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MTProto Mobile Protocol
<!DOCTYPE html> <html class=""> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>MTProto Mobile Protocol</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <meta property="description" content="Please feel free to check out our FAQ for the Technically Inclined. Client developers are required to comply with the Security…"> <meta property="og:title" content="MTProto Mobile Protocol"> <meta property="og:image" content="58401119934796773c"> <meta property="og:description" content="Please feel free to check out our FAQ for the Technically Inclined. Client developers are required to comply with the Security…"> <link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="/img/website_icon.svg?4"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/img/apple-touch-icon.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="/img/favicon-32x32.png"> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="/img/favicon-16x16.png"> <link rel="alternate icon" href="/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link href="/css/bootstrap.min.css?3" rel="stylesheet"> <link href="/css/telegram.css?241" rel="stylesheet" media="screen"> <style> </style> </head> <body class="preload"> <div class="dev_page_wrap"> <div class="dev_page_head navbar navbar-static-top navbar-tg"> <div class="navbar-inner"> <div class="container clearfix"> <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right hidden-xs"><li class="navbar-twitter"><a href="https://twitter.com/telegram" target="_blank" data-track="Follow/Twitter" onclick="trackDlClick(this, event)"><i class="icon icon-twitter"></i><span> Twitter</span></a></li></ul> <ul class="nav navbar-nav"> <li><a href="//telegram.org/">Home</a></li> <li class="hidden-xs"><a href="//telegram.org/faq">FAQ</a></li> <li class="hidden-xs"><a href="//telegram.org/apps">Apps</a></li> <li class=""><a href="/api">API</a></li> <li class="active"><a href="/mtproto">Protocol</a></li> <li class=""><a href="/schema">Schema</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="container clearfix"> <div class="dev_page"> <div id="dev_page_content_wrap" class=" "> <div class="dev_page_bread_crumbs"></div> <h1 id="dev_page_title">MTProto Mobile Protocol</h1> <div id="dev_page_content"><!-- scroll_nav --> <blockquote> <p>Please feel free to check out our <a href="http://core.telegram.org/techfaq">FAQ for the Technically Inclined</a>. Client developers are required to comply with the <a href="/mtproto/security_guidelines">Security Guidelines</a>.</p> </blockquote> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#related-articles" id="related-articles" name="related-articles"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Related articles</h3> <p><div class="dev_page_nav_wrap"></p> <ul> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/description">Mobile Protocol: Detailed Description</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/auth_key">Creating an Authorization Key</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/samples-auth_key">Creating an Authorization Key: Example</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/service_messages">Mobile Protocol: Service Messages</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/service_messages_about_messages">Mobile Protocol: Service Messages about Messages</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/serialize">Binary Data Serialization</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/TL">TL Language</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/schema/mtproto">MTProto TL-schema</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/api/end-to-end">End-to-end encryption, Secret Chats</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/schema/end-to-end">End-to-end TL-schema</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="/mtproto/security_guidelines">Security Guidelines for Client Software Developers</a></p> </li> </ul> <p></div></p> <hr> <p>This page deals with the basic layer of MTProto encryption used for Cloud chats (server-client encryption). See also:</p> <ul> <li><a href="/api/end-to-end">Secret Chats, end-to-end-encryption</a></li> <li><a href="/api/end-to-end/voice-calls">End-to-end encrypted Voice Calls</a></li> </ul> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#general-description" id="general-description" name="general-description"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>General Description</h3> <p>The protocol is designed for access to a server API from applications running on mobile devices. It must be emphasized that a web browser is not such an application.</p> <p>The protocol is subdivided into three virtually independent components:</p> <ul> <li>High-level component (API query language): defines the method whereby API queries and responses are converted to binary <em>messages</em>.</li> <li>Cryptographic (authorization) layer: defines the method by which messages are encrypted prior to being transmitted through the transport protocol.</li> <li>Transport component: defines the method for the client and the server to transmit messages over some other existing network protocol (such as HTTP, HTTPS, WS (plain WebSockets), WSS (WebSockets over HTTPS), TCP, UDP).