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Apple and Russia Face Off Over Telegram on App Store

56 points by kharazi 8y ago

codedokode 8y ago
Is not this anti-competitive? Apple prevents Telegram from updating while allowing it to competing messengers. By the way legally Telegram is not a russian company (British company if I remember correctly) so Apple cannot get away with "who cares, they are from Russia". Is it ok that at Russian government's request American company is restricting a British company?
- segmondy 8y ago
  Not allowing them to update their app globally is truly evil. Apple has been positioning as a champion of privacy but it's all rubbish. They truly are as bad as Google.
  - wpdev_63 8y ago
    It's like the ceo[0] of the world's most profitable company lying[1] to every person in america about their most intimate device they own. I don't care what you say. I don't believe for a second that vault 7 is an exploit and not a built in backdoor. [0]:https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ [1]:https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ EDIT - this is going to get downvoted to oblivion cause it goes against the grain but it is an opinion and people should at least be open to it. Especially with the fact that news[2] like this is coming out everyday. [2]:https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      Uh, so what you’re saying is that you have no idea at all what “vault 7” is?
      - wpdev_63 8y ago
        If you read my link you would see that the fbi,cia, and nsa have "exploits" that they can be used to gain (root)access to iphones,android phones, samsung tvs etc. [hello george orwell] I can't believe for a second that the government can merely send a magic packet to an iphone and have it exploited as it does. It must a built in backdoor they can only access or else alot of other people would have it as well.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        Essentially everything in that list affects old versions of iOS…
        wpdev_63 8y ago
        Are you seriously doubting they still don't have that type of access?
        saagarjha 8y ago
        …yes?
        wpdev_63 8y ago
        picks up magic eight ball "Will there be another leak of exploits for the latest version of ios in the next year" Shakes magic eight and revealing the answer to be "ARE YOU DAFT! YES!!!" "The magic eight has spoken" putting aside hubris, take a look through eff.org and see for yourself. If you care enough about privacy and the future, take a look at fightforthefuture.org to see which candidates are funding these programs and the ones who are actively fighting the surveillance state.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Not banning Telegram from the app store is truly evil.
    - IntelMiner 8y ago
      Feel free to extrapolate on this comment...?
      - ryanlol 8y ago
        If you truly value privacy, perhaps you’d ban the “secure messaging” app with a history of obvious crypto backdoors? https://habr.com/post/206900/ https://habr.com/post/206900/ I’d love to see any credible explanation as to how this could have happened by accident.
        huhtenberg 8y ago
        Have you actually read the post you linked to? He found a flaw, they fixed it. The flaw itself is of a kind common to a home-brewed crypto and it was lying on a surface. Saying that Telegram made this mistake on purpose is, if you pardon my French, making shit up.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Do you actually understand the nature of the “mistake” they made here? Yes, they fixed it. No, you can’t accidentally write code that pulls DH nonces from your server. >The flaw itself is of a kind common to a home-brewed crypto You can’t say things like this and then proceed to accuse others of making up shit.
        huhtenberg 8y ago
        This is way too crude and obvious to be an intentionally planted protocol weakness. Telegram doesn't have reproducible builds, do they? So if they really wanted to fuck people over, all they had to do is to ship a build that uses predictable PRNG. The vast majority of users will use vendor-supplied binaries, so chances are that for any pair of peers you will be able to fully recover all their secrets and eavesdrop on the traffic. You don't even have to be Telegram to do that. In fact, this works against any protocol... unless client binaries are routinely audited and matched against their source, which is never the case with any of the clients. The only example I am aware of was Zimmerman's PGPfone back in mid-90s. So, yes, I think that you are seeing things that are not there and it's yet another case of stupidity rather than malice on part of Telegram's devs.
  - TheForumTroll 8y ago
    >Apple has been positioning as a champion of privacy I wonder who has anything to gain from this position of Apple outside of Apple itself? No one in their right mind can both know Apple's history and believe they are a bastion of privacy. I'd be surprised if they aren't worse than Facebook.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > No one in their right mind can both know Apple's history and believe they are a bastion of privacy. What history are you referring to?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > They truly are as bad as Google One of the reasons privacy activism has a hard time getting any traction is because of this all-or-nothing attitude. Apple clearly does more than Google for users’ privacy. But they drop the wall in one case and suddenly they’re “truly as bad as Google.” All-or-nothing hardball works if one has leverage. (Even then, it is a costly strategy.) If one is in the minority, however, it virtually guarantees being ignored. The world exists in shades of grey.
    - zzzcpan 8y ago
      I'd say they do as little as possible to keep the privacy PR going. It's more than Google, but still very very little.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > It's more than Google, but still very very little Perfect is the enemy of good. My point is it’s possible to criticise a company without being (falsely) hyperbolic.
