Is that $200,000 in BTC valued at the time that the award will be given, or valued now? With the way things are going, not sure which would be better...
$200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
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Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#12[deleted]
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#13This is $200,000 in bitcoins, not actually $200,000.
what do you think the definition of "$200,000 in bitcoins" is?
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#14Travel to russia, get big wrench and hit Durov with it until he gives up his password. Win 200k. In all seriousness, im interested to see if anyone can crack this.
If I remeber correctly the Russians indeed have a special term of getting the crypto key in such manner: Thermorectal Cryptanalysis.
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#15Most of the concerns people had were Telegram's servers acting maliciously or being coerced into acting maliciously, which is obviously not covered by this contest or the protocol they have designed. It's a bit disingenuous that Telegram is broken but not in a way that this bounty could pay for.
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#16At least they'll put their money where their mouth is. I'm excited to see someone call out the naysaying masses on HN and stand by their product in this regard.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that it's secure. If someone breaks it, it means it's broken, but if nobody breaks it, it doesn't mean someone else can't break it (or hasn't already).
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#17At least they'll put their money where their mouth is. I'm excited to see someone call out the naysaying masses on HN and stand by their product in this regard.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that it's secure. If someone breaks it, it means it's broken, but if nobody breaks it, it doesn't mean someone else can't break it (or hasn't already).
It actually makes things worse really "no hackers can break this!" sounds good on paper, but it could just mean your adversary has more to gain by the system not being publicly broken.
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#18This is $200,000 in bitcoins, not actually $200,000.
what do you think the definition of "$200,000 in bitcoins" is?
I think it means its 200k in "bitcoin" thats near impossible to cash out at such volumes. So I think this is a PR stunt and nothing more.
Rolling your own encryption has always been proven to be the worst idea.
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#19Does the secret email address change every day? Or is it the same one from now until the close of the contest?
Re: $200,000 to the first person to break Telegram
#20At least they'll put their money where their mouth is. I'm excited to see someone call out the naysaying masses on HN and stand by their product in this regard.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that it's secure. If someone breaks it, it means it's broken, but if nobody breaks it, it doesn't mean someone else can't break it (or hasn't already).
Agreed, but the tone of the previous discussion was definitely more along the lines of "This could never work, you guys don't know what you're doing."
If it proves resilient over 2.5 months of highly motivated attacks (motivated by both the money / "I-Told-You-So" factor), I think that's a fairly strong statement in their favor.