5 ms·

> (yes, the apps are open source, but at least on the App Store and Google Play you can't verify that the open source code is what's shipped). It is doable. T

> (yes, the apps are open source, but at least on the App Store and Google Play you can't verify that the open source code is what's shipped). It is doable. Telegram has a procedure you can run to verify the binaries, also from the Apple App Store. Yes, it requires a jailbroken phone, but it is doable.

mort96 4y ago
I didn't know that. If accurate, this puts Telegram more in the category of something like Signal on the desktop than WhatsApp or this Google thing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eitland 4y ago
  Unlike Signal, Telegram provides both end-to-end encrypted chats and point-to-point-encrypted chats. (But unlike Signal Telegram also haven't been caught with glaring zero days or caught sending images to anyone except the intented recipient the last fee years.)
  - m4lvin 4y ago
    What is the difference between end-to-end- and point-to-point-encrypted?
    - eitland 4y ago
      End-to-end-encrypted means without significant, unexpected breakthroughs in mathematics, no one can read it between the sender and the recipient, even if the traffic pass through FSB, NSA, Telegram, Google and Facebook headquarters and they all conspire to break it. Point-to-point-encrypted means it can theoretically[1] be read by the vendor (Telegram in this case) or anyone who can coerce the vendor. This is the standard for mail, online banking etc. The reason for providing both end-to-end-encrypted and point-to-point-encrypted is that point-to-point-encryption is significantly simpler, which makes it easiee to create useful and or cool features. [1]: vendors can do a nunber of things to make it hard/next to impossible for employees and others to access data, like for example restricting access to user data to service accounts, only allow debugging access in special circumstances and auditing such debugging access. Telegram used to claim they solve it by sending/storing encrypted data through/in different data centers from the keys, and keeping these days centers in different jurisdictions. Done properly should mean that two or more employees across the company would have to conspire to get access to customer data, or two or more judges in different countries would have to demand data. But unlike with end-to-end-encryption we have to take their word for it.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      Building over eitland's reply, Telegram allows users to see messages on several devices. This is because they terminate encryption on their servers and can send a copy of the plaintext message (re-encrypted) to every other device of the same user. They also store a copy because you can start from scratch with no surviving devices and a brand new one. All you need is access to your account. E2E chats work only on one device and are invisible to the other devices of the user [1]. More technical details at [2] [1] https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats [2] https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end
      - mort96 4y ago
        Essentially it just means that the connection between the app and the server is encrypted à la HTTPS, right?
        pmontra 4y ago
        Right. With E2E they receive encrypted data, with point to point they get plain text.
        eitland 4y ago
        I think this can be misunderstood in at least two ways. My most understanding reading is that you mean Telegram receives the data in plain text at their servers. That reading implies that they don't do this whole "encrypted data one way, keys another way" thing. (If we know they don't do that I am interested in knowing.) But a number of people here on HN will read it as "Telegram sends data unencrypted", which is definitely incorrect.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    (But unlike Signal Telegram did agree to cooperate with Russian government to help fight 'extremism') Even if you trust Telegram's e2e it's not on by default. Secure chats are second class and missing lots of features (plus glitchy, I lost multiple entire chat histories), so almost no one uses them.
    - eitland 4y ago
      > Even if you trust Telegram's e2e it's not on by default. I have not seen anyone postin any reason to not trust their end-to-end-encryption, so this shortens to a criticisms of point-to-point-encryption, which is (abd I'm feeling generous here) as about as useful as criticism of postcards. Note, I'm not going after you but after the HN tradition of trashing Telegram.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Thanks for clarification. I don't care about the tradition, it is my personal distrust. There's no visibility into the organization, they struggle for money, if FSB comes after them or their relatives in Russia with a rubber hose I don't see why they don't cooperate. It doesn't require breaking e2e either to make an impact, since no one I know uses secret chats on the regular anyway
