4 ms·

This is such a misrepresentation. Telegram could at-will feed the cloud-2FA password to password hashing function like Argon2 to derive a client-side encryption

by maqp 2y ago

This is such a misrepresentation. Telegram could at-will feed the cloud-2FA password to password hashing function like Argon2 to derive a client-side encryption key. Everything could be backed up to the cloud in encrypted state only you can access. Do they do that? No. So it's not as much as trade-off, as it is half-assed security design.

thisisabore 2y ago
I'll have you know they had maths PhDs design their security, sir. Eight of them! Yeah, it's a bit of a joke.
- maqp 2y ago
  Yeah, put a geometrician* to do the job of a cryptographer. This is what you get. * I'm being serious, Nikolai Durov's PhD dissertation title was "New Approach to Arakelov Geometry" https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/3110 https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/31... https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2030 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2030
  - codedokode 2y ago
    Advanced math is actually more difficult (in my opinion) than programming languages.
    - joshuamorton 2y ago
      Sure, but cryptography is its own subfield of advanced math (and also a bunch of more CS and UX based implementation challenges like avoiding side channels).
    - maqp 2y ago
      Cryptography is nightmare magic math that cares about the color of the pencil you write it with. It's not enough you know how to design a cipher that is actually secure, you need to know how to implement it so that the calculator you run it on consumes exactly the right amount of time, and in some cases power, per operation. Then you need to know how to use the primitives together, their modes of operation, and then you get to business, designing protocols. And 10% of your code is calling the libraries that handle all that stuff above, 90% is key management. There's a good amount of misuse resistant libraries available, but Nikolai was too proud to not look into how the experts do this, and he failed even with trivial stuff: He went with SHA-1 instead of SHA-256. He didn't implement proper fingerprints. His protocol wasn't IND-CCA secure. He went with weird AES-IGE instead of AES-GCM which is best practice. He used the weird nonces with the FF-DH, instead of going with more robust stuff like x25519. One thing you learn early in academia, is that expertise is very narrow. I bet he knows a lot about geometry. Maybe even quite a bit about math in general. But it's clear he doesn't know enough to design cryptographic protocols. The cobbler should have stuck to his last. EDIT, to add, the real work with cryptographic protocols starts with designing everyday things that seem easy on the paper, with cryptographic assurance. Take group management that the server isn't controlling. For Telegram it's a few boolean flags for admin status and then it's down to writing the code that removes the user from the group and prevents them from fetching group's messages. For Signal it's a 58 page whitepaper on the design of how that is done properly https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdf This is ultimately what separates the good from the bad, figuring out how to accomplish things with cryptography that first seem almost impossible to do.
skeledrew 2y ago
Telegram currently has very intuitive and snappy search, even in very active groups with years of content. That's because the heavy lifting is done by the server. Think that'd still be possible if there was no way for the server to process the data?
- maqp 2y ago
  Yeah, try searching anything older than a year, the amazing snappy search grinds to halt. Meanwhile I'm storing years worth of stuff on Signal with no issues, and it searches ridiculously fast offline with no seconds long pause for buffering.
  - therein 2y ago
    Yeah Telegram search is not in a state where anyone should be proud of it.
  - skeledrew 2y ago
    So interesting. I just did a search for mentions of someone I know in multiple Telegram groups and channels, and got all the results, going back 5 years, instantly. And these groups and channels have millions of messages. All media is also perpetually available (unless deliberately deleted), and take a couple seconds to load. I don't see any other platform having that kind of convenience.
- SXX 2y ago
  PCs and phones been fast enough to have snappy search on text data for years now. Is "grep" not snappy enough for you?
  - skeledrew 2y ago
    Not at all. Try searching 500/1000 sources (maximum number of conversations any free/premium user can be part of), each with potentially millions of messages, and providing the results in under a second.
codedokode 2y ago
Apple could also use E2E for their cloud backups by default, but they don't (and if you enable E2E, it doesn't apply to contact list and calendar backup anyway). Why do you demand more from Telegram than from Apple or Google?

by maqp 2y ago

thisisabore 2y ago

I'll have you know they had maths PhDs design their security, sir. Eight of them! Yeah, it's a bit of a joke.

maqp 2y ago
Yeah, put a geometrician* to do the job of a cryptographer. This is what you get. * I'm being serious, Nikolai Durov's PhD dissertation title was "New Approach to Arakelov Geometry" https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/3110 https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/31... https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2030 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2030
- codedokode 2y ago
  Advanced math is actually more difficult (in my opinion) than programming languages.
  - joshuamorton 2y ago
    Sure, but cryptography is its own subfield of advanced math (and also a bunch of more CS and UX based implementation challenges like avoiding side channels).
  - maqp 2y ago
    Cryptography is nightmare magic math that cares about the color of the pencil you write it with. It's not enough you know how to design a cipher that is actually secure, you need to know how to implement it so that the calculator you run it on consumes exactly the right amount of time, and in some cases power, per operation. Then you need to know how to use the primitives together, their modes of operation, and then you get to business, designing protocols. And 10% of your code is calling the libraries that handle all that stuff above, 90% is key management. There's a good amount of misuse resistant libraries available, but Nikolai was too proud to not look into how the experts do this, and he failed even with trivial stuff: He went with SHA-1 instead of SHA-256. He didn't implement proper fingerprints. His protocol wasn't IND-CCA secure. He went with weird AES-IGE instead of AES-GCM which is best practice. He used the weird nonces with the FF-DH, instead of going with more robust stuff like x25519. One thing you learn early in academia, is that expertise is very narrow. I bet he knows a lot about geometry. Maybe even quite a bit about math in general. But it's clear he doesn't know enough to design cryptographic protocols. The cobbler should have stuck to his last. EDIT, to add, the real work with cryptographic protocols starts with designing everyday things that seem easy on the paper, with cryptographic assurance. Take group management that the server isn't controlling. For Telegram it's a few boolean flags for admin status and then it's down to writing the code that removes the user from the group and prevents them from fetching group's messages. For Signal it's a 58 page whitepaper on the design of how that is done properly https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1416.pdf This is ultimately what separates the good from the bad, figuring out how to accomplish things with cryptography that first seem almost impossible to do.

skeledrew 2y ago

Telegram currently has very intuitive and snappy search, even in very active groups with years of content. That's because the heavy lifting is done by the server. Think that'd still be possible if there was no way for the server to process the data?

maqp 2y ago
Yeah, try searching anything older than a year, the amazing snappy search grinds to halt. Meanwhile I'm storing years worth of stuff on Signal with no issues, and it searches ridiculously fast offline with no seconds long pause for buffering.
- therein 2y ago
  Yeah Telegram search is not in a state where anyone should be proud of it.
- skeledrew 2y ago
  So interesting. I just did a search for mentions of someone I know in multiple Telegram groups and channels, and got all the results, going back 5 years, instantly. And these groups and channels have millions of messages. All media is also perpetually available (unless deliberately deleted), and take a couple seconds to load. I don't see any other platform having that kind of convenience.
SXX 2y ago
PCs and phones been fast enough to have snappy search on text data for years now. Is "grep" not snappy enough for you?
- skeledrew 2y ago
  Not at all. Try searching 500/1000 sources (maximum number of conversations any free/premium user can be part of), each with potentially millions of messages, and providing the results in under a second.

codedokode 2y ago

Apple could also use E2E for their cloud backups by default, but they don't (and if you enable E2E, it doesn't apply to contact list and calendar backup anyway). Why do you demand more from Telegram than from Apple or Google?