Zoom’s encryption update is like skipping two generations smartphone upgrade | Hacker News Reader

Zoom’s encryption update is like skipping two generations smartphone upgrade

mashable.com

18 pointsdsavant15 comments

Nothing substantive has changed, and Zoom will still have the capability to intercept and eavesdrop on your calls. Unless companies using this have no IP to protect or operate exclusively in China, Zoom is an awful idea and a major risk.

We simply cannot talk about Zoom without mentioning China. The company has extremely deep ties to the country and China is known for large-scale theft of intellectual property and eavesdropping.

Even if Zoom executives wouldn't hand this information over to the CCP, what's to stop the CCP from pressuring a developer or planting one?

Which video chat application doesn't have the ability to intercept calls? Something which works on desktop and not mobile only like Signal

If you're referring to group calls, there aren't any applications that meet the criteria unless you self-host.

1-to-1 there are plenty of options, like Riot/Matrix.

Even though plenty of Western governments have engaged in IP theft before, I'd trust most of them more than the CCP which engages in organized and systematic IP theft.

I have Signal desktop installed. Maybe you should research what you say before spreading false FUD around?

Signal desktop is not a video-chat application (at least on macOS, it's asynchronous messaging only)

Duo at least promises E2E encryption and handling high latency connections, although I haven't tried it yet. But I'd love to see a comparision of personal use case.

I've been tinkering with self-hosting my own Jitsi[0] instance, it's one way to limit eavesdropping only to people with access to your own infrastructure.

[0] https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/blob/master/doc/README.m...

Group FaceTime, though the apple hardware only restriction is a big one.

I really don't care if TikTok or Zoom are associated with a particular country actually or if people assume it for racist, ideological, or nationalist reasons. It's the celebrities, novelty-seekers, and other influencers who community spread half-baked apps of unknown provenance like the corona that are the problem.

LOL.

These guys are space cadets if they think a move to AEAD GCM is compelling for “privacy minded” folks, whilst still in the shadow of no e2e encryption and all of the other security flaws.

Privacy minded folks won't use anything closed source anyway and certainly require e2e encryption.

I think it's a good balance of decryption speed and strength, considering what Zooms market is.

There are always cases where encryption is useful, and I'll never turn down free upgrades but...

The main purpose of Zoom is big meetings and lectures. Those are made insecure by human nature. So either you're having 121 conversations and should not be using zoom. Or you're insecure already and improving encryption won't make any difference when agency X leans on the person in the room with the most to lose...

Am I missing something here?

> The new, more secure Zoom will be available on May 30

That's quite a long wait for this update.

Honest question, there’s been a lot of posts lately on alternatives. Besides self hosting with Jitsi, are other platforms just as vulnerable to eavesdropping? I ask because there’s concern with customers we use Zoom. We would like to ensure that alternatives to Zoom suffer the same problems so we have comparisons to show customers.

I'm not sure fixing broken encryption is like smartphone upgrades.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com