Telegram - secure, free messaging • Hacker News Board

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#201

Post by Confusion » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 7:49 AM UTC

utnick wrote: post #120

A lot of haters in this thread. To be expected. I've been following this space for a while and telegram is the best app out there right now. The usability is great and they are trying to do the right things when it comes to security. The apps are open source and can be audited. I fully expect there to be bugs, that is part of the process! You would be insane to trust your life to a crypto app thats been around a few…

The point of most 'haters' is that trying to do the right thing isn't good enough.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#202

Post by polarix » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 8:03 AM UTC

hrjet wrote: post #154

ge0rg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only open-source apps on open-source operating systems [..] ...running on Open Source hardware. Many modern smartphones employ a baseband processor and an application processor with shared memory. While the app processor might be running an open-source compiled Android, the baseband processor is usually on a closed, not externally verified (and very buggy) RTOS provided by the manufacturer (Qualcomm, MediaTek, TI, ..…

> running on self-manufactured hardware FTFY. Open sourced hardware by itself is of no practical use because the guy who manufactured it for you might have altered it in production.

And let's not forget to consider a "trusting trust" attack on the hardware you use to manufacture the processor.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#203

Post by asadlionpk » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 8:18 AM UTC

Devs of this app: Don't be disappointed by these harsh comments because most of them contain technical fixes you need to do asap!

These suggestions, if implemented/fixed will surely get you some really dedicated early adopters!

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#204

Post by haarts » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 9:58 AM UTC

TeeWEE wrote: post #112

Everybody is so negative here. Ok rolling your own security protocol might not be the best move. However, they want to be competetive with whatsapp. Most people who try to make a whatsapp killer suck in uix. But this app is really good and fast. I think its better than whatsapp in a multitude of terms. Okay, there are improvements. But I can submit a pull request to the android app and improve it myself! How Awesome!

I fully agree. Everybody can surely agree this is vastly better that WhatsApp despite it's shortcomings.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#205

Post by dspillett » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 10:20 AM UTC

alonium wrote: post #71

Wow, there are so many cryptography experts with world names in this thread! And interesting why you think that it's not possible to read most of cryptography/cryptanalysis books and check common mistakes of implementation afterward? Do you really think that this is THAT hard? Your scepsis would be understandable if they used OWN cryptoalgorithm. However their protocol is based on well known strong crypto.

There is a lot more to secure protocol design than just stringing together commonly accepted standards, unfortunately.

There are a great many ways you can all gaps which mean a hacker can circumvent your security arrangements, and we are sceptical because we've seen it done wrong so many times before that it is healthier to take the pessimistic view (assume it is wrong and be pleasantly surprised if it isn't, rather than unpleasantly surprised if/when it turns out not to be).

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#206

Post by haarts » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 10:20 AM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #48

kitd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct to be wary. However, the MTProto java impl is here: https://github.com/ex3ndr/telegram-mt

Interesting. Some observations: TextSecure has been a work in progress for two years: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/commits/master?... Telegram seems to have been in progress for two months: https://github.com/ex3ndr/telegram-mt/commits/master?page=2 Telegram also seems to be the work of a single author. While TextSecure was written mostly by Moxie, there were several other contributing members.

Textsecure != Telegram. Textsecure is a replacement for SMS/text messages and Telegram for Whatsapp type messages. Totally different things.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#207

Post by niketas » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 10:40 AM UTC

To whom it may concern: Pavel Durov, one of the authors of Telegram, announced he will pay $200K (or 200 BTC) to decrypt his traffic http://tjournal.ru/paper/durov-decifer-telegram

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#208

Post by rblaze » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 12:46 PM UTC

TelegramApp wrote: post #162

huhtenberg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this protocol is the result of thougtful and prolonged work of professionals. Pray tell, why replay protection is done after decryption.

In terms of DoS possibilities, one doesn't need to replay old messages, they could just as easily send new ones or random garbage. We could employ additional filtering techniques, but that increases processing time. And since modern hardware allows for very fast AES decryption, there is no particular gain in building additional layers of protection. All that, naturally, implies that other anti-DoS measures are also b…

Replay protection isn't about DoS attacks. Replay protections is about re-injecting previous messages to confuse recipient.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#209

Post by floatboth » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 12:48 PM UTC

TelegramApp wrote: post #184

moxie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. And what problems with IGE are you aware of? Any known attack? As far as we know, it is the ubiquitous CBC that has had issues. And by the way, Kerberos had to abandon PCBC - not IGE. IGE was the first attempt at an "authenticating encryption mode," originally for Kerberos. It was a failed attempt (it does not provide integrity protection), and had to be removed. That was the beginning of a 20 year quest for an…

2. A passing look at the docs would reveal that we do not use IGE that way, and instead use SHA1 for integrity check (see 'message key' here: https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/description ). The problems you mentioned as endemic to IGE used for integrity verification, are therefore irrelevant in this case. As for KDF, going for slower provable algorithms used for each incoming\outgoing packet may be a preferred solut…

Slower algorithms?!

All popular KDFs (PBKDF2, bcrypt, scrypt) are adaptive (tunable). You choose the number of iterations.

Re: Telegram - secure, free messaging

#210

Post by floatboth » Tue, Dec 17, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #118

qwertyboy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like TextSecure encrypts your actual texts, for which you still pay, while Telegram also takes care of delivery, for free, and does it faster and better than SMS (which should be pretty darn easy, what with SMS doing such a very bad job indeed).

(iirc) If you're communicating with another TextSecure user then the messages go via the internet rather than over SMS

If you're communicating with a CyanogenMod WhisperPush user.