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Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

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Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#321

Try the mud puddle test: log into your account on a new device using the password recovery flow. Can you see your old messages? If the answer is yes then law enforcement can too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/08/05/how-se...

Why not the "founder locked up" test? If the founder claims secure encryption, yet they are not in jail, that means there's no secure encryption because they negotiated their freedom in exchange for secret backdoors.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#322
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram currently has very intuitive and snappy search, even in very active groups with years of content. That's because the heavy lifting is done by the server. Think that'd still be possible if there was no way for the server to process the data?

PCs and phones been fast enough to have snappy search on text data for years now. Is "grep" not snappy enough for you?

Not at all. Try searching 500/1000 sources (maximum number of conversations any free/premium user can be part of), each with potentially millions of messages, and providing the results in under a second.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#323
post #227

I am null at cryptography but thie following does not sound too bad as a default tbh. And I think it is misleading to focus solely on e2ee and not mention the distributed aspect. https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests > To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that…

>To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. This is utter bullshit I debunked back in 2021. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/238562/how-does...

In practice also didn't work, only one government was needed to arrest the guy. And now all they need is a hammer or some pliers. No need for multiple governments to coordinate.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#324
post #323
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To protect the data that is not covered by end-to-end encryption, Telegram uses a distributed infrastructure. Cloud chat data is stored in multiple data centers around the globe that are controlled by different legal entities spread across different jurisdictions. This is utter bullshit I debunked back in 2021. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/238562/how-does...

In practice also didn't work, only one government was needed to arrest the guy. And now all they need is a hammer or some pliers. No need for multiple governments to coordinate.

Well I'm sure France isn't taking Durov to some black site at this point. But since there's no such thing as distributed computation of single AES block operation, each server must by definition have access to the server's SQL-database key, and that key can be confiscated from which ever node is interacting with the database. Last I heard the servers in EU were in Netherlands, so if needed, perhaps the authorities there will handle it after court proceedings.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#325
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PCs and phones been fast enough to have snappy search on text data for years now. Is "grep" not snappy enough for you?

Not at all. Try searching 500/1000 sources (maximum number of conversations any free/premium user can be part of), each with potentially millions of messages, and providing the results in under a second.

AFAIK telegram dont have any super-advanced search features neither it instantly return you results for all these years. Also if you search less common terms it's usually take longer than less than second.

And if you just run client on device without a lot of this history cached search wouldn't be anywhere as fast as you expect. So I pretty sure there no server-side magic there, but instead very good UX.

Also I can tell for certain that with right index grepping tons of JSONs can be very effective on any modern devices.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#326

Try the mud puddle test: log into your account on a new device using the password recovery flow. Can you see your old messages? If the answer is yes then law enforcement can too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/08/05/how-se...

If you apply this test to things like LastPass or Bitwarden they fail too. And yet the don't keep my unencrypted passwords on their servers.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#327
post #321

Try the mud puddle test: log into your account on a new device using the password recovery flow. Can you see your old messages? If the answer is yes then law enforcement can too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/08/05/how-se...

Why not the "founder locked up" test? If the founder claims secure encryption, yet they are not in jail, that means there's no secure encryption because they negotiated their freedom in exchange for secret backdoors.

That isn’t applicable here. Telegram isn’t encrypted and yet they refused to comply with subpoenas. Companies whose customer data is encrypted can truthfully say that they have no way to access it for law enforcement. Telegram can’t.

Maybe in the future, creators of encrypted messaging apps will get locked up. I certainly hope not. But this case doesn’t indicate anything one way or another.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#328
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal also allows edits and deletions.

I haven't used Signal in a while, so I probably misremember some of what it supported. I just looked it up though and Signal's delete feature seems to leave a "This message was deleted" placeholder like what Facebook Messenger does, which looks a bit annoying to me ( https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360050426432-De... ). Telegram just directly removes the message for everyone.

But with the benefit that it prevents situations where responses to the deleted message appear to have a completely different context and meaning.

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's literally the entire point of this article. That is, in this day and age, when people talk about "secure messaging apps" they are usually implying end-to-end encryption, which Telegram most certainly is not for the vast majority of usages.

Also, iMessage is very secure...but then all your stuff is backed up on iCloud servers unless you specifically disable it. That includes all your iCloud encryption keys and plaintext messages. Worse, iPhones immediately start backing up to iCloud when set up for a new user - the only way to keep your network passwords and all manner of other stuff from hitting iCloud servers is to set the phone up with no network con…

Apple devices are also always gossiping about which devices are where

Re: Is Telegram really an encrypted messaging app?

#330
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already know how Signal is going to come out here, because this is something people complain incessantly about (the inconvenience of not getting transcripts when enrolling new devices).

I agree with the principle here wholeheartedly. One addendum though is I think this isn't quite the same as the mud puddle test. The idea behind the mud puddle test is if you've forgotten everything, but then manage to recover your data, then the principle must be that someone other than you has to have had access. With Signal, they intentionally refuse to sync data as an extra security step even if you have the keys…

This isn't fully accurate. You can backup your Signal messages on Android with an encrypted file and a key you control. So yes, just installing on a new device isn't going to give you history. I'd prefer they offer a universal structure for that backup file so we could easily switch between Android and iOS and have some way to backup your data at all on iOS (presently if anything goes wrong when setting up a new phone you lose your entire message history).
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