simonh 8y ago
Is it possible Apple is considering a legal challenge? I know the system in Russia is horribly corrupt, but at least they seem to care about pretending to have a functioning legal system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- codedokode 8y ago
  Russia has no relation here. Apple now is imposing sanctions upon a British company (Telegram is registered there). By the way Russian users are only 7% of Telegram's userbase.
jve 8y ago
> It is possible that, as a result, the app is not GDPR compliant As a result of what? And this is between Russia/USA which has nothing to do with GDPR. And moreover, company has to be GDPR compliant and not an app. An app may include stuff that helps to be GDPR compliant, but is only a subset of what is required to be compliant.
- ryanworl 8y ago
  The prior sentence explains that because users haven’t been able to update the app, it would potentially be an older version which does not include any changes they have implemented since then for compliance.
- mercer 8y ago
  FWIW, from the man/Durov himself: "as a result, we’ve also been unable to fully comply with GDPR for our EU-users by the deadline of May 25, 2018. We are continuing our efforts to resolve the situation and will keep you updated."
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    To be fair, they had fully two years to do this before the May 25th "deadline".
peteretep 8y ago
I'm curious to know if Russia's a big enough market for Apple to give a shit. It's not China. Also, does Putin really want to upset the middle-class iPhone users in Russia, over an app written by Russians? Seems risky.
- mv4 8y ago
  Putin does not care about middle-class iPhone users in Russia. Blocking Telegram is just another form of censorship for him. He got away with blocking half the Internet in Russia already. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-internet-censorship-facebook-regulations-rules-a8315656.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-inter...
  - Grue3 8y ago
    For those who read this, "half of the Internet" is not an exaggeration. I legitimately cannot access about half of websites I get linked to without a proxy.
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      I had a couple of questions about this. First does attempting to access the site simply time out? For instance in the UAE you get an official message saying that the content is blocked. Second what has the coverage of this been like in the local media?
      - codedokode 8y ago
        Yes, it times out. If a site uses HTTP, there can be a notification about it being blocked, for HTTPS sites it is not possible. Some ISPs block packets by inspecting SNI field and such blocks can be bypassed by playing with TCP packet size either from client or server side. Some ISPs just block traffic to blacklisted IPs without inspecting the packets. > Second what has the coverage of this been like in the local media? All major media in Russia are controlled by the government. They reported that Telegram is used by terrorists and drug dealers and Durov refused to comply with russian law and provide decryption keys that are needed for the invesigation (Durov says that accounts in question are long deactivated and that he was required to provide keys allowing to decrypt the traffic of any user, and that those terrorists used WhatsApp as well). Putin's advisor on Internet development also suggested that russian users can switch to messengers made by russian companies. There also was a small rally in Moscow against internet censorship. Only about 12000 people from 12-million city took part in it.
heisenbit 8y ago
The problem with the app store is that it is a great control point. We may appreciate the safety it provides but it is a tempting target for regulators. More diversity in the ecosystem would help here.
- api 8y ago
  People are only now realizing this?
  - drdaeman 8y ago
    They've realized this many times, only to forget the next day.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    People have been saying this for years. For the 98% of non technical users, the App Store is suitable for them because its GUI is incredibly easy to use and understand. For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing Not even that: for the 2% who want to install software that hasn't annoyed {Apple, the local government}.
    - overcast 8y ago
      2% is being incredibly generous. If I asked my entire office of 200 people what rooting their phone meant, I'd be flabbergasted if 4 of them knew what I was even saying. HN and forums like it really live in a tiny, tiny bubble of vocal minorities. I've been in this industry for twenty years, and I have absolutely no interest in monkeying around with my phone. I just want it to work.
cynix 8y ago
Strangely, the desktop version in the Mac App Store seems to be getting updates just fine.
- Mindwipe 8y ago
  Not even Apple remembers the Mac App Store exists to interfere with it.
- hmage 8y ago
  Russian Govt asked to remove telegram from App Store, not Mac App Store. Apple will try their best to do the minimum required from them. (Which is nothing since they still didn't remove telegram from app store)
thisisit 8y ago
I wonder how would have Apple have reacted if it was a Chinese request considering they have blocked VPN apps from the China Store.
Aissen 8y ago
Since they have blocked VPN apps in China, the cat is out of the bag: they have proved to every country that they have the technical means to block a whatever app they like in a given country, and that they'd cave to local regulations to prevent being blocked. That's the cost of doing business anywhere, whether a dictatorship or not. They might stall for a time, but they'll end up blocking Telegram in Russia as well. And other apps will follow.
- codedokode 8y ago
  As I understand, Apple has blocked updates for all countries, and Telegram is a British company, not Russian, and russian users are only 7% of its userbase.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

