• hruzgar@feddit.de
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      5 months ago

      non-standard algorithm

      thats exactely the point lol. Why would you use an algorithm designed and proposed by the US government in a “secure” messenger?

      • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        Which algorithm are you referring to exactly?

        In general, people are wise to use ciphers and protocols that have been examined by the global cryptography community and have held up to that scrutiny.

      • Simon Müller@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        The algorithm was neither proposed nor designed by the US government, it was made by (what is now known as) Signal, a 501c nonprofit.

        The claims of signal being “state-sponsored” come from assuming how money flows through the OTF - Open Tech Fund - which has gotten grants from government programs before. (IIRC)

        It wouldn’t make sense for the US Gov. to make such a grant to make a flawed protocol, as any backdoor they introduce for themselves would work for any outside attacker too - it’s mathematics. It works for everyone or for no one. Would they really wanna make tools that they themselves use, just to have it backdoored by other state actors?

        And again, Durov’s claims are entirely assumptions, and that coming from someone that has had [various](https://mtpsym.github.io// different vulnerabilities and weird bugs on their platform

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      Oh, and it’s been potentially backdoored by the FSB (Russia’s CIA) for six years.

      From the very start rather.

      And there’s been a few cases where not FSB, but mundane police was reading suspects’ messages before arresting them.

      Don’t trust Telegram, I use it because, eh, most people use either that or VK DMs in Russia as the default IM. But never trust it for something which should be secret.

      You can even have “opposition”-themed channels there or call for rebellions, but don’t ever expect anything to be secret or even pseudonymous. Even without ill intent regularly flaws are found which allow to get a lot of information, and the code quality is sewer-level.

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, I’m going to take this with a massive dose of salt. At least, Signal has encryption on by default for people. Where Telegram does not.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Telegram CEO Pavel Durov issued a scathing criticism of Signal, alleging the messaging service is not secure and has ties to US intelligence agencies.

    Durov made his remarks on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, pushing a variety of points against the rival messenger app, including alleging it has ongoing ties to the US government, casting doubt over its end-to-end encryption, and claiming a lack of software transparency, as well as describing Signal as "an allegedly “secure” messaging app.

    The comments seem to have been inspired by a City Journal report that detailed the origins of Signal, which was kickstarted by a $3 million grant from the US government’s Open Technology Fund.

    The report says that Maher was an “agent of regime change” during the Arab Spring, and communicated with dissidents in the Middle East and North Africa.

    The CEO also claims that users’ Signal messages have popped up in court cases or in the media, and implies that this has happened because the app’s encryption isn’t completely secure.

    It’s hard to say, but Durov may be making a reference to Sam Bankman-Fried, whose Signal messages were a key part of the trial that resulted in the ex-CEO being convicted.


    The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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    5 months ago

    The CEO also claims that users’ Signal messages have popped up in court cases or in the media, and implies that this has happened because the app’s encryption isn’t completely secure. However, Durov cites “important people I’ve spoken to” and doesn’t mention any specific instance of this happening.

    […]

    The Register could not find public reports of Signal messages leaking due to faulty encryption.

    Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

    Durov’s entire criticism seems to be based on implications and have no actual evidence of any technical problems with Signal. He’s basically just throwing shade at a competing business, which amounts to whining.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      5 months ago

      Funny how first association is “eend-to-end encryption is broken” and not, you know, that whoever used the message got hold of one of the “ends”.

  • catalog3115@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I am going to repeat what I have said for another similar post.

    I still stand for Signal App.

    • Telegram has no default E2EE, Telegram is run by for profit company
    • Multiple flaws were found in Telegram’s encryption algorithm
    • Almost all cleartext messages are stored on telegram server, but signal stores encrypted message temporarily
    • Signal is non-profit & all their source code + finances are public. Even their server codes are publically available
    • TCB13@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yes, yet telegram isn’t a piece of shit of an app that runs slowly on every device, can’t sync messages because “something went wrong” and doesn’t depend on electron to run. Also, not funded by the CIA.

      • Linguist@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Could you not apply this “funded by the CIA” argument to other things such as… The Tor Network? Which was created by the US Military Naval Research? Also some US government departments have donated to Tor. Does that mean Tor is breached?

        • TCB13@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Okay that’s fair, even if remove that and assume they hold zero influence / there are no cleaver backdoors Signal is still not good when it comes to performance and reliability.

      • hruzgar@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        completely agree with you. I can’t believe why you are getting downvoted. Promoting a platform which is funded by the CIA, US gov and Israel. Completely insane really I don’t understand how people are still believing this. They really need to wake up to the truth otherwise things will never change. Privacy will stay an illusion we give ourselves to believe that nobody can read our messages (even if they absolutely can)

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      Telegram is as safe as just using Facebook DMs (unencrypted), only it’s Russian.

      I suggest you judge for yourself how safe that is.

      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Even if it were encrypted and the backdoor was controlled by the Russian state, logically that would make it safer than Facebook for anyone living in Western jurisdictions. The Russian government cannot get them and is hardly going to exchanging intelligence with its enemies.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          5 months ago

          Even if it were encrypted

          It’s not.

          logically that would make it safer than Facebook for anyone living in Western jurisdictions. The Russian government cannot get them and is hardly going to exchanging intelligence

          No it wouldn’t. You shouldn’t opine on what they’d do. They can negotiate, you know. And they are exchanging intelligence all the time.

          with its enemies.

          If that were true, corporations wouldn’t work with their competitors.

          • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You shouldn’t opine

            To “opine” is to have an opinion. Are you suggesting I should refrain from having an opinion? Does this apply to your own opinions too? Odd place to make such an argument.

            Otherwise: interesting point. To me, a state that can obtain personal data by leaning on its owns corporations is, by definition, more threatening than one that has to negotiate for it with a hostile power. But perhaps I underestimate the scale of that practice.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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              5 months ago

              On what they would and wouldn’t do - yes, I try not to make opinions.

              But perhaps I underestimate the scale of that practice.

              Considering that the balance of power between US government and, say, Meta is not much different from the same between it and Russian government (Meta doesn’t have a military, but has ways to compensate for that), that should be right.

    • extant@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      There’s no oversight for any of these agencies and they have the means and incentive to backdoor cryptography, what would stop them from doing this morality? There’s no possible way that they both aren’t compromised and all we’re seeing now is them firing pot shots at each other trying to convince the reader to join their honeypot because its sweeter.