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        > any reason to not trust their end-to-end-encryption Durov claiming in 2014 to assist Russian government in fighting 'extremism' (we all know what it means) is enough for me. I couldn't find any debunking, clarification or walking back those words.
        eitland 4y ago
        Maybe some clarification: Telegram has said that they cooperate with authorities almost everywhere when it comes to open groups and channels. This means terrorist groups like ISIS/Daesh gets taken down. As for closed groups I think they claim they don't have access and police have to get someone on the inside. As for cooperating with Russian authorities in particular, Telegram has a history of open confrontation with Russian authorities, and for a long time had to maintain a proxy network for Russian residents. Today we also see that both Russians and Ukrainians use Telegram to reach out, but I suspect at least Ukrainians use something else between themselves.
  - godelski 4y ago
    > Unlike Signal, Telegram provides both end-to-end encrypted chats and point-to-point-encrypted chats. Source on this? Signal can't even send messages to users with their phones off. Telegram (like WhatsApp) will buffer the message on the server (to the best of my knowledge) and can relay that message quite some time after. Signal clearly provides E2EE chats and group chats, so I'm not sure why that's stated here. For point-to-point, my understanding is that the functionality is extremely limited here and that you can't actually chat. That's what I found googling anyways. While Signal doesn't have this, there is an open feature request for something like this[0], but traction is often low on topics like these. Maybe if HN users were as passionate on Signal forums as they were here we'd get more of these features? Who knows. Devs may just ignore those too. > But unlike Signal Telegram also haven't been caught with glaring zero days or caught sending images to anyone except the intented recipient the last fee years. I'd actually like a source on this. I'm not aware of any Signal zero days... ever. Or hearing about Signal users receiving wrong messages. I have heard about several zero days with Telegram though. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/ https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/
    - BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
      > Signal can't even send messages to users with their phones off. Telegram (like WhatsApp) will buffer the message on the server (to the best of my knowledge) and can relay that message quite some time after. That is exactly what Signal has done for years (if not from the beginning?). It's why there's a distinction between one vs. two checkmarks on a sent message: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320751-How-do-I-know-if-my-message-was-delivered-or-read- https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320751-Ho...
throwaway290 4y ago
Can you jailbreak the latest iOS? Or you think running outdated OS doesn't create bigger problems security wise? And if not and you run the latest OS on your main device, how can you be sure the app store sends it the same non-backdoored version of Telegram that you would verify on the outdated jailbroken OS?
- eitland 4y ago
  The point is, if you want to, you can keep a jailbroken device around to try to catch Telegram or Apple red handed for providing a modified binary. You can use another to run it on for daily use.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    If you jailbreak a new version before they learn about it and change what they ship. (I think it's not likely to be the case but if we are going all the way then it is what it is.)
    - kelnos 4y ago
      You don't need to jailbreak a new version of iOS. You can just use the existing jailbroken phone (on an older version of iOS) to install the latest version of the Telegram app, and then verify it. Yes, eventually you'll be unable to install the latest versions of some apps on your increasingly-older-by-the-day version of iOS, but presumably some recent-enough version of iOS is jailbreakable at all times.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        > You can just use the existing jailbroken phone (on an older version of iOS) to install the latest version of the Telegram app, and then verify it. I mean different versions of the app can be shipped targeting different iOS versions, in which case it'd be a race.
        4y ago

