Telegram founder Pavel Durov marketed himself as a shining light, someone who did what he wanted, independent and brave. But that’s not how the world works. He needed multiple citizenships, server infrastructure from large corporations, investors and influential friends.
Dissidents, terrorists, cybercriminals and even the Russian military relied on the Telegram messenger service. If, in theory, someone could decrypt all data traffic through a back door, all of those users would be completely compromised.
Six years ago, Pavel Durov met President Emmanuel Macron for lunch in France. This fact was not publicly known until now. Sources told the WallStreetJournal that Telegram was offered a new home in France. The catch would have been greater cooperation. On Saturday, French authorities arrested Durov as part of an investigation.
The year before, French spies targeted Durov in a joint operation with the United Arab Emirates, during which his iPhone was hacked. This secret operation, codenamed “Purple Music,” was also not publicly known until now.
Why did Durov use an American iPhone in the first place? What other Western technology did he and his closest confidants and programmers use? Windows? Linux?
Telegram’s entire security stands and falls with the AES-256 encryption algorithm, which comes from the West. This means that the Russian military also relies on AES-256 via Telegram. Unless backdoors have been built in, a message encrypted in this way cannot be deciphered within a realistic time frame; not even with the most powerful supercomputers. If backdoors are included, i.e. several well-hidden weak points, decryption is possible.
It must be assumed that weak points had already been built into the German Enigma encryption machine with the help of classic espionage. This later made it easier for the codebreakers at Bletchley Park in Britain to make the Germans’ encrypted messages readable during World War II. The Bletchley story is now well known. But not the vulnerabilities that were most likely engineered into the machines. Similar circles were involved in the manipulation of the Hagelin machines from Switzerland.
French security officials were extremely concerned that the Islamic State was using Telegram to recruit activists and plan attacks. Telegran’s availability for chats, conversations and even video makes it easier for terrorists and increasingly expensive and burdensome for counterterrorism authorities. At some point, the math no longer adds up.
For years, Telegram ignored subpoenas and court orders from law enforcement agencies that piled up in a rarely checked email address belonging to the company, according to a person close to Durov.
Telegram says it now complies with the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which requires online companies to cooperate with authorities.
Why did Telegram choose the UAE as its headquarters?
France and the United Arab Emirates granted Durov citizenship in 2021, and the Gulf state invested more than $75 million in his platform. The UAE was long under the influence of the British Empire, which had extensive intelligence services.
The UAE supported military operations of the US and other coalition states in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan (2001) and Saddam Hussein in Baathist Iraq (2003), as well as operations in support of the global war on terror in the Horn of Africa at the Al Dhafra air base outside Abu Dhabi. The air base also supported allied operations during the 1991 Gulf War and Operation Northern Watch. The country had signed a military defense agreement with the US in 1994 and one with France in 1995. In January 2008, France and the UAE signed an agreement allowing France to establish a permanent military base in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In March 2011, the UAE participated in international military operations in Libya.
Mubadala Investment Company and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners recently announced that they have invested $150 million in the mobile messaging application Telegram.
How can any Telegram user be sure that the service is secure when the boss and who knows how many people are in the UAE? Programming work can theoretically be done anywhere in the world by various people, but that also makes them vulnerable to intelligence agencies.
Durov commuted between the Middle East, Europe and America, collecting passports. In addition to France and the United Arab Emirates, Durov holds citizenship of St. Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean island nation. He eventually founded Telegram in the United Arab Emirates. The French passport allowed him to move freely around Europe, including on a bike trip to Normandy last year, according to his social media posts.
He has traveled to the United States several times, the entrepreneur told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson this year, adding that he is always greeted at the airport and elsewhere by FBI agents who try to elicit his cooperation.
A former French intelligence official at the General Directorate of Internal Security said compromising Telegram was a long-term effort by French intelligence services, but did not comment on the hacking operation against Durov.
A French law signed this year requires online platforms to cooperate with authorities in stamping out illegal content.
That law is mirrored in the EU’s Digital Services Act, which subjects “very large” online platforms to increased monitoring and enforcement. Telegram said this week that it is still below the threshold of 45 million active monthly users in the bloc to be considered very large.
Telegram voice calls, like those of most internet telephony apps, are blocked in the United Arab Emirates because encrypted calls are considered a security risk.
Nervous Russians
Russia’s military depends on Telegram because of a lack of better technology.
Baza, a Telegram channel linked to Russia’s security apparatus, reported that the Defense Ministry, prominent businessmen and officials from several security agencies were immediately ordered to delete work-related messages from the app.
Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that asking users to delete their sensitive messages on the app, including those from the editor of Russian state news channel RT, was “completely stupid.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed without evidence that “Durov was obviously taken away on someone’s advice and is being threatened with terrible punishments, apparently in the hope of somehow gaining access to encryption codes.”
A popular pro-Russian war blogger with more than 780,000 followers shared a post saying that France’s decision to arrest Durov “basically means that the communications chief of the Russian armed forces has been arrested.”
Blogger Alexei Sukonkin said Telegram is “the foundation of military communications,” although Russian officials publicly deny this claim.
If Western intelligence agencies get a backdoor into Telegram, “it would be an absolute disaster” for Russia.
The Ukrainian army has successfully relied on Delta, a battlespace management system developed by the Ukrainians in cooperation with NATO. Delta has received high praise from the Western military bloc.
Dmitry Medvedev said it was now “vital” that the Russian army develop a new military messenger, as “it is difficult to predict how long Telegram will remain as we know it” or “will remain at all.”
Bulgarian journalist Hristo Grozev, who has investigated Russian intelligence services and was close to Navalny, said Russia’s domestic intelligence agency FSB and military intelligence agency GRU had used Telegram to recruit saboteurs and plan “terrorist attacks.”
