>Because the chat app doesn't encrypt conversations by default—or at all for group chats—security professionals often warn against it.
Everytime this story comes up it just complains about the default setting.
Terribly reasearched articled. It offeres no insight to HNers compared to previous discussion. A bad workman blames his tools. Defaults are powerful -- I will concede. Not understanding defaults counts as not understanding your tool.
I don't even believe WhatsApp is E2E but I've no evidence to proove that -- I'm just that skeptical of FB. I believe FB are reading WA messages but again -- nothing to base that on other than FB being heavily incentived to do so.
Although I'm not the original commenter, direct cash payment isn't the only incentive for established media to protect established product. Let's not forget they're apps from different, rival countries.
The journalist is just wrong. Security professionals don't warn against it because it doesn't encrypt by default, they warn against it because Telegram wrote their own encryption protocol and they haven't allowed an outside audit. Basically "trust us we know what we're doing.
If something has changed feel free to correct me, but as far as I know MTProto is still all in-house closed source code and hasn't ever been audited.
One note: Telegram doesn't need to "allow" experts to audit their code - E2E is all in the clients which have source available. I don't think it's had enough scrutiny to be trustworthy though.
Interesting thanks. Maybe it'll get to Linux one day then. Not that I'm too fussed, I use telegram for larger groups mostly, and secure chats on Signal.
I like channel, I even use it as RSS reader. Sticker, Gif feel so much better in telegram. Saved messages, 1 member private channel for quick notes. And telegram has true native app for all major OS, not electron like signal.
Telegram is substantially more feature rich. However Signal is open source. However that only really matters on the front - end. Nobody can inspect the code on a server unless you have access.
You'll ultimately have a make a descision based on who you trust more.
Although the article does not add anything new, I do have to agree that the way Telegram is positioning itself is rather frustrating: they are really pushing the "secure" nature of the service and try their best to make it seem even _more_ secure than WhatsApp or Signal (eg. speculating other encryption standards are US-funded and therefor not trustworthy), while it is clear that they have made some design decisions that make it less secure. And that's fine!
The user experience is great, and I like the service in general. The fact that it's not tied to an advertising company that is profiling users and making money of it is of course the biggest plus, but please stop with the whole "totally secure" BS. It's confusing and is probably even hurting their image: I have had to explain multiple times to friends and family I finally moved off of WhatsApp that we did not do it for the security, but rather to be free of being mined for personal data... Same thing goes for these non-tech 'news' sources that make a big deal out of it as well, while it's totally obvious if you investigate a bit more.
(Apologies for the rant, I guess had to get this off my chest.)
WhatsApp pushes you to upload your encryption keys to the cloud by default. Therefore, in its default configuration it is not end to end encrypted. Even if you don't do this, you have no idea if your contacts have.
What is a good place to start with Matrix? Which app is like Telegram or Signal that uses Matrix? I can never figure out how me and my family would use something based on Matrix together.
Element (formerly called Riot) is the de facto standard client for Matrix. Set-up is very easy and the user experience is solid on the Android and mobile versions. You can even easily cross-sign keys.
I wouldn't even mention Matrix to get someone started. But this page will lead them to the Web App and mobile apps. By default they will sign you up to the matrix.org homeserver with E2E encryption. It is a great way to get people started. You can then send them a link to your profile or they can find you be email or phone number if you have verified those.
Yes, matrix is federated so from the communication side it doesn't really matter who you sign up with you can chat with anyone and join any rooms. What homeserver you pick is really just for the service and how much you trust them with your (meta)data.
I read your comment and thought it was a little over the top. Then as I was reading the article I saw the embedded tweet without any context and it was just so bizarre I had to see why on earth it was even featured. A search for “toothpaste” and, sure enough:
> Telegram's MTProto protocol isn't obviously broken in a practical way, concedes Matt Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University who has consulted for Facebook on encrypted messaging systems. But it's uniquely "weird," he says, in a way that suggests its inventors don't understand tried-and-true cryptography practices and raises his suspicions that it may yet have undiscovered vulnerabilities. "It's like if everyone else in the world has agreed that we're going to use drywall to do the walls in a house, and then you've got somebody who's using toothpaste," says Green. "Even if the toothpaste works and makes a nice wall, that's weird. How do you know they're not doing other weird, nonstandard things when they put the electrical wiring into the house? And that's what scares me."
I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt (maybe this guy is just terrible at analogies?) so I’m not sure I’d say facebook definitely seeded the article but this is just such a wacky, nonsensical thing for someone to say I don’t really know what on earth to make of it.
Bunch of researchers from another country with a different cryptographic tradition creates different cryptographic primitives and a competing school of cryptography calls them weird and "toothpaste". What did I just read?
"You're not doing it the way we did it, so we're assuming you must be doing other nefarious things as well."
That's some pretty serious hubris and not something I've seen before in the crypto space. I've just always assumed most of the people in crypto worked together to build a better product which seems to be constantly under attack from governments. This is the first time I've seen one group call out another group simply because they didn't do it "the FB way"?
Is this just some healthy competition between two competing products or is FB actively trying to undermine Telegram's product??
It honestly seems less risky at this point. What is the KGB gonna do with my data? They've got no jurisdiction in the US, the best they might hope is to blackmail me. The FBI, on the other hand, does have jursidiction.
