Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the early-morning hours of February 24, targeting several key cities with military strikes. After fleeing Russia, the brothers founded Telegram as a way to communicate outside the Kremlin's orbit. They now run it from Dubai, and Pavel Durov says it has more than 500 million monthly active users. Multiple pro-Kremlin media figures circulated the post's false claims, including prominent Russian journalist Vladimir Soloviev and the state-controlled Russian outlet RT, according to the DFR Lab's report. But because group chats and the channel features are not end-to-end encrypted, Galperin said user privacy is potentially under threat. Telegram does offer end-to-end encrypted communications through Secret Chats, but this is not the default setting. Standard conversations use the MTProto method, enabling server-client encryption but with them stored on the server for ease-of-access. This makes using Telegram across multiple devices simple, but also means that the regular Telegram chats you’re having with folks are not as secure as you may believe.
from hk