An anon emails:

I was first attracted to the Telegram whitepaper because it seems like it has the potential to be a kind of decentralized

"WeChat". WeChat is a very popular social media app that is China's "App for Everything" with payment systems,

social media, and a bunch of other stuff:

https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

Tencent which developed it is now Asia's most valuable company, worth $580 billion:

https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Telegram already has 200 million users and is the platform for many cryptocurrency discussions. It seems that

they could implement a coin with low transaction fees and use it to drive micropayments on the web. They

already know who their customers are and they have a big hardware infrastructure.

But there are some suspicious things about them. I sent a bunch of links before showing that they appear to

still be very connected to the FSB (the Russian CIA). Officially, their founders made a bunch of money from

starting vk and fund the hardware supporting Telegram out of their own pockets to the tune of $70 million of

which $62 million was on equipment. They don't make any money!

From what I've seen, that story sounds like a cover for an FSB operation to spy on people who seek to use

an end-to-end encrypted chat app! More evidence for that theory is that they rolled their own encryption,

something called "MTProto". This is generally regarded as a very bad idea for most technologists. Of course,

if you are actually the FSB then it may be a very good idea!

In particular, there is a little known possibility of hiding mathematical backdoors in seemingly secure cryptosystems

in a way that may be very difficult to detect:

We need to talk about mathematical backdoors in encryption algorithms

https:// www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/15/crypto_mathematical_backdoors/

Here's a particular technique for doing that:

Partition-Based Trapdoor Ciphers

https:// www.intechopen.com/books/partition-based-trapdoor-ciphers/partition-based-trapdoor-ciphers

In 2015 it was revealed that the Swiss company Crypto AG had installed this kind of backdoor into the

encryption machines they sold to Iran, Libya, and other countries at the behest of the NSA, GCHQ, and

the BND. They backdoored machines at least from 1955 to 1997 and led to the exposure of diplomatic

communications in the 1980's.

Telegram's "ICO" is quite different from other ICOs in the way it is structured.

And they claim a "Proof of Stake" mining. But I actually suspect that the whole system will be centralized!

They have a ton of their own hardware for some reason! If they make it centralized, then they will be

able to get huge transaction rates for very little cost and will be able to handle a huge number of

participants.

But, of course, a centralized coin is not very sexy! So I suspect they will do just enough to let them call

it decentralized and to back up their "libertarian" stance while making tons of money and feeding all

kinds of sensitive into to the FSB!

But I guess we'll just have to see how it plays out!

And the Huawei issue is quite topical because there's this story going around:

Don’t use Huawei phones, say heads of FBI, CIA, and NSA

178

The US intelligence community is still worried about Chinese tech giants’ government ties

https:// www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011246/huawei-phones-safe-us-intelligence-chief-fears

Don't use Huawei phones, FBI warns

http:// www.newshub.co.nz/home/money/2018/02/don-t-use-huawei-phones-fbi-warns.html

Now it may be that the Huawei phones are indeed sending info back to China, I have no idea. But I wouldn't

be surprised if that story was concocted by big US phone makers to try to counteract $100 phones which are

almost as good as the $1000 US offerings.

A bit of evidence in favor of that interpretation:

UK cyber security agency sticks with China's Huawei despite US spy fears

http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/02/20/uk-cyber-security-agency-sticks-chinas-huawei-despite-us-spy/

There's also the related story (supposedly now debunked) that the Trump admin is considering nationalizing the 5G phone

network to prevent cheap Chinese cell tower equipment from being a security risk:

Scoop: Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network

https:// www.axios.com/trump-team-debates-nationalizing-5g-network-f1e92a49-60f2-4e3e-acd4-f3eb03d910ff.html

Again, I wouldn't be surprised if this were a ploy by US manufacturers to lock out cheaper competition…

I thought his comments on the Wassenaar Agreement were interesting:

​

and that he says:

"I am convinced that all export versions of encryption system contain backdoors in one way or another. This is a direct constraint from the Wassenaar agreement. In this respect, the crypto AG and other companies (revealed by the Hans Buehler case) are the best examples. There are other less known [examples].

If this is true, it would be interesting to think through the consequences for cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin uses 3 cryptographic primitives:

The Cryptography of Bitcoin

http:// blog.ezyang.com/2011/06/the-cryptography-of-bitcoin/

The public key cryptography is:

Elliptic Curve DSA on the curve secp256k1

https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithm

The proof of work cryptographic hash function is SHA256:

https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2

and it also uses another hash function RIPEMD-160:

https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIPEMD

Here's why it uses two hash functions (though I'm not sure that answer is very convincing!):

Why does Bitcoin use two hash functions (SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160) to create an address?

https:// bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/9202/why-does-bitcoin-use-two-hash-functions-sha-256-and-ripemd-160-to-create-an-ad

I haven't seen anyone questioning the security of any of those 3 primitives, but of course they wouldn't would they!

I did find this intriguing article suggesting that quantum computers might break the elliptic curve signature

scheme by 2027:

Bitcoin’s Elliptic Curve Signature Could be Broken by 2027

https:// news.bitcoin.com/bitcoins-encryption-could-be-broken-by-2027-claim-singapore-quantum-experts/

but it suggests that the proof of work SHA256 will not be significantly sped up by quantum computing in the next 10 years.

More suspicious "explanation" for the two hashes:

Why use both SHA and RIPEMD to generate the public address? Why not use one or the other?

https:// www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ggjyg/why_use_both_sha_and_ripemd_to_generate_the/

A bit more believable to me (of course he's assuming Satoshi is trying to protect bitcoin from being broken by the NSA instead

of him being the NSA!):

How to steal all coins

http:// blog.oleganza.com/post/42523601710/how-to-steal-all-coins

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