mort96 4y ago

I didn't know that. If accurate, this puts Telegram more in the category of something like Signal on the desktop than WhatsApp or this Google thing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eitland 4y ago
Unlike Signal, Telegram provides both end-to-end encrypted chats and point-to-point-encrypted chats. (But unlike Signal Telegram also haven't been caught with glaring zero days or caught sending images to anyone except the intented recipient the last fee years.)
- m4lvin 4y ago
  What is the difference between end-to-end- and point-to-point-encrypted?
  - eitland 4y ago
    End-to-end-encrypted means without significant, unexpected breakthroughs in mathematics, no one can read it between the sender and the recipient, even if the traffic pass through FSB, NSA, Telegram, Google and Facebook headquarters and they all conspire to break it. Point-to-point-encrypted means it can theoretically[1] be read by the vendor (Telegram in this case) or anyone who can coerce the vendor. This is the standard for mail, online banking etc. The reason for providing both end-to-end-encrypted and point-to-point-encrypted is that point-to-point-encryption is significantly simpler, which makes it easiee to create useful and or cool features. [1]: vendors can do a nunber of things to make it hard/next to impossible for employees and others to access data, like for example restricting access to user data to service accounts, only allow debugging access in special circumstances and auditing such debugging access. Telegram used to claim they solve it by sending/storing encrypted data through/in different data centers from the keys, and keeping these days centers in different jurisdictions. Done properly should mean that two or more employees across the company would have to conspire to get access to customer data, or two or more judges in different countries would have to demand data. But unlike with end-to-end-encryption we have to take their word for it.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Building over eitland's reply, Telegram allows users to see messages on several devices. This is because they terminate encryption on their servers and can send a copy of the plaintext message (re-encrypted) to every other device of the same user. They also store a copy because you can start from scratch with no surviving devices and a brand new one. All you need is access to your account. E2E chats work only on one device and are invisible to the other devices of the user [1]. More technical details at [2] [1] https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats [2] https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end
    - mort96 4y ago
      Essentially it just means that the connection between the app and the server is encrypted à la HTTPS, right?
      - pmontra 4y ago
        Right. With E2E they receive encrypted data, with point to point they get plain text.
        eitland 4y ago
        I think this can be misunderstood in at least two ways. My most understanding reading is that you mean Telegram receives the data in plain text at their servers. That reading implies that they don't do this whole "encrypted data one way, keys another way" thing. (If we know they don't do that I am interested in knowing.) But a number of people here on HN will read it as "Telegram sends data unencrypted", which is definitely incorrect.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  (But unlike Signal Telegram did agree to cooperate with Russian government to help fight 'extremism') Even if you trust Telegram's e2e it's not on by default. Secure chats are second class and missing lots of features (plus glitchy, I lost multiple entire chat histories), so almost no one uses them.
  - eitland 4y ago
    > Even if you trust Telegram's e2e it's not on by default. I have not seen anyone postin any reason to not trust their end-to-end-encryption, so this shortens to a criticisms of point-to-point-encryption, which is (abd I'm feeling generous here) as about as useful as criticism of postcards. Note, I'm not going after you but after the HN tradition of trashing Telegram.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Thanks for clarification. I don't care about the tradition, it is my personal distrust. There's no visibility into the organization, they struggle for money, if FSB comes after them or their relatives in Russia with a rubber hose I don't see why they don't cooperate. It doesn't require breaking e2e either to make an impact, since no one I know uses secret chats on the regular anyway
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      > any reason to not trust their end-to-end-encryption Durov claiming in 2014 to assist Russian government in fighting 'extremism' (we all know what it means) is enough for me. I couldn't find any debunking, clarification or walking back those words.
      - eitland 4y ago
        Maybe some clarification: Telegram has said that they cooperate with authorities almost everywhere when it comes to open groups and channels. This means terrorist groups like ISIS/Daesh gets taken down. As for closed groups I think they claim they don't have access and police have to get someone on the inside. As for cooperating with Russian authorities in particular, Telegram has a history of open confrontation with Russian authorities, and for a long time had to maintain a proxy network for Russian residents. Today we also see that both Russians and Ukrainians use Telegram to reach out, but I suspect at least Ukrainians use something else between themselves.
- godelski 4y ago
  > Unlike Signal, Telegram provides both end-to-end encrypted chats and point-to-point-encrypted chats. Source on this? Signal can't even send messages to users with their phones off. Telegram (like WhatsApp) will buffer the message on the server (to the best of my knowledge) and can relay that message quite some time after. Signal clearly provides E2EE chats and group chats, so I'm not sure why that's stated here. For point-to-point, my understanding is that the functionality is extremely limited here and that you can't actually chat. That's what I found googling anyways. While Signal doesn't have this, there is an open feature request for something like this[0], but traction is often low on topics like these. Maybe if HN users were as passionate on Signal forums as they were here we'd get more of these features? Who knows. Devs may just ignore those too. > But unlike Signal Telegram also haven't been caught with glaring zero days or caught sending images to anyone except the intented recipient the last fee years. I'd actually like a source on this. I'm not aware of any Signal zero days... ever. Or hearing about Signal users receiving wrong messages. I have heard about several zero days with Telegram though. [0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/ https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/
  - BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
    > Signal can't even send messages to users with their phones off. Telegram (like WhatsApp) will buffer the message on the server (to the best of my knowledge) and can relay that message quite some time after. That is exactly what Signal has done for years (if not from the beginning?). It's why there's a distinction between one vs. two checkmarks on a sent message: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320751-How-do-I-know-if-my-message-was-delivered-or-read- https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320751-Ho...

throwaway290 4y ago

Can you jailbreak the latest iOS? Or you think running outdated OS doesn't create bigger problems security wise? And if not and you run the latest OS on your main device, how can you be sure the app store sends it the same non-backdoored version of Telegram that you would verify on the outdated jailbroken OS?

eitland 4y ago
The point is, if you want to, you can keep a jailbroken device around to try to catch Telegram or Apple red handed for providing a modified binary. You can use another to run it on for daily use.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  If you jailbreak a new version before they learn about it and change what they ship. (I think it's not likely to be the case but if we are going all the way then it is what it is.)
  - kelnos 4y ago
    You don't need to jailbreak a new version of iOS. You can just use the existing jailbroken phone (on an older version of iOS) to install the latest version of the Telegram app, and then verify it. Yes, eventually you'll be unable to install the latest versions of some apps on your increasingly-older-by-the-day version of iOS, but presumably some recent-enough version of iOS is jailbreakable at all times.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      > You can just use the existing jailbroken phone (on an older version of iOS) to install the latest version of the Telegram app, and then verify it. I mean different versions of the app can be shipped targeting different iOS versions, in which case it'd be a race.
      - 4y ago