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There was a serious FUD campaign started by one of the developers of now competing app Signal a few years ago. Now if you mention Telegram on Reddit you're imm

by skrowl 10y ago

There was a serious FUD campaign started by one of the developers of now competing app Signal a few years ago. Now if you mention Telegram on Reddit you're immediately bombed with "OMG TELEGRAM CRYPTO IS BROKEN!" even though 0 people on earth have ever provably decrypted a Telegram message. They even offered a $300K bounty where you could act as the server... no takers.

Phlarp 10y ago
Somehow, I don't think you are going to find more sympathy for Telegram's broken crypto (or Signal's "FUD" campaign) here on HN. At the end of the day, for many nerds looking at these two pieces of software and their developers-- Moxie comes out looking a lot more serious about privacy and more experienced with crypto than Nikolai and Pavel. To say nothing of Telegrams closed source cloud app model, questionable financing strategy or debatable ties to the Russian intelligence apparatus.
- skrebbel 10y ago
  > questionable financing strategy or debatable ties to the Russian intelligence apparatus. Soo you counter FUD with FUD. Great strategy!
dsacco 10y ago
I don't have skin in this game, but I want to mention that contests are not evidence of security. Furthermore, cryptographers other than those working at Signal have expressed distrust for its security.[1][2] What Telegram should do to earn the trust of the technical community (specifically, the security savvy people who criticize it for unorthodox encryption methodologies), is contract a real audit from a leading security firm that specializes in cryptanalysis, like Riscure. [1]: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/726428912968982529 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/72642891296898252... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9775080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9775080
- hueving 10y ago
  >is contract a real audit from a leading security firm Suggestions like this do nothing to dispell the image that modern security firms are little more than a protection racket. If you don't pay for "an audit" from an "industry leading" firm, you'll be shunned by everyone.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    What's your alternative suggestion?
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    You pay for an audit, or you release the code/algorithms for the community to publicly audit. Otherwise, you're just making claims that are unbacked by anything. Presumably only the fact that there hasn't, yet, been a public exploit. But that's not a useful metric.
MatthiasP 10y ago
Does Telegram use E2E encryption by default now, yes or no?
- makomk 10y ago
  Probably not, but the hilarious thing is that a year or so after attacking Telegram for that, the developers of Signal took a substantial chunk of cash from Google to promote Allo as using Signal Protocol and end to end encryption, even though it's disabled by default so Google can mine your chat history for ad targeting (and enabling it has the inconvenient side effect of disabling your own local chat history). Basically, it's about the cash. Signal's business model is to convince everyone that their protocol is the only secure one and charge everyone to licence it. If that means promoting non-E2E services that store and mine chat history, that's fine so long as they pay up.
  - geofft 10y ago
    > charge everyone to licence it What? The protocol is publicly described. They've blogged about it. I can imagine people being able to reconstruct it from memory. The first Google result for "signal protocol license" is https://whispersystems.org/blog/license-update/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/license-update/ , clarifying that it's under GPLv3 (i.e., patent grant) with an exception for the App Store. Has anyone paid money to license the protocol? Has Signal asked for money? Is it even possible to give them money for the protocol?
    - bad_user 10y ago
      GPLv3 is cool as open source goes, but is pretty restrictive. Basically you can't link to it and distribute your app without it being open source. A company like Google can probably not use it.
      - geofft 10y ago
        What I meant with GPLv3 is "and they are even willing to grant any patent rights to the general public". I don't know if they hold patents on it, but if they either don't, or are willing to license them freely, then you can implement the protocol from the public documentation of it.
yownie 10y ago
It's not FUD if the skepticism is valid
michael_h 10y ago
How much is a Telegram exploit worth? Maybe more than $300K.
Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
Well... People said to them "don't roll your own crypto. Whatever you've got going now doesn't look too sane". The Telegram devs more or less said "f*ck you, we are programming world champions and PhDs". Then, about 6 months after they were all cocky, a russian guy showed that the telegram server could mitm every secret chat by providing the client with shitty entropy. Either it was a back door, or the telegram devs showed that everyone else was right. Don't use it for the crypto. If that is what you want, use something else.

