Raphael Robert's Avatar

Raphael Robert

@raphaelrobert.bsky.social

Privacy. Security. Research. MLS co-author, working in secure messaging at @phoenixrd.bsky.social.

261 Followers  |  101 Following  |  54 Posts  |  Joined: 30.04.2023  |  2.0981

Latest posts by raphaelrobert.bsky.social on Bluesky

I think it's a different set of tradeoffs (as is always the case in decentralized environments). So the short answer would be: yes.

29.10.2025 22:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Making MLS more decentralized It’s no secret that we at Phoenix R&D are big fans of the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, having helped it to come into existence. It’s a versatile group key agreement and messaging protocol ...

We made MLS more decentralized! We are excited to share DMLS that brings fork resilience to the MLS protocol, solving a key challenge in distributed systems while maintaining Forward Secrecy.

This work was made possible by @equalitie.bsky.social, who funded it as part of the Breakout program.

29.10.2025 09:36 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 7    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1
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EU-ÜberwachungsplÀne in der Kritik: WirtschaftsverbÀnde Bitkom und eco klar gegen Chatkontrolle Die Stimmen gegen die Chatkontrolle werden mehr und lauter. Nun hagelt es deutliche Kritik aus der Wirtschaft. Zudem warnen der Deutsche Journalistenverband und der Anwaltverein vor einer Überwachungs...

Die Stimmen gegen die #Chatkontrolle werden mehr und lauter. Nun hagelt es deutliche Kritik aus der Wirtschaft. Zudem warnen der Deutsche Journalistenverband und der Anwaltverein vor einer Überwachungsinfrastruktur, die schnell ausgebaut werden kânnte.

netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-uebe...

07.10.2025 05:58 β€” πŸ‘ 303    πŸ” 160    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 5
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Unser Brandbrief zur geplanten Chatkontrolle – eine GefΓ€hrdung der digitalen Sicherheit Deutschlands | Phoenix R&D 🚨Der Gesetzentwurf zur #Chatkontrolle sieht vor, dass digitale Kommunikation einschließlich verschlΓΌsselter Nachrichten und Fotos gescannt werden soll.Β  Die Sicherheit von sicheren Messenger-Diensten ...

🚨 Der Gesetzentwurf zur #Chatkontrolle sieht vor, dass digitale Kommunikation einschließlich verschlüsselter Nachrichten und Fotos gescannt werden soll.

Wir haben uns an die deutsche Bundesregierung gewandt, sich am 14. Oktober gegen den Gesetzesvorschlag der Chatkontrolle auszusprechen.

06.10.2025 20:02 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
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LinkedIn annonced that it will use your data to train AI models, and craftily chose to use an opt-out mechanism. Deactivate this in your settings now, of you don’t want to give away your content.

18.09.2025 15:09 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Ex-WhatsApp cybersecurity head says Meta endangered billions of users in new suit Attaullah Baig, fired this year, said he had warned Mark Zuckerberg engineers had unaudited access to user data

As an ex head of security of an end-to-end encrypting messenger I can relate

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

08.09.2025 21:18 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Yes. E2EE would be undermined in one way or another.

28.08.2025 20:01 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
MLS: The Naked King of End-to-End Encryption Evgeny Poberezkin's blog

There's an article making the rounds with the provocative title "MLS: The Naked King of End-to-End Encryption". It needs some rebuttal.

www.poberezkin.com/posts/2025-0...

tl;dr - MLS is fine. This is a misunderstanding about modularity.

28.08.2025 17:09 β€” πŸ‘ 14    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 2
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Barking Up The Ratchet Tree – MLS Is Neither Royal Nor Nude - Dhole Moments One of the first rules you learn about technical writing is, β€œKnow your audience.” But often, this sort of advice is given without sufficient weight or practical examples. Instead, you&…

Not long ago, someone (who is likely the founder of SimpleX Chat) wrote a blog post about MLS that contained a pretty blatant factual mistake about MLS' authentication, including an alleged lack of security. Thankfully, @soatok.bsky.social took the time to debunk that: soatok.blog/2025/08/25/b...

25.08.2025 16:43 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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I had to see for myself

08.08.2025 07:25 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Combining TLS and MLS: An experiment We did a thing. We combined TLS and MLS into a hybrid protocol. Of course, when things get serious, full names are in order: We combined the Transport Layer Security protocol and the Messaging Layer S...

