Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by JetSpiegel » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

ricksharp wrote: post #106

closeparen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Public keys are open, but the hard part is mapping real people to their public keys. How do you know that the public key they send is the real one, and wasn't modified en route? For people you know IRL, this is easy, but for strangers?

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

#122

Post by mjg59 » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

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…

What encryption scheme were you using in PGP?

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

#123

Post by permanentdecaf » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #90

permanentdecaf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pavel Durov wants everyone to think security is about trust in people. Most companies in that business do the same, because it's easier than building something that doesn't require trust in people. The way Pavel Durov and others like him present "trust" is (ironically) shady corporate structures[1], shell companies, or use of the word "Switzerland." They want people to think like that because they've built businesses…

I read the WP article you cited, titled, "The secret American origins of Telegram, the encrypted messaging app favored by the Islamic State". If Telegram isn't that secure, then why are extremists like IS using it over Signal or WhatsApp? I know Telegram has better features for big groups and much better multi-platform support, so is that the reason? I'm legitimately asking without any snark.

Marketing.

Sadly, one of the conclusions you can draw from Telegram is that a security business is almost better off with no security.

Pavel Durov says that Telegram is "heavily" encrypted over and over again, journalists who don't know better take that at face value and encode it into every headline ("Telegram, the encrypted messaging app, ..."), and meanwhile since there is no encryption there is no risk of anyone finding or publishing vulnerabilities in it.

Since cryptography already seems unreal to most people (and is always just a matter of getting the smart IT guy to 'crack' it on television), everyone's already predisposed to thinking that security = Switzerland. Unless there's a major change, the charlatans will win every time.

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

#124

Post by moosingin3space » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #84

toephu2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Do you have any proof WhatsApp is insecure?

I think the question should be do we have proof that it is secure?

Moxie Marlinspike's reputation is dependent on his ability to deliver a secure product. Signal/Signal Protocol development is funded by donations and grants from groups like the Freedom of the Press Foundation, EFF, etc, and those groups desire a secure messaging product. Moxie has staked his reputation on WhatsApp's implementation of the Signal Protocol multiple times on the OWS blog, which he would not do if he disapproved of WhatsApp's implementation. There's no hard proof (except what can be gained through analysis of the executables), but there's no incentive for Moxie to lie, therefore, WhatsApp's implementation should be reasonably secure.

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

#125

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

ricksharp wrote: post #108

tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

* Assymetric transforms are much, much slower than the AES transform or any other block or stream cipher.

* In most cases, an asymmetric transform gives you a deceptively small amount of headroom within which to fit your data before losing security.

* asymmetric transforms are less safe to implement than simple authenticated symmetric ciphers.

* for that matter, cost-effectively authenticating messages will require "symmetric" primitives anyways.

* modern asymmetric algorithms (like Curve25519) don't "directly" support encryption.

That's just off the top of my head. It is hard to think of a single competent public key cryptosystem that encrypts directly with the asym transform.

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

#126

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:19 PM UTC

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.

If the USG was aware of a secret flaw in RSA, they wouldn't be tipping their hands about it to random small companies. Come on.

But: avoid RSA anyways. It's inferior to modern curve crypto.

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

#127

Post by geofft » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #87

geofft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we can all agree that if some totally below-the-radar crypto anarchist who happens to have a few million dollars from bitcoins figured out that they actually have enough access via the dark web to bribe a few Russian generals and long story short detonate a nuclear bomb a few miles outside New York City, just for shits and giggles, then they should be stopped at some point along the way. I agree with this,…

It seems the problem logicallee is working is the massively growing destructive power available to individuals or small groups. Technology is accelerating to the point where the destructive power that was formerly available only to state actors with proper command & control systems is now available to small states, groups, and even individuals -- chemical, bioweapons, delivery by drone, etc. It is now possible to mai…

Sure, but that destructive power has nothing to do with online communications. I sort of buy your argument about the power grid, but I am absolutely confident that a dozen motivated and funded people from this forum could easily build our own darknet, operating over some combination of radio waves, dark fiber, and sneakernet, that is completely invisible and unknown to law enforcement.

Again, there have been conspiracies (and armies) in human history for centuries, and most of them didn't have realtime messages in people's pockets. They had letters carried on horseback, and it worked just fine.

People use encrypted chat apps over the internet because it happens to be easy enough and reliably secure enough. If it weren't, there's no inherent reason to keep using the internet for this. There's enough other ways to communicate.

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

#128

Post by drawkbox » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:21 PM UTC

dotBen wrote: post #115

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…

Did the FBI give any reason/leverage as to why you should comply with their ask? If you are writing about it here, I'm assuming it wasn't an NSL (national security letter) and so would you be open to publishing a copy of it publicly? Would be great to get sunlight on that.

Probably in an old desk somewhere, it wasn't an NSL but I wish I would have held onto it, I would have captured it on my phone if smart phones were around then. It basically said if you are going to keep using PGP or custom encryption for the app that they would like to meet with us to discuss since we were connecting to government financial endpoints. Then it said if we use RSA that this would not be a needed discussion. It was very strange and eerie all in all and we did not want to rock the boat.

Since we were small/medium agency/company we just complied as we were just helping smaller/medium companies sell stuff like Ukuleles and hats to AAFES so it was not a big issue. The key of the app was the EDI/AS2 integration that didn't use the PGP or custom crypto as it had to use certain algos RSA/DSA/TripleDES/FIPS/strong hashing for Drummond Group interoperability certification. The certification of interoperability and crypto communication was required to trade with Wal-mart, govt/AAFES etc.

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

#129

Post by baby » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

permanentdecaf wrote: post #72

otalp wrote: post #5

>"It would be naive to think you can run an independent/secure cryptoapp based in the US." This seems to be a shot at WhatsApp and Signal, implying that they have loopholes that allow the FBI to snoop in. I'm not sure how true that is. This might be an attempt to deflect from the fact that Telegram uses a home-baked encryption protocol which might be insecure, while WhatsApp uses the OWS protocol.

Pavel Durov wants everyone to think security is about trust in people. Most companies in that business do the same, because it's easier than building something that doesn't require trust in people. The way Pavel Durov and others like him present "trust" is (ironically) shady corporate structures[1], shell companies, or use of the word "Switzerland." They want people to think like that because they've built businesses…

> Pavel Durov wants everyone to think security is about trust in people

I think his point is the reverse, while people trust Signal because of Moxie & Trevp.

puts Tinfoil hat it's possible that Trevp is not "that" involved with Signal because he doesn't want to be involved with the government and backdoors.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 15, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

otalp wrote: post #5

>"It would be naive to think you can run an independent/secure cryptoapp based in the US." This seems to be a shot at WhatsApp and Signal, implying that they have loopholes that allow the FBI to snoop in. I'm not sure how true that is. This might be an attempt to deflect from the fact that Telegram uses a home-baked encryption protocol which might be insecure, while WhatsApp uses the OWS protocol.

[deleted]