The article mention that he is detained as part of a investigation:
Durov was traveling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France as part of a preliminary police investigation.
TF1 and BFM both said the investigation was focused on a lack of moderators on Telegram, and that police considered that this situation allowed criminal activity to go on undeterred on the messaging app.
Now we are detaining CEOs for potential criminal activity on their platforms, I expect to see many other CEOs behind bars before the end of the weekend
Hate on billionaires all you want, but a platform like this shouldn’t be forced to moderate. It runs completely counter to the USP of the app. It’s encrypted anonymous communication capabilities.
It’s encrypted anonymous communication capabilities.
Unless you enable it for every single chat (and IIRC only available for chats with only two persons, not group chats) there’s no encryption. Or did they change that? The only encryption that applies to most chats on that platform should be transport encryption via TLS.
That’s not correct. There’s user to server encryption, just not e2e. It’s less secure, sure, but given that they want to arrest the CEO over his compromise on keeping that actually private, it seems trustworthy enough, and has been over the years.
That’s exactly what the comment said: The only encryption that applies to most chats on that platform should be transport encryption via TLS. It’s about the same level of encryption as Lemmy PMs.
The fact that Telegram doesn’t cooperate with French authorities doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cooperate with other authorities or sell your data to the highest bidder. They have all the technical means for it.
Don’t use a regular Telegram chat if your life depends on the messages being private. Use XMPP, Matrix with E2EE, or at the very least Signal. Heck, even WhatsApp is (reportedly) better, as it claims to provide E2EE and that’s been checked by some security professionals who have been given access to the source code. If you absolutely must use Telegram for something like that, only use secret chats.
Sure, it’s mtproto. The security it provides for non-encrypted chats (which are the absolute majority of chats) is not any different from just having TLS for transport. It’s potentially even worse as it’s not as well-audited.
Data is not kept unencrypted on their servers, according to their docs.
That just means that they store both your data in some encrypted way and the key. They can still read it trivially. You don’t even have to know the protocol to understand why: you can add new devices without having any other device online, and read all non-secret chats. It might also just mean disk encryption, in which case it’s plain-text in RAM while the server is running.
is not any different from just having TLS for transport
Yes, in simple terms, all encrypted transfer protocols are similarly protected from mitm attacks.
That just means that they store both your data in some encrypted way and the key. They can still read it trivially.
They can and they said the decryption keys are always kept separately (there are probably more layers than I can describe) from the data to make sure the servers are not used to decrypt the data locally. They can be lying for all I care. The bigger problem is that people somehow assume this a huge threat, while all previous cases didn’t involve anything like that. People are getting into trouble for their public content - protected by some encryption but visible to anyone interested (who then report it to oppressive authorities).
While some go extra mile to explain to you how you should use e2e for your family group chats, real criminals do their stuff everywhere (especially on telegram) for years, staying safe. Problem is not how weak or strong the encryption is, but that once you are under oppression and do opposition activities, you’re going to learn by yourself how to deal with it. Signal will not save you from people in your group chats if they are there to report on you.
Telegram never or rarely cooperates with authorities in investigations into terrorism, child abuse, drug trafficking, weapons marketplaces, etc. This is probably the main reason they arrested the guy.
Telegram is categorically less encrypted than Signal for most chats. It’s mostly the same level of security as Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, even Email (SMTP/IMAP over TLS) or SMS: it only encrypts communications between the client and the server. Telegram can read everything you send in regular chats. The only way to get end-to-end encryption (such that Telegram technically can’t access your communication) is by starting a fussy and inconvenient “secret chat”. It can only be done between two people (so no E2E group chats at all), only when both are online at the same time, and it only works on the devices on which the secret chat was initiated and accepted; in other words, as a frequent user I’ve only used it once for some really sensitive personal information. Even then Telegram still has access to a lot of metadata about messages: phone numbers of both parties, when the messages are sent, how big they are, etc.
I’m not saying that cooperating with intelligence/LE agencies is always an ethical, or even a good choice, but Telegram demonstrably had the ability to do so.
the article doesn’t explain what laws he’s accused of breaking. i’m not defending the person-- i find the lack of detail to be a bit odd.
