Secure messaging service app offers $200,000 bounty

Luke [flabbyrabbit]
10 years ago | edited 10 years ago

0

Break their encryption and earn yourself $200,000 (in Bitcoins) - http://telegram.org/crypto_contest

[quote=BBC]Telegram, a secure messaging service app, has offered a reward to the first person who can crack its encryption.

The firm’s founder has put up an award of $200,000 (122,000) worth of Bitcoins for breaking the protocol.

To win the award, users will have to intercept a daily message between the founders Pavel and Nikolai Durov to find out a secret email address.[/quote]

There is a technical FAQ here http://core.telegram.org/techfaq

Cyan Wind [freewind1012]
10 years ago

0

@flabbyrabbit: This sounds interesting. Should we gather as a group? :/

![Image](https://www.hackthis.co.uk/user/userbar.png?user=freewind1012%20//%20Navigator)

[deleted user]
10 years ago

0

Well I say good luck to anyone who attempts to crack it.

Fireshard
10 years ago | edited 10 years ago

0

I see no reason why that sort of encryption would be crack-able, if correctly implemented:
Since both SHA-1 and AES-256 are impossible to crack (though they both have some vulnerabilities - see Wikipedia), and the key encrypted with SHA-1 is created using a salt (supposedly created using a PRG), this should be fail-safe (although i can see no improvement over simple AES-256).

Even if several vulnerabilities would be found to this algorithm, it would still be robust enough to encrypt data nowadays with no chance of cracking (and no viable brute-forcing).

Edit:

Should someone manage to crack this, please go ahead and try cracking AES and SHA-1, though :). There should be a lot more money than $200.000 for those. ;)

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