The “P” in Telegram stands for Privacy

February 12, 2021  By Pierluigi Paganini


Security expert Dhiraj Mishra analyzed the popular instant messaging app Telegram and identified some failures in terms of handling the users’ data.

Summary: While understanding the implementation of various security and privacy measures in Telegram, I identified that telegram fails again in terms of handling the users data. My initial study started with understanding how self-destructing messages work in the secret chats option, telegram says that “The clock starts ticking the moment the message is displayed on the recipient’s screen (gets two check marks). As soon as the time runs out, the message disappears from both devices.” 

The popular instant messaging app has 500 million active users suffers from a logical bug exists in telegram for macOS (7.3 (211334) Stable) which stores the local copy of received message (audio/video) on a custom path even after those messages are deleted/disappeared from the secret chat.

Technical analysis: Open telegram for macOS, send a recorded audio/video message in normal chat, the application leaks the sandbox path where the recorded message is stored in “.mp4” file.

In my case the path was (/var/folders/x7/khjtxvbn0lzgjyy9xzc18z100000gn/T/). While performing the same task under secret chat option the MediaResourceData(path://) URI was not leaked but the recorded audio/video message still gets stored on the above path.


In the video proof-of-concept the user receives a self-destructed message in the secret chat option, which gets stored even after the message is self-destructed. 

Bonus: The above mentioned version of telegram for macOS stores local passcode in plain text, below is the video proof-of-concept.
ttps://www.youtube.com/embed/zEt-_5b4OaA Both the vulnerabilities was patched in version 7.4 (212543) Stable and 3000 EURO bounty was awarded. In past I’ve identified multiple vulnerabilities in Telegram you can read them here. Later today Fri 12 Feb 12:15 PM, CVE-2021-27204 & CVE-2021-27205 was assigned. What next?

About the Author: Security Researcher Dhiraj Mishra (@mishradhiraj)

Original post at:

https://www.inputzero.io/2020/12/telegram-privacy-fails-again.html

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, privacy)

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Pierluigi Paganini
Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.





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