Comment by palata
8 hours ago
Exactly, to me there are two requirements:
* The cryptography must be sound. That's the obvious one, if it's not encrypted then it's not "end-to-end" encrypted.
* There must be a practical way for the user to "verify" (with some definition of verifying) the client they are running.
A web browser doesn't provide that at all. It does not mean that everything else provides it: there are many ways to provide a Desktop app that break E2EE, but that is a different discussion. My point is that fundamentally, the web browser does not provide that. It's not that the laws of physics prevent it, it's just that the web browser never chose to provide that.
> it's just that the web browser never chose to provide that.
Yes, this exactly. If we wanted ‘verifiable’ app distribution via browser, then we’d need browsers to implement some way to cross check the code downloaded vs a publicly published list somewhere - similar to certificate transparency or what WhatsApp is trying to do with an extension [1]. Without that, web apps are left working with a weaker threat model.
[1] https://engineering.fb.com/2022/03/10/security/code-verify
Yep! Just nitpicking here, but...
> or what WhatsApp is trying to do with an extension
I remember looking into it, and while it is interesting, I think what it allows to verify is that the intermediary (Cloudflare, I believe) didn't tamper with the code being served. Which in the end allows the user to verify that the code they run comes... from the server they trust.
And even that is not super practical, I find.
It would already be a huge improvement if browsers warned you when a web app has been modified, and gave you its hash
It would, but at this point, do you need a browser really? Like the big advantage of the web is that users load the latest version of whatever you serve, and they don't have to care about updates. In many cases that's desirable. But it fundamentally doesn't work for E2EE.
I am not trying to say "browsers should not exist, everything should be a desktop app". I guess I am more defending "some use-cases work better in a browser, others work better as desktop apps". And I have the strong feeling that over the last years (decades?) there has been a very strong push by web people to say "everything should run in the browser".
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