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Beeper couldn’t bring iMessage to Android — but it can still make a great chat app (www.theverge.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It also basically undoes all of the security and privacy features of Signal.

I'd like to have a source for this claim, please.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

The source is basic documentation about how Matrix bridges work.

Not only is no longer NOT E2EE, but all of your Signal messages are stored (encrypted) on a remote server, with virtually all metadata attached to them. Things Signal themselves do not keep on their servers.

Further, you're increasing your attack surface by adding another, likely easier way to hack into all of your messages, if one were so inclined.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I don't have a direct source other than the source code of the software they use: https://github.com/mautrix/signal

When using one of their "cloud hosted" bridges, the bridge software (that connects between Matrix/Beeper and other protocols) has to read all message content. Otherwise, it's impossible to bridge to another protocol. E2EE becomes end (other users) to bridge (beeper) encryption.

With "local hosted" bridges, E2EE stays intact, but messages can't be sent/received if the device hosting the bridge is unavailable.

In the future, with MLS (a different E2EE protocol), it could be possible to keep E2EE even when bridging to Matrix on cloud hosted bridges.