Comment by celsoazevedo
Comment by celsoazevedo 4 days ago
I assume it's the lack of end-to-end encryption by default on basic features.
Good service btw, but not the best from a privacy point of view.
Comment by celsoazevedo 4 days ago
I assume it's the lack of end-to-end encryption by default on basic features.
Good service btw, but not the best from a privacy point of view.
And every time someone makes this comment. MTProto 2 uses standard crypto primitives. Besides this, do you know who else rolled their own crypto? Moxie. You don't get to roll your own crypto first and then weaponize this against your opponents but that's exactly what he did along with abusing words like "plaintext" to describe any encryption not E2EE.
AES-IGE is not best practice. Neither is this https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/telegram-ecdh/
The difference is Moxie isn't an amateur when it comes to cryptographic design. Wikipedia actually lists him as a cryptographer. The company has also employed an actual mathematician/cryptographer, Trevor Perrin.
Meanwhile, Telegram employed the CEO's brother who's a geometrician, which is not the same. You wouldn't hire a dentist to perform brain surgery even though both studied medicine.
Signal protocol's double ratchet is considered best practice by pretty much every competent cryptographer.
MTProto's main issues are not the teething issues of the yester-years. It's the fact every chat is sent to the server that can then read the messages. Telegram only has E2EE in internet debates about it's non-existent E2EE in practice.
Are you aware the article you link to technically critiques MTProto 1, including links to web archives of the MTProto 1 docs?
> MTProto's main issues are not the teething issues of the yester-years. It's the fact every chat is sent to the server that can then read the messages. Telegram only has E2EE in internet debates about it's non-existent E2EE in practice.
Telegram does in fact have E2EE available in the form of Secret Chats, so that's just an incorrect statement from you.
Regardless, that wasn't what I was rebutting. If anyone is going to have a reasonable debate about Telegram's problems, at least do so reasonably, without resorting to well-worn and facile language invented by the person who has the most to gain from its use. Moxie is not at all innocent in any of this and I'm glad he's no longer involved with Signal, which I use every day.
It's nice to see their reasoning, but the issue remains: Telegram can read most direct messages (because almost no one uses private chats) and everything sent in groups.
It's a good service and in some cases it can compete with Matrix, Signal, etc, but most direct chats and all groups have no privacy from Telegram (and anyone with access to their servers).
Besides that there it's also them choosing to roll their own crypto instead of using established cyphers and protocols.