from Hacker News

The most backdoor-looking bug I've ever seen (2021)

by takoid on 5/10/24, 3:33 AM with 110 comments

  • by andreyvit on 5/10/24, 11:24 AM

    A very under appreciated aspect of Telegram’s protocol is that it’s designed by very, very weird people. Telegram scooped up a lot of winners of ACM ICPC contests in Russia, some of whom I’ve personally met, and the design of the protocol is exactly in line with the code these people generally write.

    It’s really a showcase of how very high IQ and outstanding mathematical abilities mix with a distrust of existing technologies and a lack of expert intuition coming from more normal industry experience.

    Just try implementing MTProto, or at least read the low-level docs, and you’ll see for yourself. Crypto isn’t the weirdest part. The whole thing is an attempt to define a binary protocol in terms of grandiose mathematical concepts most of which didn’t even end up ever used in the actual protocol. And there’s zero thought given to what’s actually important, making a bullet-proof syncing between server and client states (and that results in numerous bugs to this day).

    Can’t discount malice, but I don’t believe that’s the case.

  • by dang on 5/10/24, 6:01 AM

    Related:

    The most backdoor-looking bug I’ve ever seen (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30013192 - Jan 2022 (77 comments)

    Discussed at the time:

    The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726068 - Jan 2021 (208 comments)

    Cryptography Dispatches: The Most Backdoor-Looking Bug I’ve Ever Seen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25721990 - Jan 2021 (1 comment)

  • by syngrog66 on 5/10/24, 6:42 PM

    Telegram is near the top of a private list of tools/bizs I keep I call "Too Russian to Touch"

    Technically I try to boycott everything with too strong of a connection to any of the so-called CRINK nations (ie. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.) Its hard to enforce it perfectly. But where its easy enough for me to do, I do.

  • by cbxyp on 5/10/24, 7:26 AM

    I guess the most backdoor-looking bug I've ever seen (referring of course to Signal Desktop's usage of React's __dangerouslySetInnerHTML to render user-supplied messages in a Node.js privileged context) is below the technical authors paygrade. (https://thehackerblog.com/i-too-like-to-live-dangerously-acc...) - CVE-2018-11101

  • by whenlambo on 5/10/24, 7:18 AM

    Nikolai Durov, who developed the Telegram encryption system, lives in St. Petersburg. He has retired from working in Pavel's companies - their roads with his brother have diverged. Now Nikolai is a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences = working for the Russian government.

  • by SCUSKU on 5/10/24, 5:26 AM

    I wonder what the author’s other reservations about Telegram are? Hand rolled crypto is definitely a massive reason to be suspicious, but are there other issues the author is alluding to?

  • by dathos on 5/10/24, 5:23 AM

    It being removed is good, but the lack of communication about such a major part of the security being this weak erodes the little trust I had for Telegram

  • by medo-bear on 5/10/24, 6:20 AM

    I use Telegram as a better Discord, not as a better Signal

  • by plugin-baby on 5/10/24, 5:23 AM

    > In text I can't do justice to the facial expressions of cryptographers when you mention Telegram's protocol, so just believe me that it's weird.

    Seems like a red flag.

  • by ccvannorman on 5/10/24, 5:57 AM

    Not your keys, Not your convos

  • by surfingdino on 5/10/24, 5:37 AM

    Unless backed with solid evidence intent and use, assuming incompetence rather than malice is sufficient explanation of errors in security protocols' design and implementation. This stuff is hard and any shortcuts you take are quickly proven to be the weak points, any weak points become back doors.

  • by igammarays on 5/10/24, 7:16 AM

    Keep in mind this is likely a hit piece in a press war. Telegram and Signal regularly attack each other, accusing the other of security and privacy failures. The number of times the author uses subjective words like “weird” and “bizarre” in a strictly technical analysis exposes their bias.

    See Durov’s (Telegram founder) recent announcement regarding Signal.

    https://t.me/durov/274

    > A story shared by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, uncovered that the current leaders of Signal, an allegedly “secure” messaging app, are activists used by the US state department for regime change abroad

    > Unlike Telegram, Signal doesn’t allow researchers to make sure that their GitHub code is the same code that is used in the Signal app run on users’ iPhones. Signal refused to add reproducible builds for iOS, closing a GitHub request from the community. And WhatsApp doesn’t even publish the code of its apps, so all their talk about “privacy” is an even more obvious circus trick .