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Signal on F-droid Guardian Repo (lemmy.today)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) by sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I just noticed today that Signal (not talking Molly) is now available on F-Droid via the "Guardian" repository.

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

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[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It's probably not an official thing. F-Droid can't distribute apps in the official repo via their own policy if the developer doesn't agree. Third-party repos like Guardian can.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If it’s not official, how do you verify who is building the binary?

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think they ship prebuilt binaries, i.e. the exact same ones you find on the Signal website

AFAIK this also applies to Tor Browser, Orbot and other third-party apps distributed by Guardian

Edit: I downloaded the files and manually verified the signatures. They are indeed the exact same files.

Because I didn't really know how to grab an APK from the Guardian F-Droid repo, I used their S3 bucket and downloaded the Signal APK. It's named Signal-Android-website-prod-universal-release-7.30.2.apk, which is the exact same file name as the one of the APK you can get from the Signal website.

I then used keytool to print the signature certificate fingerprint: (renamed the files to make it less confusing)

keytool -printcert -jarfile signal-website.apk

Signer #1:

Certificate #1:
Owner: CN=Whisper Systems, OU=Research and Development, O=Whisper Systems, L=Pittsburgh, ST=PA, C=US
Issuer: CN=Whisper Systems, OU=Research and Development, O=Whisper Systems, L=Pittsburgh, ST=PA, C=US
Serial number: 4bfbebba
Valid from: Tue May 25 17:24:42 CEST 2010 until: Tue May 16 17:24:42 CEST 2045
Certificate fingerprints:
	 SHA1: 45:98:9D:C9:AD:87:28:C2:AA:9A:82:FA:55:50:3E:34:A8:87:93:74
	 SHA256: 29:F3:4E:5F:27:F2:11:B4:24:BC:5B:F9:D6:71:62:C0:EA:FB:A2:DA:35:AF:35:C1:64:16:FC:44:62:76:BA:26
Signature algorithm name: SHA1withRSA (weak)
Subject Public Key Algorithm: 1024-bit RSA key (weak)
Version: 3

keytool -printcert -jarfile signal-guardian.apk

Signer #1:

Certificate #1:
Owner: CN=Whisper Systems, OU=Research and Development, O=Whisper Systems, L=Pittsburgh, ST=PA, C=US
Issuer: CN=Whisper Systems, OU=Research and Development, O=Whisper Systems, L=Pittsburgh, ST=PA, C=US
Serial number: 4bfbebba
Valid from: Tue May 25 17:24:42 CEST 2010 until: Tue May 16 17:24:42 CEST 2045
Certificate fingerprints:
	 SHA1: 45:98:9D:C9:AD:87:28:C2:AA:9A:82:FA:55:50:3E:34:A8:87:93:74
	 SHA256: 29:F3:4E:5F:27:F2:11:B4:24:BC:5B:F9:D6:71:62:C0:EA:FB:A2:DA:35:AF:35:C1:64:16:FC:44:62:76:BA:26
Signature algorithm name: SHA1withRSA (weak)
Subject Public Key Algorithm: 1024-bit RSA key (weak)
Version: 3

The fingerprints are identical.

Another edit: I just noticed that Signal even has official instructions for checking the signature on their APK download page. They use apksigner instead of keytool, but it's basically the same process.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for doing this!

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Takes like 2 minutes 😅

[–] QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You have quite a bit of background knowledge to know how to do that though, you should give yourself more credit!

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 minutes ago* (last edited 18 minutes ago)

Thanks, I mean I used to work as a Java developer before, and I'm quite interested in the Android platform, so I'm familiar with the SDK and build tools, and know how app signatures work

But it's really not that hard to figure out. There are countless guides on the internet, and as I said, Signal even has a quick guide for how to verify the APK signature on the download page

[–] lady_mongrel@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can confirm, the repository was Guardian Project

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I know, it even says so in the post:

I just noticed today that Signal (not talking Molly) is now available on F-Droid via the "Guardian" repository.

[–] lady_mongrel@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Haha it would help if I could read 🤣