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There seems to be a concerted effort to discredit Matthew's claims. Even here on HN. I find this suspicious. The Signal protocol has been heavily audited by man

There seems to be a concerted effort to discredit Matthew's claims. Even here on HN. I find this suspicious. The Signal protocol has been heavily audited by many different people from many different countries. It's usually found to be sound. The telegram protocol has been found to have issues that are, if not malicious, amateur level mistakes. Once again, this is not my opinion. This is the result of independent auditors who have no affiliation with either the USA or Russia. There are positives to the UI of Telegram, there are negatives to the UI of Signal. None of these has much to do with the underlying protocol of either. Personally I'd rather we all put our collective efforts into something like the protocol suggested by Matrix, but if only given the choice of Telegram or Signal, I'd avoid Telegram like the plague. They are either malicious or amateur. Either one isn't a good choice for security.

FabHK 2y ago
Eh, split any important message into pieces, put a piece each in Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, Threema, Line, and then the Americans, Russians, Swiss, and Koreans will each have some parts, but if you're lucky, nobody has all...
- Intermernet 2y ago
  I didn't even know Line was still a thing!
- viraptor 2y ago
  At that point you're giving the metadata to everyone. That's not a great thing if you actually care about being protected from all of them.
medo-bear 2y ago
You can have a secure verified protocol but an insecure implementation of the protocol (the app). Note though that Im not saying that Signal the app is insecure. However I do think that Signal can certainly do more to make itself more transparrent and to accomodate libre 3rd party implementations of their protocol
vetinari 2y ago
> The telegram protocol has been found to have issues that are, if not malicious, amateur level mistakes. Please provide evidence of such issues. Because at most, the issues with MTProto were at the level of "we are not familiar with this, but seems ok". Which seem to be inflated by Signal activists into maliciousness. You do make bear service here.
- Intermernet 2y ago
  https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/469.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/469.pdf
  - vetinari 2y ago
    From your own link: > Recently, in [MV21 ] MTProto 2.0 (the current version) was proven secure in a symbolic model, but assuming ideal building blocks and abstracting away all implementation/primitive details. Translation: it is secure, except for bugs, if any.
    - Intermernet 2y ago
      That's a generous translation! They were shown to be double-encrypting, using nonces where they weren't required, and generally making a bunch of mistakes that would be fine if they were writing a student level implementation of a secure messenger protocol, but not one that went on to be tacitly endorsed by a bunch of nation states! It's like a clunkier version of the backdoor in Dual EC DRBG. When problems like this are found, you can either assume deliberate malice (as in the case of NIST) or accidental incompetence. Either should be immediate grounds for not using the software. This isn't Flappy Bird. This is meant to be secure comms. The "This Is Fine" mentality doesn't cut it.
- Intermernet 2y ago
  "You do make bear service here." I'm not sure what this means.
  - 2y ago

FabHK 2y ago

Eh, split any important message into pieces, put a piece each in Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, Threema, Line, and then the Americans, Russians, Swiss, and Koreans will each have some parts, but if you're lucky, nobody has all...

Intermernet 2y ago
I didn't even know Line was still a thing!
viraptor 2y ago
At that point you're giving the metadata to everyone. That's not a great thing if you actually care about being protected from all of them.

medo-bear 2y ago

You can have a secure verified protocol but an insecure implementation of the protocol (the app). Note though that Im not saying that Signal the app is insecure. However I do think that Signal can certainly do more to make itself more transparrent and to accomodate libre 3rd party implementations of their protocol

vetinari 2y ago

> The telegram protocol has been found to have issues that are, if not malicious, amateur level mistakes. Please provide evidence of such issues. Because at most, the issues with MTProto were at the level of "we are not familiar with this, but seems ok". Which seem to be inflated by Signal activists into maliciousness. You do make bear service here.

Intermernet 2y ago
https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/469.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/469.pdf
- vetinari 2y ago
  From your own link: > Recently, in [MV21 ] MTProto 2.0 (the current version) was proven secure in a symbolic model, but assuming ideal building blocks and abstracting away all implementation/primitive details. Translation: it is secure, except for bugs, if any.
  - Intermernet 2y ago
    That's a generous translation! They were shown to be double-encrypting, using nonces where they weren't required, and generally making a bunch of mistakes that would be fine if they were writing a student level implementation of a secure messenger protocol, but not one that went on to be tacitly endorsed by a bunch of nation states! It's like a clunkier version of the backdoor in Dual EC DRBG. When problems like this are found, you can either assume deliberate malice (as in the case of NIST) or accidental incompetence. Either should be immediate grounds for not using the software. This isn't Flappy Bird. This is meant to be secure comms. The "This Is Fine" mentality doesn't cut it.
Intermernet 2y ago
"You do make bear service here." I'm not sure what this means.
- 2y ago