56 points by kharazi 8y ago

Is not this anti-competitive? Apple prevents Telegram from updating while allowing it to competing messengers. By the way legally Telegram is not a russian company (British company if I remember correctly) so Apple cannot get away with "who cares, they are from Russia". Is it ok that at Russian government's request American company is restricting a British company?

segmondy 8y ago
Not allowing them to update their app globally is truly evil. Apple has been positioning as a champion of privacy but it's all rubbish. They truly are as bad as Google.
- wpdev_63 8y ago
  It's like the ceo[0] of the world's most profitable company lying[1] to every person in america about their most intimate device they own. I don't care what you say. I don't believe for a second that vault 7 is an exploit and not a built in backdoor. [0]:https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ [1]:https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ EDIT - this is going to get downvoted to oblivion cause it goes against the grain but it is an opinion and people should at least be open to it. Especially with the fact that news[2] like this is coming out everyday. [2]:https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/
  - ryanlol 8y ago
    Uh, so what you’re saying is that you have no idea at all what “vault 7” is?
    - wpdev_63 8y ago
      If you read my link you would see that the fbi,cia, and nsa have "exploits" that they can be used to gain (root)access to iphones,android phones, samsung tvs etc. [hello george orwell] I can't believe for a second that the government can merely send a magic packet to an iphone and have it exploited as it does. It must a built in backdoor they can only access or else alot of other people would have it as well.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        Essentially everything in that list affects old versions of iOS…
        wpdev_63 8y ago
        Are you seriously doubting they still don't have that type of access?
        saagarjha 8y ago
        …yes?
        wpdev_63 8y ago
        picks up magic eight ball "Will there be another leak of exploits for the latest version of ios in the next year" Shakes magic eight and revealing the answer to be "ARE YOU DAFT! YES!!!" "The magic eight has spoken" putting aside hubris, take a look through eff.org and see for yourself. If you care enough about privacy and the future, take a look at fightforthefuture.org to see which candidates are funding these programs and the ones who are actively fighting the surveillance state.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ryanlol 8y ago
  Not banning Telegram from the app store is truly evil.
  - IntelMiner 8y ago
    Feel free to extrapolate on this comment...?
    - ryanlol 8y ago
      If you truly value privacy, perhaps you’d ban the “secure messaging” app with a history of obvious crypto backdoors? https://habr.com/post/206900/ https://habr.com/post/206900/ I’d love to see any credible explanation as to how this could have happened by accident.
      - huhtenberg 8y ago
        Have you actually read the post you linked to? He found a flaw, they fixed it. The flaw itself is of a kind common to a home-brewed crypto and it was lying on a surface. Saying that Telegram made this mistake on purpose is, if you pardon my French, making shit up.
        ryanlol 8y ago
        Do you actually understand the nature of the “mistake” they made here? Yes, they fixed it. No, you can’t accidentally write code that pulls DH nonces from your server. >The flaw itself is of a kind common to a home-brewed crypto You can’t say things like this and then proceed to accuse others of making up shit.
        huhtenberg 8y ago
        This is way too crude and obvious to be an intentionally planted protocol weakness. Telegram doesn't have reproducible builds, do they? So if they really wanted to fuck people over, all they had to do is to ship a build that uses predictable PRNG. The vast majority of users will use vendor-supplied binaries, so chances are that for any pair of peers you will be able to fully recover all their secrets and eavesdrop on the traffic. You don't even have to be Telegram to do that. In fact, this works against any protocol... unless client binaries are routinely audited and matched against their source, which is never the case with any of the clients. The only example I am aware of was Zimmerman's PGPfone back in mid-90s. So, yes, I think that you are seeing things that are not there and it's yet another case of stupidity rather than malice on part of Telegram's devs.
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  >Apple has been positioning as a champion of privacy I wonder who has anything to gain from this position of Apple outside of Apple itself? No one in their right mind can both know Apple's history and believe they are a bastion of privacy. I'd be surprised if they aren't worse than Facebook.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > No one in their right mind can both know Apple's history and believe they are a bastion of privacy. What history are you referring to?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > They truly are as bad as Google One of the reasons privacy activism has a hard time getting any traction is because of this all-or-nothing attitude. Apple clearly does more than Google for users’ privacy. But they drop the wall in one case and suddenly they’re “truly as bad as Google.” All-or-nothing hardball works if one has leverage. (Even then, it is a costly strategy.) If one is in the minority, however, it virtually guarantees being ignored. The world exists in shades of grey.
  - zzzcpan 8y ago
    I'd say they do as little as possible to keep the privacy PR going. It's more than Google, but still very very little.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > It's more than Google, but still very very little Perfect is the enemy of good. My point is it’s possible to criticise a company without being (falsely) hyperbolic.