We did a thing. We combined TLS and MLS into a hybrid protocol.

Why? Because sometimes you need connections that last for weeks, quantum-resistant security, or simpler certificates.

The experiment is open-source. Here's the story πŸ‘‡

02.07.2025 08:06 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 3    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 2

We really did do a thing.

02.07.2025 08:11 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Phoenix R&D (Remote): Freelance Junior Product Manager (all genders, part-time) Phoenix R&D GmbH has a remote job opening for Freelance Junior Product Manager (all genders, part-time) (published: 15.05.2025). Apply now or check the other available jobs.

We are #hiring a Freelance Junior Product Manager to help us build the next generation of private & secure messaging.

If you’re interested in joining our team, please apply today!
For friends of secure messaging πŸ₯·, please share our post with potential candidates.

15.05.2025 09:51 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 5    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at @passthesaltcon.bsky.social on July 2nd!

I’ll discuss end-to-end encryption with MLS, the growing MLS ecosystem, the MIMI IETF working group, and metadata protection.
It’s my first time attending, and I look forward to connecting with the French community!

14.05.2025 08:08 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

The idea that you can just β€œteach computer science” and be apolitical is a beautiful dream that expired in the 2000s, at the latest. Computer science has re-organized every facet of our society: it is inherently political. Instead of taking this idea seriously, we ran from it. Now we live in hell.

03.05.2025 15:27 β€” πŸ‘ 239    πŸ” 60    πŸ’¬ 5    πŸ“Œ 8

It's an informational draft, so I think it cannot use normative language, but adding @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy and @claucece.bsky.social who actually wrote this.

02.05.2025 18:27 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Definition of End-to-end Encryption This document provides a definition of end-to-end encryption (E2EE) from both the perspective of a regular internet user as well as from the perspective of required properties for implementers.

There has been an attempt by Knodel et al to have a more rigorous definition over at the IETF: www.ietf.org/archive/id/d...

02.05.2025 16:00 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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Mike Waltz Accidentally Reveals Obscure App the Government Is Using to Archive Signal Messages A photograph of Trump administration official Mike Waltz's phone shows him using an unofficial version of Signal designed to archive messages during a cabinet meeting.

www.404media.co/mike-waltz-a...

01.05.2025 22:59 β€” πŸ‘ 151    πŸ” 42    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 2
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Hey Google designers, are we sure about this new layout logo in Google Meet?

The negative space around the boxes reminds me of something.

30.04.2025 10:21 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Information on RFC 9750 Β» RFC Editor

The MLS Architecture document – the companion document to the MLS Protocol document – is now finally available as RFC 9750:

www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9750

22.04.2025 21:08 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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And so it begins, BlueSky complies with censorship requests of an authoritarian regime

17.04.2025 12:11 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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The Dangers of End-to-End Encryption Privacy Guides is formally taking a stand against dangerous and frightening technologies.

www.privacyguides.org/articles/202...

01.04.2025 07:21 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

This might indeed be interesting to inform decisions about the frequency of commits. Our DS design is pretty set already, but it would be interesting to compare the details.

27.02.2025 01:40 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

MLS is efficient, but what does that mean in practice?

This paper sheds some light on the question by building a test framework for OpenMLS.

arxiv.org/pdf/2502.18303

27.02.2025 00:18 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 4    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

… and now it looks like Apple caved, while Google didn’t: www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

25.02.2025 13:04 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

The SCW podcast team does it again and breaks down a newish, complex and alarming topic into palatable and informative pieces. Excellent questions from @durumcrustulum.com and @dadrian.io expertly answered by @josephhall.org and @matthewdgreen.bsky.social.

Listen to it if you have time!

25.02.2025 07:37 β€” πŸ‘ 10    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

The latter is exactly what Apple could have done. Signal for example took that stance. And even WhatsApp did, IIRC.

21.02.2025 16:44 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row Customers' photos and documents stored online will no longer be protected by end to end encryption.

I’m deeply disappointed in Apple.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

21.02.2025 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

Thanks for updating the blog post!

15.02.2025 11:27 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

We proudly signed this too. Always push back.

14.02.2025 10:50 β€” πŸ‘ 5    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

@raphaelrobert is following 20 prominent accounts