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Former Whatsapp Users Bring Telegram to its Knees

posted by Dopefish on Sunday February 23 2014, @02:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the there-is-no-viable-alternative dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:

"A mere three days after Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's acquisition of Whatsapp, the popular smartphone messaging app suffered a major service outage that lasted three and a half hours. Left to their own devices, Whatsapp users worldwide went rushing to its rival apps, including secure chat provider Telegram. The surge in new users quickly turned into a tidal wave that brought Telegram's service to its knees:

The SMS gateways we use to send registration codes are overloaded and slow 100 SMS per second is too much. Trying to find a solution.

In its official twitter, Telegram announced that more than 1.8 million new users had joined on Saturday, Feb 22. Four hours later, it reported an additional 800 thousand.

Telegram's messaging service, which uses 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, RSA 2048 encryption and Diffie-Hellman secure key exchange, began enjoying a spike in popularity after Whatsapp's acquisition. Although it has released the source code for its java libraries and all its official clients, its server software is still closed source."

 
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  • (Score: 1) by TheLink on Monday February 24 2014, @02:42AM

    by TheLink (332) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:42AM (#5613)
    A talks to B but C MITMs them.

    A -> C "hey my pic is a 'cow' what's yours?"
    C -> A "my pic is a cow too"
    A -> C "all secure then!"
    C -> B "hey my pic is a 'pig' what's yours?"
    B -> C "my pic is a pig too"
    C -> B "all secure then!"

    Much easier if it's text messages. Harder for voice - since delays become more noticeable.

    And if B started telling bacon jokes regarding the pig pic it becomes a lot more work, but C might be able to tell B to focus on stuff that's easier to "pass-through" without rewrites.

    Of course you could use another channel to do the verification, but how would you arrange that without being MITMed again? :)

  • (Score: 1) by LM-Els on Monday February 24 2014, @03:59AM

    by LM-Els (2466) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:59AM (#5666)

    The image they use is actually closer to a QR thing than a describable image. You'll have to send screenshots.
    Not saying that a MITM can't alter those, but it does become a little less easy than simply cow vs pig. And you could send the screenshots via email to bypass a Telegram MITM.

    • (Score: 1) by TheLink on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:47AM

      by TheLink (332) on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:47AM (#6437)
      If it's closer to a QR thing MITMing it might actually be easier to automate than the cow/pig thing. Assuming you don't do checking via other channels.