What a load of hipocrisy. The dude uses unauthenticated DH for his apps "secret chats", which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds. Other chats use just TLS, meaning they get to read EVERYTHING.
Use Signal, people.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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which a bored student with a laptop can MITM in seconds
No, how can a bored student breach e2ee in seconds? note that no such cases have been reported by any telegram user so far.
Because the DH is unauthenticated, as I already said. Users can't report it because there is no way to tell for them.
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Telegram backend is still closed-source, btw
Clicking the link gives me the following warning:
The site ahead may contain harmful programs
Firefox blocked this page because it might try to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit).
weird, works for me in firefox with all privacy features enabled, can you please try this link: https://telegra.ph/Why-WhatsApp-Will-Never-Be-Secure-05-15
Your original link is blocked at DNS level on my 'Threat intelligence' blocklist.
And that link is blocked at DNS level by 'Toxic' and 'Stop Forum Spam' filters.
So it's blocked before the browser can even connect for me.
I got the same warning for the original link with ff as well.
Your comment link didn't throw up a red flag.
sorry for the inconvenience, thing is this website supports multiple domains and is banned in some countries so we have to use different domains to access it, which might give red flags.
Great, thank you!
He writes as if signal's devs would have to be quiet about whatsapps encryption
E.g.
Last year, the founders of WhatsApp left the company due to concerns over users’ privacy [16]. They are surely tied by either gag orders or NDAs, so are unable to discuss backdoors publicly without risking their fortunes and freedom. They were able to admit, however, that "they sold their users' privacy" [17].
Yet signal published multiple posts about how secure whatsapp is. I don't buy it but it's not like they would be quiet. (They=moxie) https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/ https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
I believe Moxie helped them integrate Signal protocol into WA successfully while preserving user integrity and privacy.
However, it wouldnt be out of the realm for them to make modifications to their custom protocol that Moxie helped design, and turn it into a privacy nightmare after the fact.
Exactly
WhatsApp will be never private and secure, while Telegram will be never private. 😁
Who said telegram is secure?
No one said the opposite, while on WhatsApp they had several vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to get the user phone control.
An example: https://thehackernews.com/2021/04/new-whatsapp-bug-couldve-let-attackers.html
But there were many more vulnerabilities or "features" that WhatsApp allowed attackers or governments to get into user data. While I haven't read anything about against Telegram security.
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Guys, please stop using telegram if you care for your security and privacy
Telegram is not fully open source, sometimes they release the source, but the hashes of the builds don't even match (so it's a different source code) 🚩
Zero transparency about data handling, even when they get caught they don't tell details 🚩 (Telegram in the recent years has got really shady reputation)
Very often ways they implement security is weird: non open source app, non open source server, leaking APIs, use of phone numbers, at some point they started asking for an email, non encrypted chats by default, never encrypted group chats.. it can continue forever 🚩
Non-standard encryption is a real red flag, non-open-source 🚩
I know some people that work/worked for the police, and they can read all the messages easy peasy, i was trying to tell to the people many years ago, but everyone was so amused by the stickers. Now you can just read stories of the journalists and activists, and how they got imprisoned with the use telegram 👁️🗨️💀
PLEASE, STOP USING TELEGRAM IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY OR SECURITY
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This is a very good reminder why one should worry about the new messaging standard for interoperability.
WhatsApp users resilient enough not to fall for constant popups telling them to back up their chats can still be traced by a number of other tricks – from accessing their contacts’ backups to invisible encryption key changes [13]. The metadata generated by WhatsApp users – logs describing who chats with whom and when – is leaked to all kinds of agencies in large volumes by WhatsApp’s parent company [14].
It even might result in me thinking that we should have to ban facebook from entering the fediverse because people are lazy and don't switch to the real fediverse if they can see your posts and contact you directly.
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Both WhatsApp and Telegram suck. Just like any other messenger that's either proprietary or not end to end encrypted. Signal is clearly the best choice.
Signal is not the best choice, it's just a somewhat aceptable middle ground. I prefer something that doesn't require a phone number and something you can self-host, like XMPP.
