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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

#421

Post by maqp »

voxic11 wrote: post #131
t0astbread wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from that, regardless if you're on Signal or Telegram if authorities get hold of a protester's identity on such an app and have the power to access the app's servers they can gradually uncover social networks by reading metadata (if I'm not mistaken).

I think you are mistaken. Before your text is sent to Signal your sender information is encrypted with the receiver's public key. So while Signal's servers can see who to deliver the message to they cannot see who sent it. Only the receiving client can decrypt and authenticate the message. This feature was rolled out in late 2018 and is called "sealed sender". It was developed to prevent leakage of any social network…

"So while Signal's servers can see who to deliver the message to they cannot see who sent it."

Why can't they look at the TCP headers of incoming packets to determine source-IP? Also, why can't they look at session identifier or signal ID like phone number to determine who the sender is?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#422

Post by maqp »

BTCOG wrote: post #212
rectang wrote: post #44

Should the revolution fail, the digital trail left by these messages will give the government everything they need to hunt down every last activist. We saw it with the Green Revolution in Iran. We've seen it several times since. So long as messages are not encrypted, messaging apps are much more naturally suited as tools of oppression than tools of revolution.

Telegram polls are anonymous. Messages are encrypted.

Telegram knows who you are because you register with your phone number.

Telegram group messages are not end-to-end encrypted.

Telegram desktop messages are not end-to-end encrypted.

Telegram's messages are never end-to-end encrypted by default.

Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#423

Post by maqp »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #322
newsbinator wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also they don't know they're about to be arrested. One second they're walking along a street, one of dozens of other random pedestrians, the next second six guys are literally carrying them into a van.

The kill switch is used to wipe the phone when the pin is extorted from the protester. Enter a kill pin once and bye-bye.

Source on this "kill switch"?

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#424

Post by maqp »

newscracker wrote: post #279
ThinkBeat wrote: post #238

The encryption is not very good in group chat. All the security services need is to find one protesters phone force the person to unlock it and they have it all. I am sure all network traffic of any kind was heavily monitored too. It also becomes entirely useless when the authority turns off the internet. There is another one that can work with a Bluetooth mesh https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johnko…

> All the security services need is to find one protesters phone force the person to unlock it and they have it all. This is true for all apps regardless of how good their network encryption is. With Telegram it's possible to delete messages for everyone. Not so in some other apps.

"With Telegram it's possible to delete messages for everyone"

If the phone is in airplane mode, or faraday bag it's not receiving any "delete message" commands.

Also, with Telegram the case is, when the Belarusian, Russian, Chinese, Israeli, US... intelligence agency compromises the server, they can see every group message of every group, because by design Telegram's group chats never use E2EE.

Every cryptographer agrees Telegram's encryption is shit. Let's start believing them.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#425

Post by read_if_gay_ »

tptacek wrote: post #382
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, and obviously it doesn't have to, because I'm replying to you. You hint at Telegram's protocol being inferior based on the number of awards it won, a heuristic that isn't too relevant in practice.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#426

Post by maqp »

airstrike wrote: post #16
paganel wrote: post #9

Similar thing is happening in the States with different social media platforms (FB, Reddit until recently) which have empowered political views not reguarded as “good” by the mainstream media, but you don’t see congratulatory articles about this phenomenon, with FB even seen as Satan itself when it comes to politics.

Social media != instant messaging

Both are thought + location + picture + file + link sharing platforms. Perhaps you're not publishing to as wide audience, but still, they're extremely similar.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#427

Post by maqp »

outime wrote: post #6
nikivi wrote: post #2

Very curious how Telegram plans to monetize the app eventually given their crypto thing didn't work out.

Compared to WhatsApp, they do have access to all messages from every person (except for the few people using secret chats) and group so I'd not be very surprised if they started to mine that data somehow if they really want the money.

That would be a great reason to stop using it. If they never plan to use that data then they're idiots for designing a system that makes them liable for all that user data they accumulate in case it leaks. And if there's one constant on the modern planet that is "everyone will get hacked at some point". So that's another good reason to stop using Telegram. Like right now.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#428

Post by maqp »

cabrapreta wrote: post #62
mbdesign wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefer Signal myself too. It's a bit hard to switch over from WhatsApp and tried to use it at least with my spouse. One feature that Telegram and WhatsApp miss, is being able to send yourself a message. On Signal you can do this and it's very convenient for taking notes, sending passwords (laptop phone) and for saving bookmarks. I used to share interesting bookmarks from HN to my email, but that quickly got cumbersom…

You can do it on Telegram chatting with the "Saved messages" pseudo-user.

Signal has the Note-to-self feature that's E2EE. Telegram's chat to self is not end-to-end encrypted.

Re: Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests

#429

Post by maqp »

mercacona wrote: post #272
nobodyshere wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I’d ask you for some kind of proof, but I know you won’t be able to output any of it.

Proof? The ICO they did isn’t enough? They act as a business, Durov keeps control, it did not create a foundation or a non-profit. What extra proof do you need?

I totally understand where you're coming from but in order to be better than Durov who claimed Signal had backdoor without any evidence, we can't say he's selling user data without evidence.

We also can't claim he's secretly handing all non-end-to-end encrypted group chats and one-on-one messages to Kremlin, or that he's an oligarch who made his money by spying on Vkontakte users. We also can't say it's extremely suspicious his arrest warrant only lasted two months, or that journalists who visited Telegram offices in Dubai heard the company Telegram shared floor with had never even seen Telegram employees enter the offices. There is no evidence Telegram is an intelligence agency front. None. We should periodically remind people of this.

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