• Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 days ago

    The investigation did not spotlight the similarly-named Matrix open source communication protocol.

    Feel like there are going to be a lot of confused Lemmy users who won’t read more than the title.

    • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      Well goodness. I read the article, fortunately, but it’s good to see other people pointing out here.

      My initial thought was that this was the matrix we obviously care about. I didn’t look at the details to see if these people are truly nefarious and do belong in jail, which I’m okay with, but it was definitely troubling to imagine that something I thought secure wasn’t secure. 😬

  • Blisterexe@lemmy.zip
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    18 days ago

    The investigation did not spotlight the similarly-named Matrix open source communication protocol.

    huh

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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      17 days ago

      I like the full quote better:

      Dutch police said the Matrix app was targeted along with similar encrypted services known by the names Mactrix, Totalsex, X-quantum and Q-Safe. The investigation did not spotlight the similarly-named Matrix open source communication protocol.

      Absolute dupe-magnets.

  • will_a113@lemmy.ml
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    18 days ago

    I wonder if this matrix app was just a honeypot that was named to trick people into thinking they were using the “real” matrix.

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    I’m surprised so many criminals are picking these niche services that haven’t had their security verified by trustworthy third parties. That’s just asking for trouble.

    • SatyrSack@feddit.org
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      17 days ago

      The allure of the potential for “security through obscurity” is great if you don’t know better.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      18 days ago

      As with all criminals, it’s only the dumb ones that get caught.

  • Txmyx@feddit.org
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    18 days ago

    Why are these apps getting hacked? Wouldn’t just RSA 2048 be enough?

      • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        Encryption is really really hard, and avoiding some form of sidechannel attack is much much harder.

        Sure key exchange also isn’t trivial, but I would say that key exchange is significantly easier. Care to elaborate?

        • XTL@sopuli.xyz
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          17 days ago

          Encryption is trivial. Getting a reliable keystream is not.

          It all depends on the framing 😁

      • Irelephant@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        The real matrix’s key exchange is pretty headacheless, is there any downsides to it?

    • CAVOK@lemmy.worldOP
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      17 days ago

      Probably an implementation issue. Make a small error there, like storing parts of a key in memory or something like that and you’ve compromised security.

    • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      RSA doesn’t scale, so if the message is large then RSA becomes unwieldy. So most encryption methods that make use of RSA actually encrypt the data with a symmetric algorithm, and then just encrypt the key for the symmetric data using the RSA key.

      But there is still way way way too many ways to implement crypto wrong, which can completely compromise the security of it.

  • Chemical Wonka@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 days ago

    My undergraduate professor once worked for one of the largest banks in Germany, and she told me clearly that all encryption algorithms exported by the US have a way of being broken. A backdoor in the algorithm? Perhaps

    • finderscult@lemmy.ml
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      18 days ago

      Not really. Certainly some “encryption” algorithms or really implementations have backdoors, but RSA for example doesn’t. Encryption is only worthwhile if it’s mathematically sound, and you can’t backdoor mathematics without some random undergrad working on their maths degree figuring out for fun.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      17 days ago

      When was this? In years past there were weird restrictions about exporting strong encryption algorithms from the US. So much so that Java didn’t have unlimited strength algorithms bundled by default. Depending on the time she said this/she was talking about then it could’ve just been a comment on the weak algorithms being, well, weak.