Re: [Ring] Security issues

[Greg Troxel]

Adrien Béraud <address@hidden> writes:

> Those security concerns, mainly coming from a Tox developer, are mostly 
> unfounded IMO, 
> but it's always a good practice to exchange with the community and to explain 
> how Ring works. 
>
> I tried to answer the best I could in a reasonable length: 
>
> https://security.stackexchange.com/a/162603/151701 

Thanks for posting the link.  From previous discussions I understood
about using ring keys to authenticate and PFS.

The comments about OTR and axolotl seem off base.  PFS is not that
difficult in a system where peers are connected, which you need anyway
for a voice call.  But I think this does lead to ring messaging only
working if both parties are online/reachable at once.

I had either asked about the DHT address privacy issue, or thought I
should and not sent the mail, but your answer also answers that.  As I
suspected, you are agreeing that registering ring key/IP in the DHT
allows someone to track what IP address that ring id has when.
While I agree on the general point that there are tradeoffs and no
perfect approaches, I see this as significant.

It would be good for ring.cx's website to have a security page that's
basically a slight expansion of your stackexchange answer, where a user
could understand the key points of peer authentication, encryption/pfs,
and exposure of IP address.

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