Entire chat history lost #15546
Comments
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@vy-let sorry for this mess :( it's going to be a bit of a nightmare to debug this, as the logs on the phone will have been lost when the app was reinstalled. Can you please rageshake (i.e. submit debug logs) from a) the device you were sending msgs from, b) the desktop and iPhone she was failing to receive messages on? This will at least give us the user IDs and let us try to take a look on our servers (if you're using servers we control) to see what on earth happened. |
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Also, assuming you still have the message keys on your device(s), I strongly recommend manually exporting them as a backup. In the nearish future there should be a way to then separate export the keys for the rooms you share together so she can at least get the history of those back. (There are ugly workarounds to do this today if it's an emergency) |
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Thanks for your help! I sent logs from all three devices. The accounts are on a server I run; I can provide logs from there as well if you'd find them helpful. There's no emergency to restore the old messages right now, as I can still see everything on my end. |
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@vy-let I think I had a similar problem today with the desktop-app. All my encrypted room lost it's ability to decrypt the messages after I've upgraded my Linux Mint from 19 to 20. I've opend my session on Android and Web, but the Desktop session didn't got verifiied. I've restarted my Desktop app and clicked on the message to request the verification of the session and this time it worked. I had to request session verification of few different messages (naybe I was to impatient) and the all messages got decrypted again. Problem solved for me. |
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I've been experiencing this same issue but with the iOS app. Basically, everything will be working fine in a 1-to-1 chat, but then one party (person A) will suddenly lose the ability to decrypt any of the messages sent by the other party (person B). However, person B can still see all the messages sent by person A. This doesn't just apply to message history either - even newly transmitted messages are unable to be decrypted by person A. I submitted a "rage shake" bug report from the app, but I figured I'd bring it up here too since it's a pretty catastrophic failure mode. We're usually able to get it to recover, but I can't pinpoint on the exact mechanism. It's usually just a bunch of power cycles, force resets, app force kills, etc. Then eventually it will work again. EDIT: @ara4n Let me know if I should file a bug for this, and if so, where. I'm not sure if it's an iOS app issue or a server issue. I'm running the latest Synapse, with a pretty much default config (but still using SQLite). |
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@jakemoroni. Thanks for your bug report. Can you ask the other party to submit a bug report as well, please? |
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A bit off-topic to this issue but it would make such issues less bad if it was possible to recover from the loss of decryption keys if the other party is willing to cooperate. That means Alice re-sending lost messages to Bob. |
jryans
added
P1
S-Critical
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Similar issue. Lost ability to decrypt e2e rooms on Linux desktop, Mobile and web app. Debug logs submitted. |
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@larkly Thanks for the debug logs. I am not so sure your issue is the same, but it will clutter this issue up if we work it out here. Please create a new issue and describe what has happened in your case. |
kittykat
added
the
O-Occasional
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@turt2live can that be related to indexedDB just wiping the keys? |
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Possibly; We introduced improved persistence and consistency checks at some point, but I can't remember if that was Winter 2020 or Winter 2019. |
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Related #18258 |
novocaine
added
O-Uncommon
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I am going to close this issue for now as while we've not been able to confirm that it is resolved, the code base has changed to improve encryption/decryption and we have not had any new reports since last year. If anyone else comes across a similar issue, please file a new issue against the platform that you are experiencing it on (web/desktop, Android or iOS) and submit a logs using rageshake as soon as possible (shake your mobile phone or type If anyone feels that this issue should remain open, please feel welcome to reach out to me. |
Description
My partner's phone randomly lost its ability to decrypt my messages, across all rooms. (Element seems to do that a couple times a year, which is troublesome, but perhaps a separate issue.) In order to try and resolve this, I tried several things, to create some layers of redundancy:
Steps to Reproduce
First I walked her through setting up key backup, which appeared to go smoothly.
Next, I had her sign in to Element on her desktop (for the first time). She confirmed on her phone that the session was valid, and everything came in fine on desktop --- except messages from me, which were still "unable to decrypt." But moments later, Element on the phone said she had to sign in again. From this point forward, her phone app became unusable, stringing through seemingly-random sequences of logins, key backup passwords, verification dialogs (all of which would fail), until we resorted to deleting the app and reinstalling it out of frustration.
This is where the real trouble began. After signing into the freshly-installed app, the desktop session suddenly dropped all keys it had to previously-decrypted messages, across all contacts and all rooms. The fresh mobile session similarly had no messages visible. I can send new messages to her, which she can see, but she can't see any past history whatsoever.
I had her restore from key backup on desktop, where it said "Successfully restored 0 keys."
I then tried verifying her, which worked, but restored no messages.
Aftermath
My partner is understandably quite upset that the app dropped her entire message history. Personally I'm more interested in figuring out how to keep this from happening in the future, and figuring out how to get my devices and her friends' devices to re-encrypt all past history in shared rooms for her new login sessions.
I've tried searching past issue threads about this, but the ones that seem applicable all get into lengthy technical discussions that I can't make heads or tails of. I just want to get this problem resolved.
Version information
For the desktop app:
For the mobile app (in case it's relevant):
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