None of the messenger does not protect the correspondence of the user from hacking the secret service or fraud. Absolute level of safety cannot boast of any Telegram or WhatsApp or Viber.
Telegram entered the market much later than WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat and others. However, in a short time acquired a reputation as the most secure messenger. Development of the founder of the social network of “Vkontakte” Pavel Durov was presented under the slogan “reclaim the right to privacy”.
The basis of the Telegram is the technology MTProto encryption of correspondence, which was developed by Pavel Durov’s brother, Nikolai. Shortly after launch the film had a contest on hacking protection messenger. Hackathon participants were asked to get correspondence Durova “secret chat” for $200,000. But in the contest no one could not do.
Experts however are sceptical Telegram, mainly due to the fact that the encryption of the correspondence only occurs in the chat rooms and encryption are disabled by default. The American civil liberties Union, Christopher Soghoyan said that the positioning of the messenger from security point of view unjustified, because the company needs to think about protecting the default, and not to force users to change client settings.
Encryption is a key security feature of instant messaging, the most reliable is through. Its essence lies in the fact that the keys to decrypt messages are stored on users ‘ devices, not on external servers. Accordingly, no one except the users can’t get access to the correspondence. This form of encryption is used by default in WhatsApp, Viber, iMessage and other services.
Closeness to the independent audit makes MTProto potentially vulnerable to future attacks, experts say. They claim that the competitions that are conducted”, was made exclusively for PR, as these events do not prove security of the service and mislead users.
As Telegram, like many other messengers, used for authorization messages to the phone number to access the account and the correspondence can not even breaking MTProto. The fact that the basis of this method of information transmission is the technology of forty years ago Signalling System No.7 (SS7).
Intelligence agencies can intercept the message with the code and to access any account. Previously, it showed the Russian, and then German hackers. And because Telegram stores the history messages, the attacker is just at hand.
A security vulnerability allows SS7, knowing the number of victims, easily initiate the procedure to restore access to the account, and then to intercept the message and set your own password. This vulnerability makes the encryption of Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber is useless and opens up to successful attacks of any tied to your phone account.
