Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it bad to be afraid when there is reason to be?
If there's a reason to be afraid, give it. Nationality is a weak reason.
there's a difference between 'afraid of' and 'don't trust closed-source crypto from'.
Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
141–150 of 220 posts
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
We just used it for a trusted/whitelist of users to send encrypted emails to one another, usually in the same company, and to forward on invoices/purchase orders to be sent. We just used default PGP setup with symmetric keys (which used PGP/IDEA internally I think). We switched this portion to Bouncy Castle with RSA. We were just using it for additional ways to send financial docs usually invoices/purchase orders and…
But you weren't using RSA for the asymmetric PGP keys?
Probably, PGP used RSA for asymmetric keys and session keys before IDEA, can't recall exactly but it was a short lived part of the app and PGP was changing during that time and now has changed supporting most algos with OpenPGP. I think we only added PGP at the time because it was a hot item/had some buzz about it during the time.
In our app, we switched it to Bouncy Castle for digital signatures after removing it for the other features.
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#143Hmmmm.... A Russian peddling undocumented crypto warez implies US crypto is untrustworthy despite the obvious open source code. Don't suppose this would be one of Putin's patriotic citizen artists spreading fake news do you? Edit: thanks to all the replies. I am smarter now.
While I certainly not fan of custom-made crypto Telegram is also open source and they at least not pretend there some "end to end encryption" except you actually did key exchange on your own. > Don't suppose this would be one of Putin's patriotic citizen artists spreading fake news do you? You might be missed it, but Pavel lost business he built to Putin's oligarch friend.
the server is closed source
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You could use OpenPGP public keys so you can use the web of trust that comes with them.
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#145Can 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…
> What happens if someone is briefly compromised?
Could you give an example please? How do current protocols deal with that?
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#146>"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.
Indeed, looks like a shot at Signal. I was under the impression that Signal is much secure than WhatsApp at least in terms of getting away from the prying eyes of Facebook. In reality both of them use the Whisper protocol underneath AFAICT for end-point encryption.
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#147Read the replies from all the serious crypto security people on twitter and you will see the overwhelming consensus is that the FSB/Spetssviaz and FBI/NSA probably love Telegram for its roll-your-own-crypto and server mediated group chats. One also has to wonder if the FBI consider the Telegram team to be essentially undeclared Russian agents, and hence fair game.
Indeed despite what they say, we only have their word for it but no source code to check whether they accepted these requests from the snoopers in usa.
I thought they open sourced the code?
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#148Earlier 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…
> Telegram stores the messages you send/receive unencrypted on their servers. Anyone who has used Telegram for more than 5 minutes knows there are secret chats. The effort being made to rig the information against Telegram also tells a lot about its relevance.
Secret chats that aren't even supported by the official desktop client? Telegram has some things going for it, but privacy and security are not among them.
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#149Earlier 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…
> 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.
To say that Signal is secure because of the people, or to say that WhatsApp isn't secure because of Facebook only feeds the logic of Pavel Durov and all the charlatans of the world.
The point of all of this should be that it's not about people, places, or jurisdictions. If you make it about that, the charlatans who want you to think that Switzerland = secure will win every time.
Re: Telegram founder: US intelligence tried to bribe us to weaken encryption
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even wikipedia say it's founded by the governement ... As of October 2016, the project has received an unknown amount of donations from individual sponsors via the Freedom of the Press Foundation.[100] Open Whisper Systems has received grants from the Knight Foundation,[101] the Shuttleworth Foundation,[102] and the Open Technology Fund,[103] a U.S. government funded program that has also supported other privacy proj…
Supporting Cryptocat only makes sense if they don't do due diligence or if they're trying to subvert security.
I worked on the OTF-funded security audit of Cryptocat. (The report: https://leastauthority.com/static/publications/LeastAuthorit...) While I wasn't involved in arranging the work, my vague memory is that a publically-disclosed audit was a condition of the funding -- I think the OTF had that policy in general. (It's been a few years, and I haven't kept up.)
Even the author of CryptoCat now thinks you should not use CryptoCat, but I would not rush to assume ill of the OTF funding it back then.