Safe chats: do they exist, why are they needed and why is it important

What's happening

All large and small corporations cooperate with law enforcement agencies, subject to the laws of the countries in which they operate. Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber and many other social networks and instant messengers share a certain amount of user data with the authorities. Someone pours more, someone less, but the bitter truth is that everyone does it.

Showcase freedom fighters will give away all your secrets without batting an eye. For example, the creators of the popular Viber messenger, which, according to Russian law, were obliged to transfer servers to the territory of the Russian Federation, complied with the requirements of the authorities at the end of last year. Officially, this step is explained by the need to store personal data on servers inside the country, but we all know the true motives: the matter is the desire of the special services to gain access to the correspondence.

The operatives I knew told me something that I had been expecting for a long time - they receive any correspondence on Viber even easier than SMS printouts.

Published by Alexander Kovalenko on March 1, 2016

Under "easier" in this case, we mean that surveillance does not even require interaction with operators of cellular networks: all the necessary tools are at the disposal of the relevant authorities. The same applies to WhatsApp, Skype and other instant messengers, not to mention regular SMS. Moreover, not only special services can read your correspondence, but also competitors, enemies, and in general anyone who uses the services of special services. They are inexpensive and easily googled on request "SMS printout".

Under any of our articles on the topic of sms, enterprising businessmen always offer their services

When law enforcement agencies cannot get the data they need with the leverage they have, they take drastic measures. Literally in early March, for refusing to cooperate with the Brazilian police, the vice president of the Latin American branch of Facebook. The subject of controversy was information about users of the social network, allegedly involved in the distribution of drugs.

In December 2015, a Brazilian court blocked WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) in the country after refusing to provide information about the correspondence of the alleged criminals. As a result, everyone suffered: the police turned off about 100 million local users, causing a violent reaction on social networks and the outrage of the head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Even more revealing in the fight for the privacy of personal data is the confrontation between Apple and the FBI, which has not yet been resolved. The secret services talk about preventing terrorist attacks and ensuring national security, not wanting to admit that crime cannot be defeated in this way. Apple's chief legal counsel at a congressional hearing said that even if the intelligence services had the opportunity to hack any iPhone, the criminals would in any case find ways of secret communication, and cited the Telegram messenger as an example.

There is a trick against scrap

The Apple representative is right: there are a lot of secure correspondence methods and they were not invented yesterday. The brainchild of Pavel Durov, Telegram is the first to come to mind because of its popularity and unbreakable reputation: nobody has yet received the $ 200,000 assigned back in 2013 for hacking encrypted Telegram correspondence.

This invulnerability is explained by the very principle of work of secure messengers in general and Telegram in particular. The latter uses the specially developed MTProto protocol and two-layer encryption with a 256-bit AES key: they provide high speed and reliability. And in Telegram, in addition to regular chats, there are so-called Secret Chats. In them, correspondence is encrypted without the participation of the server, and all messages are sent directly from the sender's device to the recipient's device (peer-to-peer). Even if we assume that the data can be intercepted, it will be simply impossible to decrypt it without the keys stored on the devices of the participants in the conversation.

Another advantage of P2P transmission is that the messenger cannot be blocked: when there are no servers, there is simply nothing to block.

The governments of authoritarian countries often sin by blocking unwanted services. For example, everyone knows about Facebook blocked almost all over China. In October last year, due to a refusal to provide an opportunity to spy on users, Telegram was first partially, and then completely blocked in Iran. Such situations can be avoided using a P2P connection, which Pavel Durov promised after this incident.

@emmanuelksvz We are working on a P2P solution that will make the service unblockable. It’ll take some time.

A similar approach is used in various secure messengers with end-to-end encryption. The method of transferring keys may differ, but the principle remains the same: information is sent directly from device to device without the participation of intermediate servers.

Something similar may soon appear on Facebook Messenger. The journalists of The Information have quite interesting comments in the code of the iOS application. They point to a certain analogue of Apple Pay, which allows you to pay for goods and send money to users, as well as the accompanying functionality of secret chats. It is still difficult to judge the way such conversations are implemented: Facebook can follow the Telegram path and implement encryption, or it can simply add the ability to hide individual correspondence and contacts. In any case, even if the decision is made in favor of the first option, it will not be so easy to attract users and prove to them that secret chats in Messenger are really safe.

How to be

For those for whom the reliability of the communication channel plays an important role, you should pay attention to secure messengers with the mentioned encryption. They will come in handy not only for paranoid people, but also for everyone who is associated with business and has access to any more or less important information that is not intended for prying eyes. There are a huge number of available solutions, but we will not consider all of them, but focus on the three most convenient ones.

Secret Telegram chats

Thanks to the widespread use of the messenger, Telegram's secret chats can be called an ideal option. They guarantee the security of the information sent, have the function of self-destructing messages (including photos and files) after a certain time and do not allow sending correspondence to other people. For added security with one user, you can create multiple conversations and discuss different topics in them.

Secret chats in Telegram

Creating a secret chat is simple: click the New Message → New Secret Chat icon and select the desired contact. It will be possible to start a correspondence as soon as the person appears on the Web. Due to the lack of intermediate servers, it is impossible to send a message offline. Moreover, all unsent messages are stored only on your device. You can understand that the chat is secret, and not ordinary, by the lock icon next to the contact's name.

Confide

Confide

Unlike Telegram, Confide was originally designed for maximum security. The messenger is also quite popular in its niche, it is free and has clients for all desktop and mobile platforms. Confide uses end-to-end encryption and does not store messages anywhere other than the sender's and recipient's devices. Moreover, the messenger does not even display the entire text of the received message, but breaks it into blocks and shows it in parts when you hover the cursor or touch it with your finger. Read messages are immediately destroyed. Those who want to save the content using a screenshot of the screen will fail: the text will be instantly deleted, and the sender will receive a notification about the failed attempt of the interlocutor.

An account in Confide is tied to an email, after registration you can connect your social networks and allow access to contacts. If someone you know has the application installed, you can safely correspond, send photos and documents.

Threema

Threema

And this application is already for the real paranoid. It is paid, not so convenient, has a less user-friendly interface, but is even more focused on security and only works with direct encryption. Neither phone number nor email is used here. For Threema to work, you need a pair of keys that you will generate yourself when you first start: one of them is private and stored on your device, the other is public and sent to your interlocutor. After that, you will be assigned an identifier by which you can be found. You can add a contact by email or phone (if a person has linked them to an account), as well as by scanning a QR code in person (this is the safest option).

Threema allows you to exchange not only text messages, but also photos, videos, documents and geotags. There are apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Signal

Screenshot 2016-04-02 at 11.32.23

Signal is recommended by Edward Snowden himself, which in itself already means something. Like the previous ones, this application uses end-to-end encryption, but differs in that, in addition to sending text messages, photos and files, it also supports voice calls. Signal binds to your phone number and allows you to securely communicate with contacts from your phone book. On Android, it can even be made the default application for making calls and sending messages. Signal has recently become available on desktops as a Chrome app.

What do you think about secure messengers: is it worth switching to them or is it just for the paranoid? Tell us if you use secure chats, and if so, which ones you preferred and why.