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Russia Will Block Telegram Because of Encryption

posted by janrinok on Friday April 13 2018, @10:11PM   
from the stopping-terrorism-for-sure dept.

Russian Regulator Asks Courts To Disconnect Telegram

Arthur T Knackerbracket reported the following story on the 9 April:

Russian telecoms and mass communications regulator Roskomnadzor has filed a lawsuit it hopes will see secure messaging app Telegram turfed out of the country.

Moscow’s been unhappy with Telegram for some time, dating back to a mid-2017 dispute over the company’s non-compliance with requests to register as a telecoms service provider. The service and the Kremlin have also tangled over access to encryption keys.

The latter dispute is at the root of this latest episode, which has seen Roskomnadzor seek to have Telegram booted out of Russia for non-compliance.

Telegram has previously asserted it doesn’t have any keys to hand over, so can’t comply with Russian orders to do so.

Russia Will Block Telegram Messaging App Due to Encryption

takyon writes:

Russia to block Telegram app over encryption

A court in Moscow has approved a request from the Russian media regulator to block the Telegram messaging app immediately. The media regulator sought to block the app because the firm had refused to hand over encryption keys used to scramble messages.

Security officials say they need to monitor potential terrorists. But the company said the way the service was built meant it had no access to customers' encryption keys. Telegram had missed a deadline of 4 April to hand over the keys.

Russia's main security agency, the FSB, has said Telegram is the messenger of choice for "international terrorist organisations in Russia". A suicide bomber who killed 15 people on a subway train in St Petersburg last April used the app to communicate with accomplices, the FSB said last year. The app is also widely used by the Russian authorities, Reuters news agency reports.

The best endorsement.

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Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

• Some Merit In Russia’s Claim (Score: 3, Interesting) by terrab0t on Saturday April 14 2018, @11:26AM

  by terrab0t (4674) on Saturday April 14 2018, @11:26AM (#666878)

  I didn’t see a straight answer on whether or not Telegram actually does server side or end to end encryption, so I did some hunting.

  From Wikipedia:

  elegram's security model has received notable criticism by cryptography experts. They have argued that it is undermined by its use of a custom-designed encryption protocol that has not been proven reliable and secure, by storing all messages on its servers by default and by not enabling end-to-end encryption for messages by default. Pavel Durov has argued that this is because it helps to avoid third-party unsecure backups, and to allow users to access messages and files from any device. Messages in Telegram are server-client encrypted by default, and the service provides end-to-end encryption for voice calls and optional end-to-end encrypted "secret" chats.

  So, it has optional end to end encryption that you can enable, but it uses server side encryption by default. Much of the communications the Russian government wants to spy on are protected only by those server side encryption keys unless Telegram users only use the “secret chat” mode.

  Of course, Telegram could hand over the server side keys and then disable server side encryption in the next version of the app, rending those keys worthless.

  Starting Score:	1		point
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