On the Cryptographic Fragility of the Telegram Ecosystem

Theo von Arx, K. Paterson
{"title":"On the Cryptographic Fragility of the Telegram Ecosystem","authors":"Theo von Arx, K. Paterson","doi":"10.1145/3579856.3582811","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Telegram is a popular messenger with more than 550 million active users per month and with a large ecosystem of different clients. The wide adoption of Telegram by protestors relying on private and secure messaging provides motivation for developing a profound understanding of its cryptographic design and how this influences its security properties. Telegram has its own bespoke transport layer security protocol, MTProto 2.0. This protocol was recently subjected to a detailed study by Albrecht et al. (IEEE S&P 2022). They gave attacks on the protocol and its implementations, along with a security proof for a modified version of the protocol. We complement that study by analysing a range of third-party client implementations of MTProto 2.0. We report practical replay attacks for the Pyrogram, Telethon and GramJS clients, and a more theoretical timing attack against the MadelineProto client. We show how vulnerable third-party clients can affect the security of the entire ecosystem, including official clients. Our analysis reveals that many third-party clients fail to securely implement MTProto 2.0. We discuss the reasons for these failures, focussing on complications in the design of MTProto 2.0 that lead developers to omit security-critical features or to implement the protocol in an insecure manner. We also discuss changes that could be made to MTProto 2.0 to remedy this situation. Overall, our work highlights the cryptographic fragility of the Telegram ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":156082,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3579856.3582811","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1

Abstract

Telegram is a popular messenger with more than 550 million active users per month and with a large ecosystem of different clients. The wide adoption of Telegram by protestors relying on private and secure messaging provides motivation for developing a profound understanding of its cryptographic design and how this influences its security properties. Telegram has its own bespoke transport layer security protocol, MTProto 2.0. This protocol was recently subjected to a detailed study by Albrecht et al. (IEEE S&P 2022). They gave attacks on the protocol and its implementations, along with a security proof for a modified version of the protocol. We complement that study by analysing a range of third-party client implementations of MTProto 2.0. We report practical replay attacks for the Pyrogram, Telethon and GramJS clients, and a more theoretical timing attack against the MadelineProto client. We show how vulnerable third-party clients can affect the security of the entire ecosystem, including official clients. Our analysis reveals that many third-party clients fail to securely implement MTProto 2.0. We discuss the reasons for these failures, focussing on complications in the design of MTProto 2.0 that lead developers to omit security-critical features or to implement the protocol in an insecure manner. We also discuss changes that could be made to MTProto 2.0 to remedy this situation. Overall, our work highlights the cryptographic fragility of the Telegram ecosystem.
论电报生态系统的密码脆弱性
Telegram是一个受欢迎的信使,每月有超过5.5亿活跃用户,拥有一个由不同客户组成的庞大生态系统。依靠私有和安全消息传递的抗议者广泛采用Telegram,这为深入了解其加密设计以及这如何影响其安全属性提供了动力。Telegram有自己定制的传输层安全协议MTProto 2.0。最近,Albrecht等人对该协议进行了详细研究(IEEE标准普尔2022)。他们对协议及其实现进行了攻击,并提供了协议修改版本的安全证明。我们通过分析MTProto 2.0的一系列第三方客户端实现来补充该研究。我们报告了针对Pyrogram、Telethon和GramJS客户端的实际重放攻击,以及针对MadelineProto客户端的更具理论性的定时攻击。我们展示了脆弱的第三方客户端如何影响整个生态系统的安全性,包括官方客户端。我们的分析显示,许多第三方客户端无法安全地实现MTProto 2.0。我们将讨论这些失败的原因,重点关注MTProto 2.0设计中的复杂性,这些复杂性导致开发人员忽略了安全关键特性或以不安全的方式实现协议。我们还讨论了可以对MTProto 2.0进行的更改来纠正这种情况。总的来说,我们的工作突出了Telegram生态系统的加密脆弱性。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
自引率
0.00%
发文量
0
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:604180095
Book学术官方微信