In essence it was not a show, but it turned out to be. Roscomnadzor (same as FCC in US) was desperately trying to block Telegram by KGB (FSB) resolution, because Telegram did not obey to their orders to provide keys and it turned out into complete farce. During this endeavor as a side effect they blocked almost any service that was using AWS and/or other cloud services, a lot many companies in Russia had been suffering from IT ifrastructure disruption including government institutions, yet Telegrams was up and running. And the most fannies thing was that almost all middle rank officials continued to use Telegram for their daily work and leasure. In the end Roscomnadzor "silently" quit their attempts. It was so humorous to follow the event. That was the first time in the modern history of Russia when govt completely failed while acting against their citizens. After that, Durov turned into real "rock star" here. :)
but thats literally not how the laws in the US works. The fact thats it going to a foreign country gives the FBI less restrictions when it comes to intercepting that communication.
idk signal where they would require a warrant to intercept the encrypted data and metadata vs telegram where they already intercepted data/ metadata that they can then use the metadata to get a FISA warrant to hack ur phone based on metadata. Signal is clearly better for Americans.
I didn't move to telegram because I want to secretly plan an insurgency. I moved there because of the threat of censorship from big tech. It's way more than a messaging app and incredibly feature rich.
It has secure options at least. But importantly doesn't require my phone number to create an account and contact people. But also has a lot of features that are missing in something like Signal.
Signal is my preferred option, but I'm not keen on sharing my phone number with everyone.
Sorry, you don't need to use your phone number to contact someone. You can just give them your Telegram username. Which is sufficient for me in my use case for Telegram.
OK, Telegram uses boring and reliable encryption in a reasonably straightforward way. They get heck for "rolling their own encryption". Signal on the other hand uses new and exciting encryption they made up themselves but no one seems to be criticizing them for it.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadEverytime this story comes up it just complains about the default setting.
Terribly reasearched articled. It offeres no insight to HNers compared to previous discussion. A bad workman blames his tools. Defaults are powerful -- I will concede. Not understanding defaults counts as not understanding your tool.
I don't even believe WhatsApp is E2E but I've no evidence to proove that -- I'm just that skeptical of FB. I believe FB are reading WA messages but again -- nothing to base that on other than FB being heavily incentived to do so.
It’s not an article, it’s a hit piece. Established publication protecting established vendor. Classic Wired.
If something has changed feel free to correct me, but as far as I know MTProto is still all in-house closed source code and hasn't ever been audited.
https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1177.pdf
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25722076#25724978
One note: Telegram doesn't need to "allow" experts to audit their code - E2E is all in the clients which have source available. I don't think it's had enough scrutiny to be trustworthy though.
But only mobile clients, no E2E on the desktop or for groups sadly.
https://core.telegram.org/mtproto
https://github.com/tdlib/td/tree/80c35676a2eb1e9b71db355ee21...
Very large groups, if that’s your thing.
You'll ultimately have a make a descision based on who you trust more.
Not a telegram fan at all but their clients are also open source
But Telegram has one big advantage - they publish a public tdlib library with which you can easily build your own Telegram client.
The user experience is great, and I like the service in general. The fact that it's not tied to an advertising company that is profiling users and making money of it is of course the biggest plus, but please stop with the whole "totally secure" BS. It's confusing and is probably even hurting their image: I have had to explain multiple times to friends and family I finally moved off of WhatsApp that we did not do it for the security, but rather to be free of being mined for personal data... Same thing goes for these non-tech 'news' sources that make a big deal out of it as well, while it's totally obvious if you investigate a bit more.
(Apologies for the rant, I guess had to get this off my chest.)
I actually wish Signal had a "trade some security for convenience" option like that.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
Documentation is still lacking, but if you want you can reach me directly to help you set things up.
I wouldn't even mention Matrix to get someone started. But this page will lead them to the Web App and mobile apps. By default they will sign you up to the matrix.org homeserver with E2E encryption. It is a great way to get people started. You can then send them a link to your profile or they can find you be email or phone number if you have verified those.
What if I want to host my own instance? Can I communicate with people who are signed up at element.io?
I will give it another try based on your info.
I don't want my data mined and sold so Facebook can profit from pushing ads at me, I'm not worried about someone hacking into my messages.
So yes, even the article TITLE is wrong. No, it may not be more 'secure', but you'd have to be a fool to argue it isn't more 'private'.
This article is absolutely paid for by Facebook, no doubt it my mind.
> Telegram's MTProto protocol isn't obviously broken in a practical way, concedes Matt Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University who has consulted for Facebook on encrypted messaging systems. But it's uniquely "weird," he says, in a way that suggests its inventors don't understand tried-and-true cryptography practices and raises his suspicions that it may yet have undiscovered vulnerabilities. "It's like if everyone else in the world has agreed that we're going to use drywall to do the walls in a house, and then you've got somebody who's using toothpaste," says Green. "Even if the toothpaste works and makes a nice wall, that's weird. How do you know they're not doing other weird, nonstandard things when they put the electrical wiring into the house? And that's what scares me."
I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt (maybe this guy is just terrible at analogies?) so I’m not sure I’d say facebook definitely seeded the article but this is just such a wacky, nonsensical thing for someone to say I don’t really know what on earth to make of it.
...Thats not how maths works... cryptography is just math.
"You're not doing it the way we did it, so we're assuming you must be doing other nefarious things as well."
That's some pretty serious hubris and not something I've seen before in the crypto space. I've just always assumed most of the people in crypto worked together to build a better product which seems to be constantly under attack from governments. This is the first time I've seen one group call out another group simply because they didn't do it "the FB way"?
Is this just some healthy competition between two competing products or is FB actively trying to undermine Telegram's product??
I mean, bonus point for the disclosure, but why should I believe is any word of that quote?
The fact is that many Americans would prefer to have their data mined by the KGB than by the FBI.
Which do you think is safer:
- The FBI can easily read all your messages, but they're not allowed to.
- The FBI is allowed to read all of your messages, but they can't.
Anyway, the sibling comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25946537 is right.
It has secure options at least. But importantly doesn't require my phone number to create an account and contact people. But also has a lot of features that are missing in something like Signal.
Signal is my preferred option, but I'm not keen on sharing my phone number with everyone.