Telegram Messenger infrastructure is served by companies that cooperate with Russian special services that can be used to track users.
About him writes the publication “An important story”, which conducted its own investigation of the functioning of the messenger.
The investigation arrives that in 2018, Telegram Corp, which belongs to Pavel Durov, transferred the rights and obligations for the global control infrastructure of the network (GNM), registered in Antigua and Barbuda.
The agreement on behalf of GNM was signed by Vladimir Vedanevs, who simultaneously held the post of financial director of Telegram.
GNM has provided Telegram with more than 10,000 IP addresses, and, according to him, Vediaev, according to him, is responsible for the installation and maintenance of the messenger infrastructure. Many GNM IP addresses previously belonged to the St. Petersburg company Globalnet, which is associated with the Kremlin and FSB. Her beneficiary was also Vedaev, but in 2024 he rewrote the company to his relatives.
In general, half of GNM employees is located in Russia, where the company has an office in St. Petersburg.
Another St. Petersburg company, ElectronTelecom, provided Telegram 5000 IP address. This company is a FSB contractor and provides installation and maintenance of safe communication systems for special operations.
In 2022, Globalnet also installed user traffic monitoring systems at Roskomnadzor.
This indicates that Telegram Infrastructure collaborates with Russian special services that have access to user data.
Unlike WhatsApp and Signal Messengers, default telegram chats have no encryption at the end. Messages are deciphered and stored on servers that have access to infrastructure companies.
Each Telegram message contains a unique device identifier (auth_key_id), which allows us to identify the user’s device and choose the decryption key.
Accordingly, if FSB has access to Telegram Traffic, it can be used for global user tracking, including determining their location and contacts.
We know that in Russia there is a variety (the system by which Russian special services monitor phone calls and Internet active users. Each Internet provider must install it in its infrastructure. Thus, Russian intelligence services have access to traffic, which can track traffic, store it, and then analyze, Wozniak explains.
This applies not only to Russia, but also to the occupied territories of Ukraine. The messenger protocol allows Russian special services to detect devices in all places where Russian security forces have access to the Internet infrastructure.
Due to the fact that Pavel Dyurov transferred the entire infrastructure of the messenger of one company, which is actually located in Russia, the data of other telegram users around the world are also in danger.
Telegram officially denies that its contractors have access to users or critically important infrastructure, and claims that there are no servers or employees of the Russian Federation.
Nevertheless, the investigation indicates that companies that serve telegram servers are closely related to FSB, and Durov himself repeatedly visited Russia after 2014, despite the statement of “exile”.
In particular, according to the FSB base leak, Durov made more than 50 trips to Russia from 2015 to 2021.
Cases of obtaining data with a telegram with Russian special services
In recent years, many evidence has been accumulated that Russian intelligence services have access to telegram users without physical access to their devices and without hacking.
In 2023, The Wired published the stories of several Russian activists who were persecuted for participating in the anti -Noar Protes and a discussion of resistance.
According to them, reports were read in “secret” chats, although the recipients did not open them. In one case, the police referred to her message sent to colleagues to Telegram shortly before the search.
The new case has become known recently. The project on the rights of the first president, which provides assistance to the accused in treason, said that the FSB received access to reports that the Russians were sent to the bots of Ukrainian telegram channels, including “Temporary Wind”, “Military Great” and others.
According to documents, special services of the Russian Federation controlled the correspondence of users with administrators of Ukrainian channels at least a year before the start of a criminal case.
This actually eliminates the possibility of access to the devices of the accused. And the fact that users lived in different regions of Russia indicates the likely monitoring of telegram bots and channels by the security forces when correcting all appeals by Russian citizens.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.