simonh 8y ago

Is it possible Apple is considering a legal challenge? I know the system in Russia is horribly corrupt, but at least they seem to care about pretending to have a functioning legal system.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
codedokode 8y ago
Russia has no relation here. Apple now is imposing sanctions upon a British company (Telegram is registered there). By the way Russian users are only 7% of Telegram's userbase.

jve 8y ago

> It is possible that, as a result, the app is not GDPR compliant As a result of what? And this is between Russia/USA which has nothing to do with GDPR. And moreover, company has to be GDPR compliant and not an app. An app may include stuff that helps to be GDPR compliant, but is only a subset of what is required to be compliant.

ryanworl 8y ago
The prior sentence explains that because users haven’t been able to update the app, it would potentially be an older version which does not include any changes they have implemented since then for compliance.
mercer 8y ago
FWIW, from the man/Durov himself: "as a result, we’ve also been unable to fully comply with GDPR for our EU-users by the deadline of May 25, 2018. We are continuing our efforts to resolve the situation and will keep you updated."
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  To be fair, they had fully two years to do this before the May 25th "deadline".

peteretep 8y ago

I'm curious to know if Russia's a big enough market for Apple to give a shit. It's not China. Also, does Putin really want to upset the middle-class iPhone users in Russia, over an app written by Russians? Seems risky.

mv4 8y ago
Putin does not care about middle-class iPhone users in Russia. Blocking Telegram is just another form of censorship for him. He got away with blocking half the Internet in Russia already. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-internet-censorship-facebook-regulations-rules-a8315656.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-inter...
- Grue3 8y ago
  For those who read this, "half of the Internet" is not an exaggeration. I legitimately cannot access about half of websites I get linked to without a proxy.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    I had a couple of questions about this. First does attempting to access the site simply time out? For instance in the UAE you get an official message saying that the content is blocked. Second what has the coverage of this been like in the local media?
    - codedokode 8y ago
      Yes, it times out. If a site uses HTTP, there can be a notification about it being blocked, for HTTPS sites it is not possible. Some ISPs block packets by inspecting SNI field and such blocks can be bypassed by playing with TCP packet size either from client or server side. Some ISPs just block traffic to blacklisted IPs without inspecting the packets. > Second what has the coverage of this been like in the local media? All major media in Russia are controlled by the government. They reported that Telegram is used by terrorists and drug dealers and Durov refused to comply with russian law and provide decryption keys that are needed for the invesigation (Durov says that accounts in question are long deactivated and that he was required to provide keys allowing to decrypt the traffic of any user, and that those terrorists used WhatsApp as well). Putin's advisor on Internet development also suggested that russian users can switch to messengers made by russian companies. There also was a small rally in Moscow against internet censorship. Only about 12000 people from 12-million city took part in it.

heisenbit 8y ago

The problem with the app store is that it is a great control point. We may appreciate the safety it provides but it is a tempting target for regulators. More diversity in the ecosystem would help here.

api 8y ago
People are only now realizing this?
- drdaeman 8y ago
  They've realized this many times, only to forget the next day.
- walrus01 8y ago
  People have been saying this for years. For the 98% of non technical users, the App Store is suitable for them because its GUI is incredibly easy to use and understand. For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > For the 2% of people who want to be able to sideload apps and to truly do things with root privilege on their android or ios phones, enforced app stores are a terrible thing Not even that: for the 2% who want to install software that hasn't annoyed {Apple, the local government}.
  - overcast 8y ago
    2% is being incredibly generous. If I asked my entire office of 200 people what rooting their phone meant, I'd be flabbergasted if 4 of them knew what I was even saying. HN and forums like it really live in a tiny, tiny bubble of vocal minorities. I've been in this industry for twenty years, and I have absolutely no interest in monkeying around with my phone. I just want it to work.

cynix 8y ago

Strangely, the desktop version in the Mac App Store seems to be getting updates just fine.

Mindwipe 8y ago
Not even Apple remembers the Mac App Store exists to interfere with it.
hmage 8y ago
Russian Govt asked to remove telegram from App Store, not Mac App Store. Apple will try their best to do the minimum required from them. (Which is nothing since they still didn't remove telegram from app store)

thisisit 8y ago

I wonder how would have Apple have reacted if it was a Chinese request considering they have blocked VPN apps from the China Store.

Aissen 8y ago

Since they have blocked VPN apps in China, the cat is out of the bag: they have proved to every country that they have the technical means to block a whatever app they like in a given country, and that they'd cave to local regulations to prevent being blocked. That's the cost of doing business anywhere, whether a dictatorship or not. They might stall for a time, but they'll end up blocking Telegram in Russia as well. And other apps will follow.

codedokode 8y ago
As I understand, Apple has blocked updates for all countries, and Telegram is a British company, not Russian, and russian users are only 7% of its userbase.

deleted 8y ago

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deleted 8y ago

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