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Security Analysis of Telegram: 6.857 Final Project [pdf]
- aaronmacy 9y agoProfessionals anonymously ripping apart a non-anonymous undergraduate paper :clap:
- CapacitorSet 9y agoI think nobody would mind criticising the paper with their name and surname. It is an objective fact that the paper contains grammar mistakes, jokes, and no original research - it is hardly defamation or libel to say so.
- 3327 9y agoMIT needs to peer review before publication this document is full of grammar errors.
- saagarjha 9y agoAs is your comment, coincidentally. This is just a student’s project paper, not an actual research paper in a journal. I wouldn’t hold it up to that standard.
- Anon1096 9y agoThe paper is very light on details. I'm a little surprised MIT published this actually. It doesn't present anything new, and hinges on vulnerabilities since fixed to say that there are definitely new ones. Snooping on friends by looking at when they are online is interesting, but something known for a while and circumventable by just changing who can see your online status (I think it's people on your contact list by default). If you're expecting a security vulnerability, this isn't the paper to find one in (not that rolling your crypto is a good idea)
- lwf 9y ago6.857 is a class taken by undergraduates, and this is a final project paper, not a published paper.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sjroot 9y agoI think it is important to note that this is a final paper for a course at MIT. I would not hold it to the same quality standards as novel, peer-reviewed research.
- lucb1e 9y agoThere are LaTeX errors, jokes... but of course the contents is what counts, and I don't see anything noteworthy there either. It's a good writeup of what is quite well known (if you're into this kinda thing anyway) but it's not research. I wonder whether they passed the course.
- LolWolf 9y agoIt’s a final paper, not a scientific publication nor necessarily original research.
- bowmessage 9y agoThat's unnecessarily harsh.
- curiousgal 9y agoWelcome to HN?
- Proof 9y agoHe is right though in the end.
- sjroot 9y agoIt appears to be an introductory computer and network security course for undergraduates. With that in mind, it seems like they did a good enough job, though I agree that the jokes are distracting. I was only curious as to why this was submitted to HN.
- robobro 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- iamandoni 9y agoEveryone is bashing this as if it's a peer-reviewed paper...Note guys: This is just two students' final project for a class, not some security experts' publication
- tobscore 9y agoThe CLI isn't even an official client. And the open source projects on github are not up to date either. This could've been researched easily.
- fareesh 9y agoSimilar exploit published by an engineer earlier this month on WhatsApp https://robertheaton.com/2017/10/09/tracking-friends-and-strangers-using-whatsapp/ https://robertheaton.com/2017/10/09/tracking-friends-and-str...
- vanilla_nut 9y agoEven as a final paper for an undergraduate class, this is pretty light on details and doesn't appear to have even undergone basic editing. The "exploit" is only a couple pages of bare discussion that's very similar to the defaultnamehere discussion of Facebook Messenger from over a year ago. Given the skimpy details and lack of citation of the exploit's inspiration... I'd probably give this a C- at best. I really wish people in CS would ask friends to peer review their writing, because a lot of writing (not all, but a lot) is awful.
- justboxing 9y ago> because a lot of writing ... is awful. Yes. I was expecting to see an Architecture Diagram in the section titled Architecture. Instead, there's a screenshot of the app.
- bousaid 9y agoYeah I honestly expected more, especially from MIT students...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- morpheuskafka 9y agoI sure hope this is a preprint because I caught three obvious grammar errors in the first 30 seconds of reading.
- elSidCampeador 9y agoGuys use the ` character for the beginning double quotes
- yummy 9y agoWhy is this even upvoted and discussed?
- kbart 9y agoBecause it's from MIT? It's a golden standard when it comes to technology, so I guess everybody was expecting some super-mega-hack and were disappointed to find just a mediocre essay that one could expect to see on some noname, local university.