How much trust can you put in Telegram messenger?

Messaging programs are a closely watched application category, with experts scrutinizing how communications are protected from government surveillance dragnets and hackers. The primary defense invariably involves encryption, but just saying an application uses encryption by no means ensures it’s secure.

One of the latest programs to come under fire is Telegram, which is backed by Pavel Durov[cq], who also founded the popular Russian social networking site Vkontakte. Telegram is a free desktop and mobile application launched in 2013 that promotes itself as “taking back our right to privacy.”

Telegram is well intended but has several weak spots, said Alex Rad[cq], who has a background in application security testing and reverse engineering. He and researcher Juliano Rizzo, who discovered two major attacks against SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), have been analyzing Telegram intermittently since last year as a side project to help improve its security.

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