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Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

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Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#491

Post by sbarre »

pdimitar wrote: post #488
sbarre wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I say that? Did I mention the USA at any point in this discussion? What a strange thing to add. I am not American btw.

I mentioned it because people very easily single out Russia and I think that's quite the outdated sentiment. I'd start with USA, North Korea, China, Russia and Iran -- again, just as a start, and I am sure there are many others that can't be trusted. Where Telegram's devs and business resides hardly matters IMO. If somebody truly wants to put them under their boot they'll find a way, and that goes for probably half t…

You didn't "mention" it, you implied that I believed this, when it wasn't even part of the discussion. You can believe whatever you want, but you really shouldn't accuse others of such things.

Also: this whole topic is about a Russian company/app and Russian citizens living in Dubai. What other country would we be talking about here, exactly?

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#492

Post by webninja »

xyst wrote: post #25

It’s a Telegram psyop that uses emotion, particularly fear and paranoia, to switch to their shite platform.

How can we be sure it’s not the other way around? Are we supposed to just trust everything we read on Twitter (X) now?

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#493

Post by jjav »

smarek22 wrote: post #490
jjav wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they gave them all that had: the unix timestamp of when the account was created, and the last date you connected to the signal service. I'm confused. Signal also has your phone number because they require it, that's the primary privacy criticism against Signal.

I believe they have your phone number hashed not in plaintext, also they rolled in usernames recently and option to not expose your phone number to anyone, which addressed privacy concerns

I don't know how they store phone numbers, but hopefully not hashed since the search space is trivially tiny.

The usernames thing does not address any interesting concern. I don't care to show my friends who I chat with my name and phone. They already know these after all.

What I care about is not having to give Signal (the company) my phone number. That's not something they should have.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#494

Post by pdimitar »

sbarre wrote: post #491
pdimitar wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned it because people very easily single out Russia and I think that's quite the outdated sentiment. I'd start with USA, North Korea, China, Russia and Iran -- again, just as a start, and I am sure there are many others that can't be trusted. Where Telegram's devs and business resides hardly matters IMO. If somebody truly wants to put them under their boot they'll find a way, and that goes for probably half t…

You didn't "mention" it, you implied that I believed this, when it wasn't even part of the discussion. You can believe whatever you want, but you really shouldn't accuse others of such things. Also: this whole topic is about a Russian company/app and Russian citizens living in Dubai. What other country would we be talking about here, exactly?

Well then, your goal was just to point out that Dubai is a bad place for democracy -- and nothing else?

If so, OK.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#495

Post by _djo_ »

seventyone wrote: post #489
ixwt wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The winning in this case was they had to fight to be allowed to release what they provided. As nice as it would be to not have to provide that information, Signal proved that the only information they have to give is largely useless to law enforcement.

So they lost and have to give up the information/metadata they have. It's just good news that it wasn't much. But that's not guaranteed to always be the case.

No, you're misunderstanding the situation. Companies can't legally refuse to provide information in the jurisdiction they're in some cases, especially when there's a court order. Every company is subject to someone's jurisdiction.

Signal prepared ahead for that eventuality and designed it so that their services received stored only the absolute bare minimum of information, and that most importantly didn't preserve the metadata of chats and calls. This is unlike Meta, for instance, which does keep that data for WhatsApp even though the chats themselves are encrypted.

That means that what they provided in that particular subpoena is all they can provide from their server records for any user of Signal, not that it's all that was available in that particular case.

It would've been even more anonymous if not for the phone number requirement, but I can understand why they made that trade off and given the lack of metadata it's not that useful to law enforcement/surveillance agencies in any case.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#496

Post by tptacek »

upofadown wrote: post #264
croes wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Telegram still use their own crypto algorithm? If so, up-to-date source code us pretty useless. How many people check their app's source code? With third party clients it's pretty easy to get malicious ones

[flagged]

Wildly false.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#497

Post by Anamon »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #207
Intermernet wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You do make bear service here." I'm not sure what this means.

This is a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression.

It's also common in German ("einen Bärendienst erweisen").

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#498

Post by The_Colonel »

growse wrote: post #456
The_Colonel wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Get me all the numbers which talked to X, including all the numbers". You won't get the actual plaintext messages, but the contact graph + metadata (timestamps) are pretty sensitive.

Signal doesn't store the graph, nor does it log message timestamps.

How can you know without access to their servers?

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#499

Post by saagarjha »

lynndotpy wrote: post #358
saagarjha wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has a similar feature I believe.

Yes, but Facebook (and others) uses the Signal protocol in its optional E2EE chats, because it has withstood the test of time. But Telegram uses its custom protocol (MTProto2) in its optional E2EE chats, which has a host of problems and has not withstood the same weathering.

I would definitely recommend Signal over it, yes.

Re: Telegram has launched a pretty intense campaign to malign Signal as insecure

#500

Post by thisislife2 »

reportgunner wrote: post #470
thisislife2 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is political . As I mentioned elsewhere in HN, Telegram is now being promoted in the US by the political-right there because they have lost trust in US BigTech social media platforms who, they believe, are "unjustly" censoring them on their platform. That is why the right-leaning media are now heavily promoting Telegram ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ut6RouSs0w ) and bashing other platforms ( https://www.city-…

You mean the BigTech social media platforms that use Signal's protocol for messaging ? Wow I wonder why the people who don't trust BigTech social media don't choose Signal that is actually insane. If it is indeed political don't try to bring some kind of technological merit into this, it makes you look really dishonest.

You missed my point - I am agreeing with you that the arguments for or against both end up political, because politics is the reason both are being promoted. Technically both products are equivalent. And both products may also be sharing data with government(s). The right- in the US just hope that Telegram isn't sharing it with the US government. :)
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