Your messenger is end-to-end encrypted. Its server still knows who you talk to. I tried to fix that.
"End-to-end encrypted" has become a checkbox. WhatsApp has it. Signal has it. Telegram has it (sometimes). But encryption hides what you say. It does not automatically hide who you are, who you talk to, or how much you say. That part is called metadata, and for many people it is the more dangerous part. "We kill people based on metadata." — Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA So…
End-to-end encryption has become a standard feature in popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. However, encryption only hides the content of messages, not the metadata associated with them - information such as who you interact with, the frequency and volume of your communications. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, warns that we sometimes kill people based on this metadata.
To address these concerns, Umbera was developed as a messenger for Android and iOS, designed with the server in mind as if it would one day be hacked, subpoenaed or operated by an untrusted party. Here's how Umbera addresses the metadata issue:
1. No personal information is required to create an account. Instead, users select a username and password. Account recovery is handled through a 12-word phrase that only the user knows. The server does not link this to any real-world information.
2. The sender and recipient identities are concealed within the encrypted message itself. This approach, known as sealed sender, prevents the server from knowing who sent the message.
3. The recipient's location is also hidden. Messages are delivered to a mailbox address that is computed by the two parties and changes every week. The server only sees a rotating, random string receiving encrypted blobs, unable to link multiple mailboxes to the same user.
4. Message length is obscured by padding every message to predetermined size buckets (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 KiB, then steps of 4 KiB). This prevents the server from inferring information based on message size.
5. Umbera employs a hybrid session setup combining classic X25519 and ML-KEM-1024, a post-quantum standard. This ensures that even if recordings of encrypted traffic are made today, they cannot be decrypted in the foreseeable future with quantum computers.
6. While the app does not hide your IP address by default, it offers built-in Tor support on both Android and iOS devices. Additionally, calls can be routed through a relay to further obfuscate your IP address.
However, Umbera does not currently offer post-quantum message ratcheting for groups, support for post-quantum group chats, post-quantum calls, or the ability to manage multiple devices under a single account.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
