Erik MoellerNow Elon Musk is spreading FUD about Signal. If you needed another vote of confidence that Signal (end-to-end encrypted messenger maintained by a nonprofit) is the real deal, there you have it:
Billy SmithRemember that Naomi Wu was ignored by Moxie Marlinspike, when she pointed out potential flaws in their apps in China.
She got vanned over this, as the Chinese security services were actively using the flaws.
As ever, women in technology get ignored even when they are right.
I was not aware of this, but I just read up on it. From what I can tell they did not ignore her, nor did she really point out a flaw specific to Signal. They are just taking the stance that Signal can't protect the entire device it's installed on. The support article https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360055276112-Incognito-Keyboard puts it succinctly: "Signal cannot detect or prevent malware on your device."
Of course I agree it's fair to ask what Signal _should_ do to onboard users in regions with pervasive surveillance.
That may be what they are saying now, but when she was saying this 6 years ago, at a time when Signal was being recommended by Western journalists as being safe for Chinese people to use, and she could prove that it wasn't true...
That was when Marlinspike was ignoring her.
She was arguing from a technical standpoint and an engineering standpoint, that it wasn't safe, but everyone from Signal was ignoring her.
This was also when she was working on Open-Source software, and was being hassled for being a Chinese woman working in technology.
Whether it was racism, sexism, misogyny, or, ignorance, Marlinspike and the team from Signal refused to even consider that it could be a problem.
Fair enough. I think it's easy to get defensive when folks call it a "flaw in their apps" (as you put it) or an "IME vulnerability" (as she put it,) when it's not anything specific to Signal but a general issue of endpoint security affecting every app.
I do agree that orgs like Signal Foundation should look at such security questions more holistically and resist that defensive impulse. I'm seeing more evidence of that kind of holistic view under their current leadership.