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Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

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Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#101

Post by tpolm »

ricksharp wrote: post #85

Can someone correct me if I am wrong, but it seems relatively easy to make an encrypted peer-to-peer messaging system. I mean, simply use a public/private encryption algorithm that has proven to be highly secure: - Share your public key openly - Anyone can send a message to you using your public key to encrypt the message - You decrypt with your private key on device Do all the encryption/decryption on device and vio…

you are missing the fact the OS that runs the system is already compromised and has government backdoors. No matter if you use Telegram / Whatsapp / whatever. Windows / Andriod / iOS / you name it already have a million ways to be compromised and have a backdoor if needed.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#102

Post by drawkbox »

I am not sure about the claim here but the FBI has always been all over cryptography companies and products and this was well before Snowden, Phil Zimmermann (PGP) knows about this.

In 2003-2006, we built a service that was a financial system to exchange financial data through various means including AS/2 EDI over HTTP with big companies and the government suppliers such as AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange). Initially we had RSA, PGP and a custom encryption in there, the latter two for other features besides EDI. We got a letter from the FBI asking us to switch only to RSA, they wanted to know about our use of PGP and wanted to see our custom encryption if we continued to use it. Being a small/medium company we switched to just RSA to avoid any issues. It was an odd day, when I came into the office they told me I had an FBI letter on my desk and you can imagine what happens around an office when something like that happens. Very strange day indeed.

Moral of the story, if you create your own crypto or aren't using the ones you are supposed to use, in any capacity, expect some knocking.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#103

Post by daxorid »

RodericDay wrote: post #79
narrowrail wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many prominent and respected HNers have laid out the case for why Telegram has security issues. If you use the search function at the bottom, you will easily find these issues raised. I don't personally possess the knowledge to determine the soundness of Telegram's crypto, but there have been enough red flags raised on HN over the years to merit skepticism.

tbh, people like tptacek and his buddies have a clear agenda and attitude of their own. I'm definitely not sated by their pronouncements alone.

While I absolutely agree with you about the "tptacek & friends" agenda, that really has no bearing whatsoever on the actual problems they've raised with MTProto, their weird KDF, and IGE in general.

Whenever one can consider a person's arguments in isolation from your opinion of said person, it's wise to do so. This is one of those opportunities.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#104

Post by WillyOnWheels »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #23
robert_foss wrote: post #10

This is pretty alarming stuff. Especially considering how that competitors like Signal are US based. Signal is owned by twitter which by no means is a small player, so it isn't likely to fly under anyones radar.

Signal is not owned by Twitter. Moxie works there, but that doesn't mean his code is owned by Twitter.

I hate to pedantically bore people but Moxie does not work at Twitter. He did for a short period of time after Twitter acquired his 2 person startup.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#105

Post by ben_w »

drawkbox wrote: post #102

I am not sure about the claim here but the FBI has always been all over cryptography companies and products and this was well before Snowden, Phil Zimmermann (PGP) knows about this. In 2003-2006, we built a service that was a financial system to exchange financial data through various means including AS/2 EDI over HTTP with big companies and the government suppliers such as AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange). Initia…

Interesting. That strongly implies that RSA has a flaw, which is news to me.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#106

Post by ricksharp »

closeparen wrote: post #91
ricksharp wrote: post #85

Can someone correct me if I am wrong, but it seems relatively easy to make an encrypted peer-to-peer messaging system. I mean, simply use a public/private encryption algorithm that has proven to be highly secure: - Share your public key openly - Anyone can send a message to you using your public key to encrypt the message - You decrypt with your private key on device Do all the encryption/decryption on device and vio…

Who do you trust to distribute the keys? This person is empowered to MITM. Who do you trust to know the metadata about how encrypted messages are flowing? Who do you trust to get the crypto implementation details right? How will you support use of multiple devices? People generally expect seamless switching between phone and laptop these days.

Public keys are open, they can be distributed any way (they could be published to a hosted directory a shared wherever). Only the device that owns the private key could decrypt the message.

In fact encrypted messages could be stored publically anywhere and only the intended recipient could read them.

The flow of messages is not encrypted, the system only encrypts message contents. (However, there are options to make it very difficult to trace, but that is a different issue.)

Trust is up to the user to decide and is always necessary.

Multiple devices is easy enough, a device can encrypt its own private key and send it to another device (using the target devices public key). The target device would now have 2 private keys for decryption.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#107

Post by drawkbox »

ben_w wrote: post #105
drawkbox wrote: post #102

I am not sure about the claim here but the FBI has always been all over cryptography companies and products and this was well before Snowden, Phil Zimmermann (PGP) knows about this. In 2003-2006, we built a service that was a financial system to exchange financial data through various means including AS/2 EDI over HTTP with big companies and the government suppliers such as AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange). Initia…

Interesting. That strongly implies that RSA has a flaw, which is news to me.

We used Bouncy Castle and Microsoft CryptoAPI for our RSA usage, who knows if RSA, CryptoAPI or others had trapdoors but they can neither confirm nor deny.

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#108

Post by ricksharp »

tptacek wrote: post #98
ricksharp wrote: post #85

Can someone correct me if I am wrong, but it seems relatively easy to make an encrypted peer-to-peer messaging system. I mean, simply use a public/private encryption algorithm that has proven to be highly secure: - Share your public key openly - Anyone can send a message to you using your public key to encrypt the message - You decrypt with your private key on device Do all the encryption/decryption on device and vio…

Which public key algorithm? In what mode of operation? What are you going to use to actually encrypt messages? You don't want to directly use the public key primitives to do this. In what mode of operation are you going to use that second, bulk encryption algorithm? How are you going to authenticate messages? What will you do to validate the public keys of your peers? When you close the application, will it forget ev…

Thanks!

This is an excellent list of potential issues.

"What are you going to use to actually encrypt messages? You don't want to directly use the public key primitives to do this."

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Could you explain why there is a need for another encryption protocol beyond a public/private key encryption?

If the protocol is secure against brute force attack, both the public key and the encrypted messages could be open and would not create a vulnerability to the private key.

What am I missing?

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#109

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #105
drawkbox wrote: post #102

I am not sure about the claim here but the FBI has always been all over cryptography companies and products and this was well before Snowden, Phil Zimmermann (PGP) knows about this. In 2003-2006, we built a service that was a financial system to exchange financial data through various means including AS/2 EDI over HTTP with big companies and the government suppliers such as AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange). Initia…

Interesting. That strongly implies that RSA has a flaw, which is news to me.

[deleted]

Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption

#110

Post by daxorid »

drawkbox wrote: post #102

I am not sure about the claim here but the FBI has always been all over cryptography companies and products and this was well before Snowden, Phil Zimmermann (PGP) knows about this. In 2003-2006, we built a service that was a financial system to exchange financial data through various means including AS/2 EDI over HTTP with big companies and the government suppliers such as AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange). Initia…

Wickr CEO claims they were also approached to backdoor their product:

http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/security/319544-what-it-s-lik...

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