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Telegram may be a better example than Apple phones given the SB FBI case and previous articles shared here about hacks. As a service, device, implementation of

Telegram may be a better example than Apple phones given the SB FBI case and previous articles shared here about hacks. As a service, device, implementation of encryption gets more use it also will get more eyes from state actors on how to find cracks in the armor.

lainga 9y ago
There was a lot of understandable disdain for Telegram when it got popular because they roll their own crypto, MTProto. However, it looks to me like Russia's recent pants-on-head move (banning 2M IP addresses because Telegram won't give up their keys) indicates that MTProto, if not a very wise development to begin with, doesn't have any obvious cracks that the FSB could just quietly pry open.
- lightedman 9y ago
  "However, it looks to me like Russia's recent pants-on-head move (banning 2M IP addresses because Telegram won't give up their keys) indicates that MTProto, if not a very wise development to begin with, doesn't have any obvious cracks that the FSB could just quietly pry open." Or you could be falling for a classical misdirection trick, which the Russian gov't is well-known to do, and they already have the crypto broken and are doing this to cover up such a fact.
- gravity_123 9y ago
  AFAIK telegram has channels and groups which were used in russia for purposes the govt didn't want to encourage. To my understanding, both groups and channels cannot be encrypted, so this ban has less to do with encryption but with the fact that Telegram wasn't willing to handle over the plain text chats they have on their servers.
  - opencl 9y ago
    They certainly are encrypted, they're not end to end encrypted so Telegram has the keys. Supposedly each key is stored across multiple datacenters in different legal jurisdictions so no single government can compel them to hand over the keys, but this seems like a rather questionable legal theory.

lainga 9y ago

There was a lot of understandable disdain for Telegram when it got popular because they roll their own crypto, MTProto. However, it looks to me like Russia's recent pants-on-head move (banning 2M IP addresses because Telegram won't give up their keys) indicates that MTProto, if not a very wise development to begin with, doesn't have any obvious cracks that the FSB could just quietly pry open.

lightedman 9y ago
"However, it looks to me like Russia's recent pants-on-head move (banning 2M IP addresses because Telegram won't give up their keys) indicates that MTProto, if not a very wise development to begin with, doesn't have any obvious cracks that the FSB could just quietly pry open." Or you could be falling for a classical misdirection trick, which the Russian gov't is well-known to do, and they already have the crypto broken and are doing this to cover up such a fact.
gravity_123 9y ago
AFAIK telegram has channels and groups which were used in russia for purposes the govt didn't want to encourage. To my understanding, both groups and channels cannot be encrypted, so this ban has less to do with encryption but with the fact that Telegram wasn't willing to handle over the plain text chats they have on their servers.
- opencl 9y ago
  They certainly are encrypted, they're not end to end encrypted so Telegram has the keys. Supposedly each key is stored across multiple datacenters in different legal jurisdictions so no single government can compel them to hand over the keys, but this seems like a rather questionable legal theory.