• rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      6 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.

    • hruzgar@feddit.de
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      6 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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        6 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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        6 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

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    6 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!

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.town
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    6 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.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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    6 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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      6 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”.

  • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          I absolutely aim to challenge this kind of crap. If I leave, I doubt there will be people who will do it consistently. People want to follow X, Y and Z cults but not A, B and C cults, and think they are rational. Rationalists can come up with the most irrational nonsense, which is why they are not rational.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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            6 months ago

            That you can’t do something well or at all without understanding it is philosophy. Philosophy is weak in the sense that it exists on the same level as aesthetics or instincts. So it’s fighting instinct in a system built to make crowd management through instinct convenient, - in disadvantaged position.

            Also NT people like to champion their stupidest ideas as a banner to assemble under. Stupidest exactly to exclude any rational reason, so that only the feeling of community would remain.

            They don’t always say what they mean. They might say “this thing is better”, but what they mean is “I’m with the group which distinguishes itself by support for this thing, don’t be against us”.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      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.

    • The_Dark_Knight@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      Matrix is hsit atm mate stop recommending it maybe one day it will become good but that day is not today also they are said to be scattering metadata and bashes XMPP for no real reason . Briar and SimpleX is the gold standard for now only if they had more users .

      • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 months ago

        Matrix is shit atm mate

        No, it is not.

        bashes XMPP for no real reason .

        No, it does not.

        Briar and SimpleX is the gold standard for now

        No, they are not. They might fit a certain niche (or could be once they mature) but neither is a good general-purpose messenger, because their goals and designs inherently limit usability.

        No messaging platform fits every use case, but Matrix is great for general-purpose private messaging that anyone, anywhere can easily use, without Google services, without a phone number, and without being vulnerable to shutdown if a single country’s laws turn unfavorable. It has other advantages as well. It’s not flawless, but is constantly improving, and is already very useful to many people.

        If you have a specific criticism that you can actually support with facts, you could bring it up for discussion. Slinging vague attacks that look a lot like something one might see in a poorly-informed reddit post doesn’t help anyone.

        • The_Dark_Knight@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          Its like you have never used it . The clients and servers are laggy federation is shit etc . but you seem to have your mind set no hope in arguing .

          • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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            6 months ago

            The clients and servers are laggy

            Which ones, exactly? The largest public server was laggy about two or three years ago, but hasn’t been recently in my experience, and in any case, you can pick a different server or run your own. I have never seen a laggy client.

            federation is shit etc .

            Again, that doesn’t match my experience, and what you’ve written is too vague to have any useful meaning.

            no hope in arguing .

            Apparently not. Good day.

            • devraza@lemmy.ml
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              6 months ago

              I’ve previously had issues with Matrix being incredibly slow and unreliable with federation (I’m self-hosting). However, that’s pretty much in the past now and I seem to have somehow resolved that issue.

              • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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                6 months ago

                Which server software are you running? Any recent experience with Conduit or Dendrite?

                • devraza@lemmy.ml
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                  6 months ago

                  I’ve been using Conduit within a docker container for a while now, and it’s worked pretty well aside from the mautrix-signal bridge (this was fixed in version v7.0.0, I think). Other than conduit, I tried out dendrite, but the latency in sending messages was unbearablex

      • Autonomous User@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        bashes XMPP for no real reason .

        This is a lie.

        The whole area of XMPP vs Matrix is quite subjective. Rather than fighting over which open interoperable communication standard works the best, we should just collaborate and bridge everything together. The more federation and interoperability the better.

        https://matrix.org/docs/older/faq/

  • Citizen@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    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… 😉

    • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • Citizen@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        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!

        • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          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 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.

  • tuckerm@supermeter.social
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Autonomous User@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Because we keeping saying Signal and Telegram instead of Anti-Libre Software, Service as a Software Substitute, and Centralised.

      We should reach them in their spaces, moding, hacking, piracy and beginner programming channels.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Yes. And those pretenders are always people who can’t install Synapse and “delete” their messages thinking that’s very smart.

    • extant@lemmy.world
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      6 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.