Is Telegram Secure? What You Need to Know Before Downloading the App

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Telegram Is Not as Secure as It Portrays Itself to Be. Learn How to Stay Safe While Using It.

When compared to renowned instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, Telegram might seem like the underdog. However, the Russian platform is anything but with its user base of roughly 300 million. If you are not yet familiar with it, a few questions might be going through your mind right now. What is Telegram? Is it encrypted? How shady is its privacy policy? And, most importantly, is Telegram secure?
 
Worry not, as I will answer all of them and more in the following lines. As always, stay tuned until the end for some actionable advice on how to stay safe while using Telegram.

What is Telegram?

Telegram is a cloud-based instant messaging app that was launched back in 2013 and has gained quite a devoted user base since then. It was developed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov, two Russian brothers who are best known for creating the social networking platform VK (formerly VKontakte).

The app features a secret chat option with end-to-end encryption, as well as a regular chat variant that is encrypted in the Telegram Cloud. It is available on multiple mobile and desktop operating systems, namely iOS, macOS, Android, Windows Phone, Windows, and Linux.

What sets Telegram apart from the crowd is its popularity, especially among millennial and Gen Z users. Many of my friends use it and motivate their choice in doing so on the fact that it is more secure than other (Mark Zuckerberg-owned) instant messaging apps out there such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

However, that isn’t necessarily the case. For example, all WhatsApp chats feature end-to-end encryption, as opposed to Telegram using it for its secret chats only. So, what accounts for its popularity? What does Telegram do that other similar apps don’t? The answer lies within the app’s MTProto Mobile Protocol, which I will discuss in the section below where you’ll find out all there is to know about Telegram’s encryption process.

Is Telegram Encrypted?According to the official Telegram FAQ section, the app features two layers of secure encryption. Private and group cloud chats support server to client encryption, while secret chats benefit from client to client encryption. Every single bit of data is treated the same way in the process, which means that text, files, and media alike are encrypted equally.

Telegram encryption is based on 2048-bit RSA encryption, 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange. As per further info provided in the app’s FAQ for the Technically Inclined,
 

All Telegram apps ensure that msg_key is equal to SHA-256 of a fragment of the auth_key concatenated with the decrypted message (including 12…1024 bytes of random padding). It is important that the plaintext always contains message length, server salt, session_id and other data not known to the attacker.

It is crucial that AES decryption keys depend both on msg_key, and on auth_key, known only to the parties involved in the exchange.

What is more, Telegram does not rely on a MAC-then-Encrypt, Encrypt-then-MAC, or MAC-and-Encrypt model, but rather on the aforementioned MTProto Mobile Protocol. In doing so, app developers obtain a faster and more thorough message verification process which allows for the safe and silent discarding of invalid or corrupted communications.
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