In NIP-04 I noticed that DMs can be encrypted using AES-CBC. IIUC, this is not a very robust mode for using AES. Seems surprising for a greenfield project.
What's wrong with CBC? I think the bigger problem is the symmetric keys are not using a key derivation function and are therefore not uniformly random: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/issues/72
Discussion was about cipher block modes in the context of Nostr and NIP-04. You might notice all 3 levels above your comment reference either the Nostr protocol in general, or NIP-04 messages.
> And GCM does not ‘add’ a signature per se.
Your own comment to which I replied said "It’s not tamper proof, ie signed, unlike GCM". Wouldn't most people consider something "signed" as having a signature?