The article mention that he is detained as part of a investigation:
Now we are detaining CEOs for potential criminal activity on their platforms, I expect to see many other CEOs behind bars before the end of the weekend
I imagine every platform has crime happening on it.
Probably only ones the NSA can’t backdoor.
I don’t like that at all.
Hate on billionaires all you want, but a platform like this shouldn’t be forced to moderate. It runs completely counter to the USP of the app. It’s encrypted anonymous communication capabilities.
Unless you enable it for every single chat (and IIRC only available for chats with only two persons, not group chats) there’s no encryption. Or did they change that? The only encryption that applies to most chats on that platform should be transport encryption via TLS.
No
That’s not correct. There’s user to server encryption, just not e2e. It’s less secure, sure, but given that they want to arrest the CEO over his compromise on keeping that actually private, it seems trustworthy enough, and has been over the years.
That’s exactly what the comment said:
The only encryption that applies to most chats on that platform should be transport encryption via TLS. It’s about the same level of encryption as Lemmy PMs.The fact that Telegram doesn’t cooperate with French authorities doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cooperate with other authorities or sell your data to the highest bidder. They have all the technical means for it.
Don’t use a regular Telegram chat if your life depends on the messages being private. Use XMPP, Matrix with E2EE, or at the very least Signal. Heck, even WhatsApp is (reportedly) better, as it claims to provide E2EE and that’s been checked by some security professionals who have been given access to the source code. If you absolutely must use Telegram for something like that, only use secret chats.
That’s not correct. Toy may call it TLS but it’s a custom protocol. Data is not kept unencrypted on their servers, according to their docs.
Sure, it’s mtproto. The security it provides for non-encrypted chats (which are the absolute majority of chats) is not any different from just having TLS for transport. It’s potentially even worse as it’s not as well-audited.
That just means that they store both your data in some encrypted way and the key. They can still read it trivially. You don’t even have to know the protocol to understand why: you can add new devices without having any other device online, and read all non-secret chats. It might also just mean disk encryption, in which case it’s plain-text in RAM while the server is running.
Yes, in simple terms, all encrypted transfer protocols are similarly protected from mitm attacks.
They can and they said the decryption keys are always kept separately (there are probably more layers than I can describe) from the data to make sure the servers are not used to decrypt the data locally. They can be lying for all I care. The bigger problem is that people somehow assume this a huge threat, while all previous cases didn’t involve anything like that. People are getting into trouble for their public content - protected by some encryption but visible to anyone interested (who then report it to oppressive authorities).
While some go extra mile to explain to you how you should use e2e for your family group chats, real criminals do their stuff everywhere (especially on telegram) for years, staying safe. Problem is not how weak or strong the encryption is, but that once you are under oppression and do opposition activities, you’re going to learn by yourself how to deal with it. Signal will not save you from people in your group chats if they are there to report on you.
I see, perhaps I’m just unfamiliar with the criminal justice system in France
In the United States, this would not be considered an arrest, but an investigative detention (a minor but important distinction)
Oh, that makes sense
Telegram never or rarely cooperates with authorities in investigations into terrorism, child abuse, drug trafficking, weapons marketplaces, etc. This is probably the main reason they arrested the guy.
Probably because they can’t? It’s encrypted, yeah?
Signal posts their subpoenas and responses that are usually like, ‘you fucking dolt, it’s encrypted, we don’t have access’
They probably still have usernames, phone numbers and access logs with IP adresses even though the chats are encrypted.
Telegram is categorically less encrypted than Signal for most chats. It’s mostly the same level of security as Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, even Email (SMTP/IMAP over TLS) or SMS: it only encrypts communications between the client and the server. Telegram can read everything you send in regular chats. The only way to get end-to-end encryption (such that Telegram technically can’t access your communication) is by starting a fussy and inconvenient “secret chat”. It can only be done between two people (so no E2E group chats at all), only when both are online at the same time, and it only works on the devices on which the secret chat was initiated and accepted; in other words, as a frequent user I’ve only used it once for some really sensitive personal information. Even then Telegram still has access to a lot of metadata about messages: phone numbers of both parties, when the messages are sent, how big they are, etc.
I’m not saying that cooperating with intelligence/LE agencies is always an ethical, or even a good choice, but Telegram demonstrably had the ability to do so.
They view him as complicit in every single crime that has ever been linked to telegram