A security researcher made a tool that let them quickly check which of Cloudflare's data centers had cached an image, which allowed them to figure out what city a Discord, Signal, or Twitter/X user might be in.

This affects Signal too

An issue with Cloudflare allows an attacker to find which Cloudflare data center a messaging app used to cache an image, meaning an attacker can obtain the approximate location of Signal, Discord, Twitter/X, and likely other chat app users. In some cases an attacker only needs to send an image across the app, with the target not clicking it, to obtain their location.

https://gist.github.com/hackermondev/45a3cdfa52246f1d1201c1e8cdef6117?ref=404media.co

Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service, is widely used by journalists and activists for its privacy features. Internally, the app utilizes two CDNs for serving content: cdn.signal.org (powered by CloudFront) for profile avatars and cdn2.signal.org (powered by Cloudflare) for message attachments.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    Fun fact, you can always use timing attacks to narrow down a location.

    The target sends some traffic to multiple geographic sites. Looking at the response timing of that traffic gives you a maximum radius from each site. Overlay multiple radiuses and you get a workable approximate

    • stardom8048@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      Great point. The range shown in the article doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal for me, but I suppose it could matter for some situations.

  • FrostyTrichs@walledgarden.xyz
    5·
    11 months ago

    Yet another reason to move to SimpleX chat. Signal is better than nothing but far from perfect. Besides adoption I think SXC is universally the better option.

      • FediNeko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        This. In addition to metadata tracking you mention… Encrypted messages are great, until one party is compromised. Delete chat history, use a VPN, take more precautions than just using an encrypted messaging app. For most user’s purposes, this is fine, leagues better than SMS or social media conversations.

          • FediNeko@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            Agreed, but there is the challenge of our time. In the end you can only do so much and you’ll stand out just for not being a normal facebook user, been trying to get everyone to move to something else, anything that isn’t a big player. I’ve watched the world go from BBS, all the way to twitter… It has been depressing to say the least.