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000 points · username · 0 hours ago
example.com0 points · 0 comments · 12 years ago · moxie
At a glance, while this project is using secure (if aging) primitives, they've made some extremely unusual protocol choices that they need to publicly justify rather than simply describing in an API doc. Just at a glance, the use of modes like Infinite Garble Extension (a failed mode for Kerberos) is troubling, they made up their own KDF (with no proof), and they make what appear to be some amateur mistakes with how they use RSA.
I'm obviously biased, but if you want a mobile-oriented asynchronous messaging protocol, at this point I think the Axolotl ratchet should absolutely be its basis: https://www.whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/
If Telegram folks are on this thread, I'd encourage you to take a look at the TextSecure protocol. If you think it's interesting, you can federate into our network, get a provably secure asynchronous forward secrecy protocol, and also have access to an existing 10MM user base.
TelegramApp
zmanian
1. Kindly be more specific about our RSA implementation. Please note, that we only use RSA with public keys, not private. If you are aware of any possible attacks on this setup, please let us know.
2. And what problems with IGE are you aware of? Any known attack? As far as we know, it is the ubiquitous CBC that has had issues. And by the way, Kerberos had to abandon PCBC - not IGE.
Thank you for the offer to join in the project you represent. However, we feel that what we are doing is going in a somewhat different direction and has its own potential.
The team behind Telegram, led by Nikolai Durov, consists of six ACM champions, half of them Ph.Ds in math. It took them about two years to roll out the current version of MTProto. Names and degrees may indeed not mean as much in some fields as they do in others, but this protocol is the result of thougtful and prolonged work of professionals.
The basic copy on telegram.org rightfully appears as simplistic to the Hacker News resident. It was written for the general public, since we want to bring secure messaging to the masses — not just to the security geek, who has it already (in oh so many forms).
But for the technically minded we provided rather detailed documentation for our protocol: http://core.telegram.org/mtproto and API: http://core.telegram.org/api
We would be glad to respond to criticism, but not on the level of "I looked at it for 4 minutes, maybe they didn't think about X" (as another guy in the comments below put it), or "why didn't you just use this?".
If anybody here can identify a specific point and prove that it is vulnerable and can be hacked a certain way, we are ready to respond and\or fix, if neccessary. Gentlemen?