Good luck convincing normies to use some obscure messaging protocol. It's difficult with Signal, even harder with Matrix, basically impossible with XMPP. 99.99999% have never in their life heard about XMPP. Also most mobile clients absolutely suck. You also can't get proper push notifications without completely ruining your battery life. What a great choice!
I don't see a big difference, the hardest thing by itself is convincing someone to install one more program or app. Also Conversations does not suck.
Conversations is only available on Android. And that's the problem. You need different clients on different plattforms, etc. It's just a mess. Some clients don't support encryption and everything is just unnecessarily complicated, especially for new users. You can't just tell someone "let's chat on XMPP". You need to explain to them what XMPP is, what app to download depending on what OS they use, tell them how to set everything up, etc, etc...
Signal is definitely not perfect, but it's the best known private messenger and doesn't compromise on privacy and security. It's very simple to use, the setup process is basically the exact same as on WhatsApp or Telegram, it has good clients for every platform and they have operated safely with a great record for over 10 years.
I understand that other solutions might be better in theory, but if we keep suggesting a new obscure and hard to use messenger to noobs, they will never make the switch. In order to get more privacy for ourselves and the (potentially less technical) people we need to communicate with, let's just get them to use something simple and private like Signal.
Yea, ive gotten pretty wide adoption from friends and family on Signal, but id love to have a comparable product with even more features/security/privacy
Matrix may get there eventually, but for now its Signal.
Agree
When it comes to clients being not fully compatible - I understand where there might be a problem, but I personally never encountered it. Conversations covers Android, and Gajim is on both Windows and Linux. In my experience, they work just fine with each other, and Android+Windows+Linux covers the majority.
I do use Signal with a few people who refused to use XMPP, but I'd disagree they have good clients for every platform. Because the desktop one essentially doesn't work without a smartphone. Registering in something like Waydroid doesn't allow binding a desktop client because it wants to scan a QR code, and Signal-Cli just didn't work with binding a regular client. So I am stuck using the inconvenient Signal-cli, because the only alternative I saw so far would be using it on Waydroid, which is even less convenient. Not to mention that the client itself is on Electron.
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You mean that XMPP protocol which is not encrypted by default? Oh yes you mean that.
XMPP would need to be redesigned from ground up as a secure and private messaging protocol to be a valid choice.
XMPP has it advantages but to many cry out that it is the savior when it is not. We need something better.
The major clients now do have OMEMO. Yea, I agree it's flawed but that's so far it's the one I settled on. Do you know other, more refined selfhostable solutions? I am now looking for development there but doubt I'd get few people that I already got there to switch again.
Not aware that there is a modern decentralized secure and private chat protocol. Sadly. I also am not aware of any developmenta of something like that, so XMPP is the best we got (for decentralized open widly supported protocols)
I know that a lot of clients do encryption of the message body by default, but it still leaves a lot of stuff in plain text (afaik).
Sure, fuck WhatsApp, but Telegram isn't even end-to-end encrypted most of the time. Their group chats never are, and their "secret chat" encryption for non-group chats must be explicitly enabled and hardly ever is because it disables some features. And when it is encrypted, it's with some dubious nonstandard cryptography.
It's also pseudo open source; they do publish source code once in a while but it never corresponds to the binaries that nearly everyone actually uses.
And the audacity to talk about metadata when Telegram accounts still require a phone number today (as they did five years ago when this post was written) is just... 🤯
State-sponsored exploits against WhatsApp might be more common than against Telegram, or at least we hear about them more, but it's not because the app is more vulnerable: it's because governments don't need to compromise the endpoint to read your Telegram messages: they can just add a new device to your account with an SMS and see everything.
(╯° °）╯︵ ┻━┻
Anything claiming to prioritize privacy yet asking for your phone number (Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, ...) is a farce.
Bravo, bravo, bravo!!
Dude, see you on the same side of the barricades when the time comes to fight the centralized army of agent Smiths 👏👏👏
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