Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have long considered Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy. Now, based on findings published by the investigative journalism outlet ISt

Investigation by investigative journalism outlet IStories (EN version by OCCRP) shows that Telegram uses a single, FSB-linked company as their infrastructure provider globally.

Telegram’s MTProto protocol also requires a cleartext identifier to be prepended to all client-server messages.

Combined, these two choices by Telegram make it into a surveillance tool.

I am quoted in the IStories story. I also did packet captures, and I dive into the nitty-gritty technical details on my blog.

Packet captures and MTProto deobfuscation library I wrote linked therein so that others can retrace my steps and check my work.

  • Snot FlickermanEnglish
    12·
    8 days ago

    No questions. Hats off. Thank you for your service, it always seemed like a honeypot to me. Nice to see some evidence other than my gut feeling.