Another libelous post by US government affiliated "cryptographer". Perhaps next we will see other familiar faces chipping in like tptacek from matasano )
Impossible to succeed at this level without making a few enemies.
Not sure hiring a US security firm is a safer approach than crowdsourcing using the power of the global community.
After all, Matasano's tptacek obviously did spend some of his time inspecting and criticizing Telegram this week. However, he overlooked the 100K vulnerability that was later discovered by a Russian guy who considers himself a newbie in cryptography.
The other reason that makes me somewhat reluctant to spend money on hiring Matasano is the recent RSA-gate (and the strange role of tptacek in it).
Well, when some of this "research" you promote ends up being backdoors planted by NSA (http://reut.rs/192XWwG), one has to be cautious.
Personally, I am more comfortable with 70s algorithms like Diffie-Hellman that have known and well-researched weaknesses. The "modern" algorithms actively promoted by US security firms after 9/11 are not time-tested, to say the least.
With all due respect, nothing can be "obvious" unless it is proven. You cannot take something for granted just because a respected cryptographer says that. Not after we learned that NSA pushes backdoors using respected firms and people in the crypto-community.
The wish to broaden the contest is understandable and already taken into account http://bit.ly/1htlEod
What I was saying in the comment above, however, had nothing to do with the contest. I expressed concern about tptacek's aggressive promotion of one algorithms (branded as "modern") over the other (claimed as "anachronistic") without any substantial proof. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6941934
After reading tptacek's comments in the latest thread about Telegram https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940665 I can only agree. He insisted Telegram team should abandon its custom solution without providing any actual proof that it's vulnerable. His advice was to rely only on "modern" algorithms (mostly the ones included in "NSA Suite B Cryptography"), but he provided zero evidence why these algorithms should be more secure than the ones already in use.
Scientific approach is exactly what I'm calling for here. When a cryptographer resorts to arguments like "this algorithm won't work because it is not common/modern/accepted" without providing an exact way to break it, it doesn't sound like scientific approach to me. It's more like the religious mindset of someone who rigidly worships some limited list of tools (e.g. "NSA Suite B Cryptography") and punishes anyone who is independent enough to deviate from it.
That, your fierce battle against everything unconventional and the fact that you get emotional instead of actually proving your point makes me think some "best practices" are indeed intentionally promoted in the crypto-community (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938622)
Disclaimer. I'm not an employee or shareholder in Telegram. I support them like I support some other non-profits like Wikimedia Foundation. As a reader here I would prefer to see an actual mathematical proof of how a certain system could be hacked instead of rhetoric like "No cryptosystem in the world would use...", "the fact that you do argue it is extraordinarily damning" or "Why? Why? Why would you do that?".
Alas, I am not a cryptographer and not even a member of the Telegram team. I'm just a guy who backs Telegram financially and proposed to start their contest. I described my motives behind it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6938622
As for your contest, I will make sure the Telegram team will have a look at it once they are awake. As far as I understand, you designed it to be similar to Telegram's contest. How do you send messages that affect traffic in real-time? How large is the prize? Is there a deadline?
As mentioned at http://core.telegram.org/contestfaq if more tools to interact with the traffic are needed for the contestants to crack Telegram, they will be provided in the next contest right after 1 March, 2014. The current contest has an important practical task of deciphering traffic that is being intercepted in real time. This is the basic concern of regular users like myself (me and lots of other people in Russia had to stop using WhatsApp because of easily decipherable intercepted traffic). If Telegram proves to be robust in this respect, more tools to manipulate traffic and wider contests with similar prizes are to follow. Like all startups, this contest by Telegram starts from solving a basic but most important problem, then gradually gets more complicated in functionality and scope.
Telegram will always be interested in creating incentives for the crypto-community to check its security and provide feedback. So if you are waiting for tools to try, e.g., a MITM on Telegram and get your $200К, please stay tuned. It's @telegram on Twitter.
abcd_f, I'm not part of the Telegram team, nor am I a cryptographer. However, I do support these guys, and for the last 3 days I saw the Telegram team diligently reply tech questions in Twitter, HN and blogs. I saw them collect questions from security experts and put up FAQs based on them http://core.telegram.org/techfaq or http://core.telegram.org/contestfaq as well as update the obscure parts of their documentation.
>> Perhaps consider offering an alternative crypto suite based on standard protocols? In parallel with what you have. Just reuse an existing crypto framework and redo transport layer to your needs.
Again, I am not cryptographer. But as a person who wants his data to be secure I don't see anything wrong with different teams trying different approaches. I 100% agree that people crave a good encrypted communication system, but I'm not sure it can be achieved in a world where everybody uses similar methods. What if some of the common "best practices" are intentionally promoted in the crypto-community as the best ones exactly because they contain flaws and backdoors?
Please allow me to give you an example of something that could be just that.
The Telegram team was criticized by some NH critics for their custom auth key exchange protocol. People asked – why take a random value from server and a random value from client and combine both with a creepy function? Why not, e.g., just generate a random value on the client and use RSA instead? Well, the answer is simple – the Telegram guys did not trust that the random value generated on the client-side was really random.
In August 2013 it turned out that their custom approach to protocol enabled Telegram to stay more secure when multiple other secure apps using more conventional solutions were hacked (http://android-developers.blogspot.ru/2013/08/some-secureran...). Many Bitcoin apps were cracked and people lost money, Open Whisper Systems (I noticed these guys are aggressively promoted here in the NH community as the epitome of best security) had to hasten to patch their RedPhone app to avoid that vulnerability.
So I'm kind of suspicious when I see strong pressure to enforce the use of common techniques and get rid of uncommon ones just because they are uncommon. I think the Telegram guys have the right to choose their own path, and I'm sure our society will only benefit from it.
Of course, building custom solutions is no easy task and requires a lot of effort. But I've seen some of the Telegram guys (yes, the "6 ACM champions") create things that I'd thought were impossible. Maybe I am wrong in putting my trust in their abilities, and I will be fined $200K+ for my naivete. However, I am willing to continue financing such contests, and I do hope that eventually we'll all get something much more valuable than $200K.
I agree with you here. That is why such contests are going to be permanent in Telegram. New contests like this will be launched in March 2014 or earlier if anyone wins earlier. Consider the date for breaking Telegram open.
I'm afraid breaking into Telegram's central server (by the way, there is no such thing) will hardly enable you to decipher end-to-end encrypted secret chats. But certainly worth trying anyway.
Impossible to succeed at this level without making a few enemies.