</li> </ul> <div><a href="/file/811140746/2/CzMyJPVnPo8.81605/c2310d6ede1a5e220f"> <img src="/file/811140746/2/CzMyJPVnPo8.81605/c2310d6ede1a5e220f" alt="MTProto 2.0, server-client encryption, cloud chats" class="dev_page_image" style="max-width: 600px;"> </a></div> <blockquote> <p>As of version 4.6, major Telegram clients are using <strong>MTProto 2.0</strong>, described in this article. MTProto v1.0 (<a href="/mtproto_v1">described here</a> for reference) is deprecated and is currently being phased out. </p> </blockquote> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#brief-component-summary" id="brief-component-summary" name="brief-component-summary"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Brief Component Summary</h3> <h4><a class="anchor" href="#high-level-component-rpc-query-language-api" id="high-level-component-rpc-query-language-api" name="high-level-component-rpc-query-language-api"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>High-Level Component (RPC Query Language/API)</h4> <p>From the standpoint of the high-level component, the client and the server exchange <em>messages</em> inside a <em>session</em>. The session is attached to the client device (the application, to be more exact) rather than a specific WebSocket/http/https/tcp connection. In addition, each session is attached to a <em>user key ID</em> by which authorization is actually accomplished.</p> <p>Several connections to a server may be open; messages may be sent in either direction through any of the connections (a response to a query is not necessarily returned through the same connection that carried the original query, although most often, that is the case; however, in no case can a message be returned through a connection belonging to a different session). When the UDP protocol is used, a response might be returned by a different IP address than the one to which the query had been sent.</p> <p>There are several types of messages:</p> <ul> <li>RPC calls (client to server): calls to API methods</li> <li>RPC responses (server to client): results of RPC calls</li> <li>Message received acknowledgment (or rather, notification of status of a set of messages)</li> <li>Message status query</li> <li><em>Multipart message</em> or <em>container</em> (a container that holds several messages; needed to send several RPC calls at once over an HTTP connection, for example; also, a container may support gzip).</li> </ul> <p>From the standpoint of lower level protocols, a message is a binary data stream aligned along a 4 or 16-byte boundary. The first several fields in the message are fixed and are used by the cryptographic/authorization system.</p> <p>Each message, either individual or inside a container, consists of a <em>message identifier</em> (64 bits, see below), a <em>message sequence number within a session</em> (32 bits), the <em>length</em> (of the message body in bytes; 32 bits), and a <em>body</em> (any size which is a multiple of 4 bytes). In addition, when a container or a single message is sent, an <em>internal header</em> is added at the top (see below), then the entire message is encrypted, and an <em>external header</em> is placed at the top of the message (a 64-bit <em>key identifier</em> and a 128-bit <em>message key</em>).</p> <p>A <em>message body</em> normally consists of a 32-bit <em>message type</em> followed by type-dependent <em>parameters</em>. In particular, each RPC function has a corresponding message type. For more detail, see <a href="/mtproto/serialize">Binary Data Serialization</a>, <a href="/mtproto/service_messages">Mobile Protocol: Service Messages</a>.</p> <p>All numbers are written as little endian. However, very large numbers (2048-bit or <code>pq</code>, <code>p</code>, <code>q</code> params) used in RSA and DH are written in the big endian format because that is how the OpenSSL library does it.</p> <h4><a class="anchor" href="#authorization-and-encryption" id="authorization-and-encryption" name="authorization-and-encryption"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Authorization and Encryption</h4> <p>Prior to a message (or a multipart message) being transmitted over a network using a transport protocol, it is encrypted in a certain way, and an <em>external header</em> is added at the top of the message which is: a 64-bit <em>key identifier</em> (that uniquely identifies an <em>authorization key</em> for the server as well as the <em>user</em>) and a 128-bit <em>message key</em>. A user key together with the message key defines an actual 256-bit key which is what encrypts the message using AES-256 encryption. Note that the initial part of the message to be encrypted contains variable data (session, message ID, sequence number, server salt) that obviously influences the message key (and thus the AES key and iv). The message key is defined as the 128 middle bits of the SHA256 of the message body (including session, message ID, etc.), including the padding bytes, prepended by 32 bytes taken from the authorization key. Multipart messages are encrypted as a single message.</p> <blockquote> <p>For a technical specification, see <a href="/mtproto/description">Mobile Protocol: Detailed Description</a></p> </blockquote> <p>The first thing a client application must do is <a href="/mtproto/auth_key">create an authorization key</a> which is normally generated when it is first run and almost never changes.</p> <p>To prevent attackers potentially intercepting encrypted messages from decrypting them <em>post factum</em> by somehow appropriating the authorization key (for example, by stealing a device – even though in that case one could also gain access to all the information cached on the device without decrypting anything), MTProto supports <a href="https://core.telegram.org/api/pfs">Perfect Forward Secrecy</a> in both <a href="https://core.telegram.org/api/pfs">cloud chats</a> and <a href="https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end/pfs">secret chats</a>.</p> <h4><a class="anchor" href="#time-synchronization" id="time-synchronization" name="time-synchronization"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Time Synchronization</h4> <p>If client time diverges widely from server time, a server may start ignoring client messages, or vice versa, because of an invalid message identifier (which is closely related to creation time). Under these circumstances, the server will send the client a special message containing the correct time and a certain 128-bit salt (either explicitly provided by the client in a special RPC synchronization request or equal to the key of the latest message received from the client during the current session). This message could be the first one in a container that includes other messages (if the time discrepancy is significant but does not as yet result in the client's messages being ignored).