“Telegram is not a private messenger. There’s nothing private about it. It’s the opposite. It’s a cloud messenger where every message you’ve ever sent or received is in plain text in a database that Telegram the organization controls and has access to it”
“It’s like a Russian oligarch starting an unencrypted version of WhatsApp, a pixel for pixel clone of WhatsApp. That should be kind of a difficult brand to operate. Somehow, they’ve done a really amazing job of convincing the whole world that this is an encrypted messaging app and that the founder is some kind of Russian dissident, even though he goes there once a month, the whole team lives in Russia, and their families are there.”
" What happened in France is they just chose not to respond to the subpoena. So that’s in violation of the law. And, he gets arrested in France, right? And everyone’s like, oh, France. But I think the key point is they have the data, like they can respond to the subpoenas where as Signal, for instance, doesn’t have access to the data and couldn’t respond to that same request. To me it’s very obvious that Russia would’ve had a much less polite version of that conversation with Pavel Durov and the telegram team before this moment"
I like your analysis, and would love your thoughts on matrix(assuming you have ofc)
People keep finding significant vulnerabilities in its cryptography and the Matrix team tries to deflect or create strawmans for why it isnt actually a vuln. Soatok found a vulnerability in 2024 by just browsing the source code for tiny bit of time, and again just two weeks ago after looking for a couple hours. In both cases, Matrix then responded to his vuln report with hostility, saying it wasnt actually a vulnerability. He is sitting on another vulnerability.
Having a cleartext mode is a security downgrade and no secure messenger should support cleartext. It only barely got functional forward secrecy recently. VoIP in most Matrix clients (and servers) still use Jitsi backend which isn’t E2EE, even with the release of the newer (secure) Element call protocol. Matrix leaks tons of metadata, such as usernames, room names, emoji reactions, generate URL embedded previews. Rooms arent encrypted by default. It is also a UX nightmare and often times you cant decrypt your messages.
Matrix is not secure. You’d be better off with XMPP and OMEMO which has its own problems and isn’t secure either. Sill better than Matrix.
It’s better than Signal since you don’t have to disclose any personal info, but people have pointed out some issues with federation in it. Again, it’s one of those things that may or may not matter based on your use case.
That link seems dated (Nov. 2024). If anyone finds a more current critique, pls send. I also get auto-kicked from HLC simplex group, so I’m not sure what to think of them but commando’s matrix server was amazing befored abandoned