Ask HN: Is Telegram secure or not?

1 pointrthomas61 comment

I'm not a crypto expert. The experts clearly prefer Signal to Telegram for secure mobile messaging, but how secure is Telegram? I read the its encryption scheme was broken, but I also read that it's never been broken. And nobody has won the $300,000 award for breaking it. What's the deal? Is it still considered insecure?

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From what I gather, the crypto in Telegram is unorthodox and smacks of self-made, and crypto circles are extremely suspicious of anything non-standard that hasn't been thoroughly vetted. Didn't help that the website boasted of their 5 math PhDs (IIRC). (Of course, the Signal protocol was new and unusual at one time as well, but my understanding is that the basic primitives it uses and the way they're put together is more orthodox).

https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ gives Telegram "amber" for crypto, and "red" (Don't use) overall.

The only overall greens are Signal, Threema, Wire.

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