Is Signal reporting any issues?
Signal is down for me right now. I am also seeing lot's of people mentioning the same thing on Twitter.
Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
101–110 of 254 posts
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
For private chats Telegram uses end-to-end encryption and they cannot read the chats. Of course, they control the clients though, so they could update their clients to also send the chats to Russian intelligence and it would be hard for anyone to notice.
Telegram isn't E2E encrypted by default. You need to choose an "encrypted" chat. They have been criticised over this for many years now.
Yes I would think intelligence agencies should prefer Telegram over other encrypted chat providers since there's at least this possibility of leaking.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#103I'd given this challenge some thought in the recent past, specifically the challenge that the big app store owners are each generally susceptible to coercion by large nation-state actors in spite of being multinationally distributed. There was a project I was involved in rather heavily (cyph // resulted in a pair of neat conference talks) where we'd accounted for the risks of apps being banned by making the entire ap…
If users could install Telegram from third-party sources, without rooting their phones, this issue wouldn't be so serious. Or if users could install from trusted friends, even. That is, if iOS apps could be shared. There's a similar issue for Android apps. But it's my understanding that it's easier, and doesn't require rooting.
But of course, this would break Apple's "we are the only app source, because you can only trust us" security model. Or maybe it's "... because we can only trust us, and we don't want increased support load".
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough - this is essentially my own question above - what pressure can be applied by Russia to Apple to prevent App Store UK getting updates? If you have a legal dispute in country A does the prevent all counties getting updates?
> Fair enough - this is essentially my own question above - what pressure can be applied by Russia to Apple to prevent App Store UK getting updates? They can fine the company, ban import of Apple products into the country, block access to App Store, etc. Yes, that same agency. It doesn't even matter which regional section of App Store Telegram would use to publish app - users in need can switch between them and censo…
It is not the same agency - food bans were issued by Роспотребнадзор.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this points to me is the risks of owning a phone whose only way to add apps is to go through one company's own discretion. Unlike in Android where you can easily install apps from other app stores or just download the file.
Not applicable to Telegram, but if the app is open source and you have a Mac (!) you can install it using Xcode. Since Signal is actually open source, you can install it even if Apple decides to block it in the future (if you have a Mac).
OK, but High Sierra VMs in VBox are pretty easy with vagrant. Plus the standard tweaks for running on Windows and Linux hosts.
So technical users could install for their friends.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Others have already said this, but you can always add a gatekeeper on top of an open system. IMHO what closed systems like Apple propose is a false dichotomy. There's no reason why Apple couldn't allow sideloading apps and aggressively curate it's own store. The average user will use Apple certified apps and the power users who need more will sideload uncertified apps. If gatekeepers are as genuinely beneficial to en…
Put a phone permitting side loading in front of my mom or half my friends and they’ll find a way to get a virus within a month. Broadly speaking, freedom a consumer doesn’t understand isn’t freedom to them. Apple’s products are reliable in part due to their tight control over the ecosystem.
I kind of don't understand this. Nobody is forcing anyone to use sideloading. Heck, Android phones by default have sideloading turned off in the settings so you can't even accidentally do it without going through a bunch of warnings.
Unless Android phones have an extra side-channel I don't know about, I just can't imagine someone sideloading an app on one of them unless they explicitly have decided the benefits outweigh the risks.
And if an average consumer is going into their settings and explicitly turning off a security measure, then at what point does it become reasonable to say that they're doing it because the official app store is not good enough on its own for the average consumer?
I get the whole "consumers are too stupid to know what's good for them" argument that people make sometimes, but I think that's a very tricky line to walk - especially when a company has a huge amount of profit tied up in deciding that individual freedom is a net negative.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#107I'd given this challenge some thought in the recent past, specifically the challenge that the big app store owners are each generally susceptible to coercion by large nation-state actors in spite of being multinationally distributed. There was a project I was involved in rather heavily (cyph // resulted in a pair of neat conference talks) where we'd accounted for the risks of apps being banned by making the entire ap…
If users could install Telegram from third-party sources, without rooting their phones, this issue wouldn't be so serious. Or if users could install from trusted friends, even. That is, if iOS apps could be shared. There's a similar issue for Android apps. But it's my understanding that it's easier, and doesn't require rooting. But of course, this would break Apple's "we are the only app source, because you can only…
Installing apps from third-party sources is trivial on most Android phones. It only requires turning on a setting that's off by default and exposed in the regular settings app.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
I should have specified, I meant risk to freedom/censorship.
Well it has those risks too. Tainted copies of messaging apps shipped by hostile governments. If you download from the App Store you know you're getting the app that was signed by the developer.
Signed binaries and open distribution channels are not mutually exclusive.
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
anytime someone says "only nation player threat model" I say in my mind "and also internal threats" . I believe this gives a more complete picture of the actual risk.
Usually true, but not consistently. There are applications which by design have accounted for internal threats but not state actors strictly because of the motivations of the threat actors themselves. To drastically simplify it: - Internal threats are usually motivated by finance/challenge/spite. - State actors are usually motivated to counter perceived national security threats regardless of whether they're short-te…
Gobs of money and also legal control of the companies' markets. Controlling Apple's various markets gives nations a lot of power that is tough to get even with lots and lots of money (yes, see Piketty, but it's rather inefficient to buy politicians even if some billionaires are working on doing so.)
Re: Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia
#110This is a fundamental problem with the single DRM-enforced app store model that Apple innovated, and which has been widely copied and lauded.
Once you implement that, you have to toady up to whatever governments exist, including oppressive/murderous regimes, to be in their markets.
If your ecosystem is just console video games, say, it's not that big of a deal; you have to either censor some games or don't enter certain countries at all. Might be unfortunate, but its not a fundamental human rights issue.
But if your ecosystem is about general-purpose apps and communication tools, you become complicit to some degree in all sorts of vile shit; oppression and forced relocation of minorities (China), mass murder of gay people (Russia), etc.
There's no way around this for Apple; they have to cave to government demands or risk being forced out of the Russian market. That wasn't inevitable, though; it's a side effect of the model they chose.