Are Telegram chats actually encrypted? | Protos
Authorities in France have arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram and Russia’s largest social network, VK. Last week, he was in Azerbaijan at the same time as Vladimir Putin. Around the world, hundreds of millions of Telegram users are suddenly questioning a fundamental promise of Pavel Durov: “All chats are secure.” As of May 2020, Telegram claimed that Durov was the sole financier of its messenger. The application boasts between 700 and 950 million monthly active users. Since 2017, he has repeatedly assured his fans, “Everything is secure.” However, many cybersecurity experts have questioned this characterization. Although Telegram’s end-to-end encrypted “Secret Chats” are widely regarded as a truly secure messenger between two devices, there are vulnerabilities in Telegram’s group and standard chats – dwarfing the popularity of Secret Chats by orders of magnitude. In Telegram, end-to-end encryption is optional . Creating a Secret Chat requires several extra steps and do...