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
Telegram is as safe as just using Facebook DMs (unencrypted), only it’s Russian.
I suggest you judge for yourself how safe that is.
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.
To what extent is it Russian?
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.
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?
Guys, I think all these computers took military funding. Wake up sheeple.
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)
Edward fucking Snowden has recommend Signal and I think if anyone knows whether it’s secure, it’s probably him and the NSA.
That and he is paranoid to a point where he physically kills all mics and cameras on his devices, so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally.
Same guy shilled anti-libre software and we should let them stop us thinking for ourselves?
so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally.
That’s much more stupid than just using Facebook and unencrypted e-mail with Outlook address for communication, but knowing how safe exactly those are.
Edward Snowden Is NOT a security expert. Snowden was a NSA contractor. I repeat, Snowden is NOT a security expert.
so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally
This is how you know the brain has rotten and become a slick turd.
This is how you know the brain has rotten and become a slick turd.
Agreed. Making it a contest of “this talking head seems smarter” means exactly that.
Try explaining that to normies though. They don’t want to understand shit, and they want to think they are safe without understanding shit. That this is impossible they just don’t want to believe, because they don’t understand shit.
/s, right? I’m just hoping this is missing a /s.
I wouldn’t put a lot of trust in Telegram. Not only is their cryptography off by default, it’s a bespoke hand-rolled non-standard algorithm that might not work as well as they say. Oh, and it’s been potentially backdoored by the FSB (Russia’s CIA) for six years.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
You can’t even sync encrypted chats between devices. Lose your device or have a desktop client? Bye bye encrypted chat!
I know that Telegram has a lot of users, so I’m not describing all of them here. But I’ve noticed that it seems especially popular among people who kind of like to “play pretend” as underground hackers. You know, the kind of person who likes to imagine that the government would be after them.
This mudslinging feels like more of a marketing campaign than anything else. An info op that will work well on the Telegram users who like to imagine that they have outmaneuvered all the info ops.
Blaming the Americans is a signature “Russia has fucked with this company” trademark.
If one is to compare apple to apples, imho the decision to choose between Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram and other “messengers” is obvious and clear.
Signal is fully open source! You can run it on-premises, if you know your business!
Why are we not talking about it?
I hope my comment will not be discarded/removed as not being in sync with the narative… 😉
Signal is fully open source! You can run it on-premises, if you know your business!
Why are we not talking about it?
Unless something has drastically changed recently, the official Signal service won’t interoperate with anyone else’s instance. That makes its source code practically useless for general-purpose messaging, which might explain why few are talking about it.
My point is that you have all the open source software components needed to run secure communications, on your own premises, for your own users/community in case you are not trusting Signal’s infrastructure.
If you know any other similar alternative with strong encryption open source protocols please let me know! I love learning new things everyday!
Cheers!
on your own premises, for your own users/community in case you are not trusting Signal’s infrastructure.
Yes, that’s an example of data (and infrastructure) sovereignty. It’s good for self-contained groups, but is not general-purpose messaging, since it doesn’t allow communication with anyone outside your group.
If you know any other similar alternative with strong encryption open source protocols please let me know! I love learning new things everyday!
Matrix can do this. It also has support for communicating across different server instances worldwide (both public and private), and actively supports interoperability with other messaging networks, both in the short term through bridges and in the long term through the IETF’s More Instant Messaging Interoperability (MIMI) working group.
XMPP can do on-premise encrypted messaging, too. Technically, it can also support global encrypted messaging with fairly modern features, with the help of carefully selected extensions and server software and clients, although this quickly becomes impractical for general-purpose messaging, mainly because of availability and usability: Managed free servers with the right components are in short supply and often don’t last for long, and the general public doesn’t have the tech skills to do it themselves. (Availability was not a problem when Google and Facebook supported it, but that support ended years ago.) It’s still useful for relatively small groups, though, if you have a skilled admin to maintain the servers and help the users.
Thank you very much for the info!
I’m always amazed how people come out of the woodwork to defend Signal any time any criticism of it comes up. It’s become a sacred cow that cannot be questioned. Whatever you may think of Telegram should bear zero weight on your views of Signal.
The reality is that developers of Signal have close ties to US security agencies. It’s a centralized app hosted in US and subject to US laws. It’s been forcing people to use their phone numbers to register, and this creates a graph of real world contacts people have. This alone is terrible from security/privacy perspective. It doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS, which means you have no guarantee regarding what you’re actually running. These are just a handful of things that are publicly known.
And then we know stuff like this happens. NSA suggested using specific numbers for encryption that it knew how to factor quickly. The algorithm itself was secure, but the specific configuration of how the algorithm was implemented allowed for the exploit https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/nsa-crack-encryption.html
These kinds of backdoors are very difficult to audit for because if you don’t know what to look for then you won’t have any reason to suspect a particular configuration to be malicious. Given the relationship between people working on Signal and US government, this is a real concern.
The same kind of scrutiny people apply to Telegram and other messaging apps should absolutely be applied to Signal as well.
There is also Matrix, which has advantages over both of them.
Anyone see if self hosted server ever got easy enough? For realsies.
Use the Docker container.
claiming it has tiesWhich lines of its libre software source code are malicious?
