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Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot (rys.io)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Investigation by investigative journalism outlet IStories (EN version by OCCRP) shows that Telegram uses a single, FSB-linked company as their infrastructure provider globally.

Telegram's MTProto protocol also requires a cleartext identifier to be prepended to all client-server messages.

Combined, these two choices by Telegram make it into a surveillance tool.

I am quoted in the IStories story. I also did packet captures, and I dive into the nitty-gritty technical details on my blog.

Packet captures and MTProto deobfuscation library I wrote linked therein so that others can retrace my steps and check my work.

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Why do you conflate politeness and trustworthiness? Seems like a weird connection to make.

Is it really that weird? Imagine someone going to a store and the owner starts swearing at them because they asked a question. Would said visitor be more or less likely to trust the owner? I agree that being impolite doesn't necessarily equate to being ignorant in one's subject, but I wouldn't be surprised that on average the most knowledgeable and wise tend to be more polite.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Because the inverse of that is how people get conned. Someone blowing absolute smoke with a confident tone and a sweet word. Tone is about the worst indicator of trustworthiness

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Because the inverse of that is how people get conned. Someone blowing absolute smoke with a confident tone and a sweet word. Tone is about the worst indicator of trustworthiness

    Sure, skilled sociopaths con their way up that way, or that's how soulless marketers manipulate the populace. However, that does not mean that most people who are kind are sociopaths or soulless. On average kind people are just being kind.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    On average kind people are just being kind.

    And that is great, it is good to be optimistic. My point is being kind has nothing to do with trustworthiness. Hell, someone that is kind can also just be plain wrong. They might think they know something when they do not. The kindness just does not factor in to knowledge. Plenty of experts are not what people would describe as kind, and plenty of misinformation peddlers are kind. It just has nothing to do with expertise

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