by skrowl 10y ago

Phlarp 10y ago

Somehow, I don't think you are going to find more sympathy for Telegram's broken crypto (or Signal's "FUD" campaign) here on HN. At the end of the day, for many nerds looking at these two pieces of software and their developers-- Moxie comes out looking a lot more serious about privacy and more experienced with crypto than Nikolai and Pavel. To say nothing of Telegrams closed source cloud app model, questionable financing strategy or debatable ties to the Russian intelligence apparatus.

skrebbel 10y ago
> questionable financing strategy or debatable ties to the Russian intelligence apparatus. Soo you counter FUD with FUD. Great strategy!

dsacco 10y ago

I don't have skin in this game, but I want to mention that contests are not evidence of security. Furthermore, cryptographers other than those working at Signal have expressed distrust for its security.[1][2] What Telegram should do to earn the trust of the technical community (specifically, the security savvy people who criticize it for unorthodox encryption methodologies), is contract a real audit from a leading security firm that specializes in cryptanalysis, like Riscure. [1]: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/726428912968982529 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/72642891296898252... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9775080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9775080

hueving 10y ago
>is contract a real audit from a leading security firm Suggestions like this do nothing to dispell the image that modern security firms are little more than a protection racket. If you don't pay for "an audit" from an "industry leading" firm, you'll be shunned by everyone.
- ethbro 10y ago
  What's your alternative suggestion?
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  You pay for an audit, or you release the code/algorithms for the community to publicly audit. Otherwise, you're just making claims that are unbacked by anything. Presumably only the fact that there hasn't, yet, been a public exploit. But that's not a useful metric.

MatthiasP 10y ago

Does Telegram use E2E encryption by default now, yes or no?

makomk 10y ago
Probably not, but the hilarious thing is that a year or so after attacking Telegram for that, the developers of Signal took a substantial chunk of cash from Google to promote Allo as using Signal Protocol and end to end encryption, even though it's disabled by default so Google can mine your chat history for ad targeting (and enabling it has the inconvenient side effect of disabling your own local chat history). Basically, it's about the cash. Signal's business model is to convince everyone that their protocol is the only secure one and charge everyone to licence it. If that means promoting non-E2E services that store and mine chat history, that's fine so long as they pay up.
- geofft 10y ago
  > charge everyone to licence it What? The protocol is publicly described. They've blogged about it. I can imagine people being able to reconstruct it from memory. The first Google result for "signal protocol license" is https://whispersystems.org/blog/license-update/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/license-update/ , clarifying that it's under GPLv3 (i.e., patent grant) with an exception for the App Store. Has anyone paid money to license the protocol? Has Signal asked for money? Is it even possible to give them money for the protocol?
  - bad_user 10y ago
    GPLv3 is cool as open source goes, but is pretty restrictive. Basically you can't link to it and distribute your app without it being open source. A company like Google can probably not use it.
    - geofft 10y ago
      What I meant with GPLv3 is "and they are even willing to grant any patent rights to the general public". I don't know if they hold patents on it, but if they either don't, or are willing to license them freely, then you can implement the protocol from the public documentation of it.

yownie 10y ago

It's not FUD if the skepticism is valid

michael_h 10y ago

How much is a Telegram exploit worth? Maybe more than $300K.

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago

Well... People said to them "don't roll your own crypto. Whatever you've got going now doesn't look too sane". The Telegram devs more or less said "f*ck you, we are programming world champions and PhDs". Then, about 6 months after they were all cocky, a russian guy showed that the telegram server could mitm every secret chat by providing the client with shitty entropy. Either it was a back door, or the telegram devs showed that everyone else was right. Don't use it for the crypto. If that is what you want, use something else.