[ryanlol]

>(and his) point stands: it's likely incompetence

That’s not what the post is saying.

> It's very biased and uncharitable

It’s not “very biased”, if you actually look at what Telegram did the balance of probabilities leans heavily towards “backdoor” and not “not backdoor”

[pdimitar]

So, give me your definition of Hanlon's Razor then (mentioned at the end of the article by the author).

[ryanlol]

I think you’re completely missing the nuance in the words surrounding the authors mention of “Hanlon’s razor”.

Besides, look at Pavel Durovs flagkilled reply here. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

[pdimitar]

That's not saying anything of substance unless you offer your own interpretation. "You're wrong" is not a discussion, it's a kick in the gut.

> The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Solid criticism with well laid-out arguments from you, no doubt.

> Besides, look at Pavel Durovs flagkilled reply here.

Since when do upvote / downvote count mean anything at all about somebody's opinion or statements? (I haven't read the comment though.)

Look, it's obvious you have a beef with Telegram / Durov. But you are not giving any arguments, only snark. That's breaking HN's guidelines last I checked.

[ryanlol]

>I haven't read the comment though

Maybe do that. Not being snarky, you’re missing important context.

[pdimitar]

I did read it now. It's not constructive, that's a fact, but have you never got worked up by unrelenting criticism?

Still, he's an official public face and should know better. That I fully agree with.

[saagarjha]

I certainly hope that’s not the real Pavel Durov…

[pseudalopex]

Their account is 7 years old. They used to post substantive things about Telegram. Looks like him.

[StavrosK]

The author is saying "maybe things that look A WHOLE LOT like malice are actually incompetence". It's pretty clear that he thinks it's a backdoor, even though he basically says "maybe in actually wrong, but I really don't think so".

[pdimitar]

Sure, sadly that's how human languages betray us. Plus, him emphasising "a whole lot" doesn't make it a fact.

I am no cryptography expert. I judge by all the times I've seen programmers imagine they could do professional cryptography by themselves. Literally every time they fail. Thus, in my eyes it is more likely that Telegram's coders fell victim to the same illusion.

But I am not denying that it's possible it's the [beginnings of a] backdoor. The whole sub-thread is (a) my opinion on what's more likely and (b) calling out people who act snarky, offer no facts and demonstrate general negative bias.

[StavrosK]

It looks a whole lot more likely to me that this is a backdoor, as they added their own thing to a very standard algorithm (the easy and better thing to do would have been to not add anything), and all that thing did was mess with the key exchange.

It's really, really fishy.

[pdimitar]

But is it really that unlikely that it's a misguided attempt to increase entropy?

The fact that a cryptographer might scoff and laugh at the proposition doesn't mean that a normal programmer couldn't fall victim to that illusion?

In any case -- yes. Both things are likely and you made a strong point for the "malice" side.

Still, it makes me wonder why would Durov run from Russia if he was willing to backdoor Telegram? Why not remain in Russia and backdoor it while being there? Why the extra trouble? Or maybe he didn't want to backdoor it for Russia but for other nation(s)?

[StavrosK]

I don't think "people who design a cryptosystem" and "people who send randomness from the server" overlaps a lot, yeah. I don't see how anyone remotely familiar with cryptography would think that sending randomness from an untrusted party is a good idea. It's this bad.