</p> <p>Having received such a message or a container holding it, the client first performs a time synchronization (in effect, simply storing the difference between the server's time and its own to be able to compute the “correct” time in the future) and then verifies the message identifiers for correctness.</p> <p>Where a correction has been neglected, the client will have to generate a new session to assure the monotonicity of message identifiers.</p> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#mtproto-transport" id="mtproto-transport" name="mtproto-transport"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>MTProto transport</h3> <p>Before being sent using the selected transport protocol, the payload has to be wrapped in a secondary protocol header, defined by the appropriate MTProto transport protocol. </p> <ul> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#abridged">Abridged</a></li> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#intermediate">Intermediate</a></li> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#padded-intermediate">Padded intermediate</a></li> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#full">Full</a></li> </ul> <p>The server recognizes these different protocols (and distinguishes them from HTTP, too) by the header. Additionally, the following transport features can be used: </p> <ul> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#quick-ack">Quick ack</a></li> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#transport-errors">Transport errors</a></li> <li><a href="mtproto/mtproto-transports#transport-obfuscation">Transport obfuscation</a></li> </ul> <p>Example implementations for these protocols can be seen in <a href="https://github.com/tdlib/td/blob/master/td/mtproto/TcpTransport.cpp">tdlib</a> and <a href="https://github.com/danog/MadelineProto/tree/v8/src/Stream/MTProtoTransport">MadelineProto</a>.</p> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#transport" id="transport" name="transport"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Transport</h3> <p>Enables the delivery of encrypted containers together with the external header (hereinafter, <em>Payload</em>) from client to server and back. Multiple transport protocols are defined:</p> <ul> <li><a href="/mtproto/transports#tcp">TCP</a></li> <li><a href="/mtproto/transports#websocket">WebSocket</a></li> <li><a href="/mtproto/transports#websocket-over-https">WebSocket over HTTPS</a></li> <li><a href="/mtproto/transports#http">HTTP</a></li> <li><a href="/mtproto/transports#https">HTTPS</a></li> <li>UDP</li> </ul> <p>(We shall examine only the first five types.)</p> <h3><a class="anchor" href="#recap" id="recap" name="recap"><i class="anchor-icon"></i></a>Recap</h3> <p>To recap, using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model#Layer_architecture">ISO/OSI stack as comparison</a>: </p> <ul> <li>Layer 7 (Application): <a href="#high-level-component-rpc-query-language-api">High-level RPC API</a></li> <li>Layer 6 (Presentation): <a href="/mtproto/TL">Type Language</a></li> <li>Layer 5 (Session): <a href="https://core.telegram.org/mtproto/description#session">MTProto session</a></li> <li>Layer 4 (Transport):<ul> <li>4.3: <a href="#mtproto-transport">MTProto transport protocol</a></li> <li>4.2: <a href="/mtproto/mtproto-transports#transport-obfuscation">MTProto obfuscation (optional)</a></li> <li>4.1: <a href="#transport">Transport protocol</a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Layer 3 (Network): IP</li> <li>Layer 2 (Data link): MAC/LLC</li> <li>Layer 1 (Physical): IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.11, etc...</li> </ul></div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="footer_wrap"> <div class="footer_columns_wrap footer_desktop"> <div class="footer_column footer_column_telegram"> <h5>Telegram</h5> <div class="footer_telegram_description"></div> Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed. </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/faq">About</a></h5> <ul> <li><a href="//telegram.org/faq">FAQ</a></li> <li><a href="//telegram.org/privacy">Privacy</a></li> <li><a href="//telegram.org/press">Press</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/apps#mobile-apps">Mobile Apps</a></h5> <ul> <li><a href="//telegram.org/dl/ios">iPhone/iPad</a></li> <li><a href="//telegram.org/android">Android</a></li> <li><a href="//telegram.org/dl/web">Mobile Web</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/apps#desktop-apps">Desktop Apps</a></h5> <ul> <li><a href="//desktop.telegram.org/">PC/Mac/Linux</a></li> <li><a href="//macos.telegram.org/">macOS</a></li> <li><a href="//telegram.org/dl/web">Web-browser</a></li> </ul> </div> <div class="footer_column footer_column_platform"> <h5><a href="/">Platform</a></h5> <ul> <li><a href="/api">API</a></li> <li><a href="//translations.telegram.org/">Translations</a></li> <li><a href="//instantview.telegram.org/">Instant View</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> <div class="footer_columns_wrap footer_mobile"> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/faq">About</a></h5> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/blog">Blog</a></h5> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/apps">Apps</a></h5> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="/">Platform</a></h5> </div> <div class="footer_column"> <h5><a href="//telegram.org/press">Press</a></h5> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script src="/js/main.js?47"></script> <script src="/js/jquery.min.js?1"></script> <script src="/js/bootstrap.min.js?1"></script> <script>window.initDevPageNav&&initDevPageNav(); backToTopInit("Go up"); removePreloadInit(); </script> </body> </html> <!-- page generated in 11.3ms -->