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Read the post. I've had this discussion dozens of times now, everyone repeats the same arguments, all based on what Keybase puts out, never checking anything for themselves or even logically reasoning about how this could work (for those who bring up blockchain instead of third party proofs). There's a reason I link the information you're looking for, you don't even have to check it for yourself anymore.

> It was mentioned on hacker news that the app should check third party proofs by itself. This is not exactly what end to end encryption means since it still relies on third parties, but nevertheless, having to [compromise] 2 or more companies' servers before being able to MitM someone's keys (which are additionally TOFU'd) should give quite some confidence.

> However, when checking in Wireshark whether it actually does this (ask the Twitter API for the proof string and verify the signature with the the public key it received from Keybase), Keybase on my phone did not contact Twitter at all. (It did, however, proudly proclaim that the new chat was end to end encrypted.)

> The packet capture started before the username was typed into the search field on the test device and ended only after Keybase completely established the chat and claimed it was end to end encrypted.

> It is deemed implausible for the mobile Keybase client to simply have downloaded all signature chains from all users that exist on Keybase and to have checked all their proofs prior to starting the packet capture. This is the only way I can think of how the third party hosted proof could have been verified prior to the packet capture.



I'm curious, are there any apps out there that you don't have to host yourself that you do consider to be end-to-end encrypted?


What kind of a question is that? Of course there are, and self-hosting does not replace key verification.

- Wire

- Signal

- Jami

- Matrix/Element with central servers

- Threema

- Briar

- WhatsApp if you turn on key change notifications

- even Telegram secret 1:1 chats on a client that supports these kinds of chats

- anything you add OTR or PGP to... and the list goes on

You just need to do key verification, since key distribution is an unsolved problem in cryptography.




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