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Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

latimes.com

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Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#381

Post by aasasd »

newscracker wrote: post #264

It's not surprising that every time Telegram pops up here, many comments miss the fact that Telegram has a great UX, a great feature set and also provides the kind of privacy protestors value, i.e., not having their phone numbers flashed to every random stranger in groups or to random channel owners whose channels you've subscribed to. With Telegram you cannot even do a phone number enumeration attack (this can be ch…

> With Telegram you cannot even do a phone number enumeration attack (this can be changed in settings) by adding phone numbers to your contacts list to find out who's using it

You mean how multiple companies have done on dozens of millions of accounts before Tg added that feature last year, and are openly selling that data? Like with that dump of 40 million numbers just from Iran and Russia. How often do you change your number?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#382

Post by tptacek »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #319
tptacek wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal Protocol won the Levchin Prize at Real World Crypto, which was awarded by a panel of several of the most renowned academic cryptographers in the field (including Dan Boneh and Kenny Paterson). Other winners include Bellare, Krawczyk, and Joan Daemon. The protocol has been extensively analyzed and is the current gold standard for messaging encryption. Telegram's protocol... is not that.

But the standard we should apply to secure chat protocols isn't how many awards it won, but whether it's watertight. Obviously winning a prestigious prize means it's watertight, but the converse doesn't follow. A protocol can be safe for practical use without winning any prizes.

Does this comment have anything to do with the question I was responding to?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#385

Post by maqp »

diimdeep wrote: post #118

Telegram created Belarus language public channel. And posted poll to vote for new president with some clever restrictions. Anyone can vote, but you can't choose options with candidates if your phone number is not Balarusian. "I am not from Belarus" is only available poll option to make your vote if your phone number is not Balarusian. There is currently 736'000 votes with that option. Telegram poll https://t.me/s/tel…

"Poll shows that 1,184 million choose to vote for new president Tikhanovskaya."

It is possible that Telegram is being impartial and providing more honest statistics wrt. what the citizens want. But it's also the case the results are unverifiable data broadcasted from Telegram's server over TLS-equivalent connection. MITM attack of client-server encryption, as well as compromise of the server broadcasting the results allow the attacker to alter the voting results. People acting on those results will allow Telegram to bypass democratic processes. Not saying Belarus is a democracy, but if this sets a precedent it will turn Telegram into a tool of political power, and power, as always, will corrupt. Even if Durov's team is being fair and honest (which I find unlikely considering Durov is yet another Russian oligarch who made their money spying on VKontakte users), they're also useful fools creating yet another architecture with centralized control over user data.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#386

Post by kube-system »

07t15 wrote: post #357
kube-system wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the point I am making. Sample size is but one of many factors that influence the reliability of a poll, and it is not the only consideration for good polling technique. A large sample does not mitigate those factors. If there is an issue with the underlying polling technique, making the sample larger does not guarantee more correctness. You simply end up with a larger set of bad data.

Even if the sample size is the same size as the population?

1. Possibly, if they are different populations.

2. This sample in the Telegram poll is ~20% the number of voters in Belarus.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#387

Post by maqp »

newscracker wrote: post #264

It's not surprising that every time Telegram pops up here, many comments miss the fact that Telegram has a great UX, a great feature set and also provides the kind of privacy protestors value, i.e., not having their phone numbers flashed to every random stranger in groups or to random channel owners whose channels you've subscribed to. With Telegram you cannot even do a phone number enumeration attack (this can be ch…

"And nope, Signal doesn't make the cut for the above reasons because it exposes your phone number to everyone else"

This is being worked on.

The thing is you're mixing two threat models. One is a creepy dude who will give you nightly calls if they learn your phone number. The other is a state actor who will hack the server and track you based on your IP-address if no phone number is being used otherwise: hence the enumeration attacks won't matter. You can't escape state actors looking at your metadata with Wire, Element or Signal. For that you want an Onion Service based system like Briar, Cwtch, Ricochet, or TFC.

For the creepy people not having to hand out your phone number is a nicety, but it's not at all hard to block a phone number either, it works just like any other app's blacklist: just add the number and be done with it.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#388

Post by maqp »

ffpip wrote: post #286
newscracker wrote: post #264

It's not surprising that every time Telegram pops up here, many comments miss the fact that Telegram has a great UX, a great feature set and also provides the kind of privacy protestors value, i.e., not having their phone numbers flashed to every random stranger in groups or to random channel owners whose channels you've subscribed to. With Telegram you cannot even do a phone number enumeration attack (this can be ch…

I love telegram. Great UI, feels natural to use it. And SO MANY features, it's hard to keep up. Unlimited storage helps too.

When you realize end-to-end encryption is a necessary property of all features, you realize Telegram lacks even basic things like desktop clients, syncable chats, and group chats. Not so feature rich anymore ;)

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#389

Post by maqp »

asutekku wrote: post #336
sneak wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only see praise for Telegram, which is confusing, because it is unsafe snake oil. Don’t use Telegram.

It’s no more unsafe as using whatsapp or some other similar service. To be fair, if most of my relatives would not use whatsapp, i would’ve turned 100% telegram already.

"It’s no more unsafe as using whatsapp or some other similar service."

There's perhaps a 1-2% chance WhatsApp has a backdoor that allows server to read all group conversations at will.

There's 100% chance Telegram's architecture allows server to read all group conversations at will.

You're 100% wrong with your security assessment between the two.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#390

Post by kube-system »

freeone3000 wrote: post #380
kube-system wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you seeing 90%? The poll itself says 59% of the 2.3m respondents were people who voted in the election. That's 1.4m people, which is 15% of their population and 21% of their eligible voting population.

Forget the percentage - there are more people who said they voted for the second-place contender than the second-place contender's official vote count.

Yes, clearly the evidence demonstrates the election results are less than trustworthy.

But that’s not what I was taking issue with. Above, I was disputing the claim that a large sample size “guarantees correctness”

Likely, neither this Telegram poll nor the election are statistically sound in their results, for different reasons.

I am not saying that the Telegram poll has to be statistically sound to be valuable evidence.

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