Carbon Copy? As in, a rip-off?

Whatever hellhole committee named this did a poor job.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11930-014-0016-8

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...

(Not to detract from anyone's cleverness or hard work.)

I've added an important clarification in case anyone else missed the rest of the prose that discussed how this was entirely my own fault to zero in on a sarcastic turn of phrase: https://soatok.blog/2026/09/12/the-v8-javascript-runtime-und...

You can use algorithm implementations that do not have secret-dependent timing differences in any language, as long as you are clear that your guarantees do not extend to the underlying runtime or to compiler optimizations. This isn't perfect, but it's better.

You can go further Rust-to-WASM and use tools like https://github.com/trailofbits/skills/tree/main/plugins/cons... to check the assembly and the runtime that the assembly runs in. (Most of the linked Claude skill is a Python program. It just relies on AI to eliminate false positives.)

The real question is: What's your threat model?

Tell me you didn't read past the headline without telling me you didn't read past the headline.

It's already the case today (and has been for years) that you don't need to give strangers your phone number to chat on Signal. My username is soatok.45; try to get my phone number if you can.

If you want absolutely no info to be collected, ever, and there to be zero cost on the end user too, be prepared to welcome your new spam overlords. Because the people who will benefit the most from a zero cost signup that only requires a username are spammers.

You don't need to be convinced of such things. In fact, it's better if technical people remain skeptical and check.

I did in 2025. https://soatok.blog/2025/02/18/reviewing-the-cryptography-us...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49669734

Points: 21

# Comments: 11

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49664652

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Corporations only have the powers granted to them by the state. Contributing to politics need not be one of them.

I've edited the above linked post several times to make this clearer, but people still keep linking Matrix's flawed response as if it actually addressed the issue. It does not.

The issue is not as simple as "did the check exist? [y/n]". There are actually two issues:

1. Did the check exist? [y/n]

2. Did the group key agreement protocol fall to shit if the check was omitted? [y/n]

Matrix was (n, y) due to how Megolm manages keys in group contexts. Signal was (n, n) due to their protocol design.

Matrix tried to defend point 1 when the blog post was about both 1 and 2.

(Post-Quantum MLS, for comparison, would also have been impervious to this issue due to how KEMs work. Another point in favor of MLS adoption.)

> and whether the post was made in good faith (the check was added to libsignal on the same day that the author disclosed the vulnerability to Matrix, which can be a coincidence, but doesn't seem likely given that the code has been there for years).

Even if you assume the worst possible interpretation of this coincidence (which, sure, you're free to if you want-- you would be wrong if you did, of course): What does it even matter?

Like, what is the notion of "good faith" that's even necessary for someone to do independent security research and publish criticism of the cryptography used by a software project that's being propped up by EU sovereignty movements?

In my opinion, this is a stupid and vacuous framing.

Signal omitting the check didn't harm Signal's confidentiality. Matrix omitting the check demonstrably did.

---

Also, if you're going to decry my blog post for not enumerating unrelated security bugs (n.b., the blog post was about Matrix, not Signal, so why would I talk about Signal's code in that post???), be aware that I reported non-cryptographic bugs to Element (Matrix client) and Conversations (XMPP client) around the same time. Only XMPP actually credited me with any fixes.

https://gultsch.social/@daniel/116125064866469085

Business folks riding the hype train? Maybe.

HAWK is a signature algorithm, not encryption.