in our privacy bubble here, but it’s currently the best we have to reach the general public, and make private messaging as accessible as possible.
I think that’s a fair statement.
Thank you for that info and the link I’ll go into that. Just to summarize, if you have the knowledge and time: this is at-rest encryption? I’m not sure how it could be end-to-end encryption and at the same time enable to start new conversations with other Signal users / discovery based on name / phone number
I’m still fairly new to how all those things work, so I don’t have that knowledge, sadly. But since it’s all open source, their claims can be put to the test by people who do.
Though after some research, there actually haven’t been as many audits as I thought, so I think it’s important for me to mention that.
Ok thank you so much. What I would like to point at in the difference between having an end-to-end encryption between two recipients and at-rest encryption for information owned by Signal (in this example), is the purpose of those two different things. E2E encryption means only the two agents at each end have the mathematical possibility to decrypt the info: this is privacy by design. At-rest encryption on Signal servers of different things is a security layer meant to protect users’ privacy against attackers, but Signal have the means to decrypt it, and they would do it in the normal usage of the service. This would also mean they can (and have to) transmit decrypted information to whatever agency demand them to
Thank you for the explanation, that clarifies a few things for me.
If Signal was based in the EU, and finally moved away from phone numbers as the identifier like they talked about years ago, that would be just perfect.
Not sure about decentralization though. Being centralized means they have full control over the service and can ensure that everything runs exactly as securely and privately as they want for their users. (Which is also where my rant about Matrix bridges comes in)
It also means you have to trust them not to fuck around, though as long as the project is fully open-source, that alone should hold them to their proclaimed standards.
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Well this is not particular to Beeper, that’s always the case when using Matrix + Bridges for third parties right? Even though they are the main mainteners of a good part of the existing bridges
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