Telegram Messenger

Main article: Instant Messenger (IM)

Telegram is a Russian free cross-platform messenger for smartphones and desktop computers. The software allows you to exchange text messages and media files of different formats.

Audience

2024: RuTerminal quote availability

SoftWell, a developer of banking software for trading, risk control and treasury, continues to develop the functionality of the RuTerminal trading platform. SoftWell announced this on February 6, 2024. All users of the platform have become available to receive current market data through the Telegram application. Read more here.

2023

Telegram audience in Russia grew by 31.5 million users in 2 years

By October 2023, Telegram's audience in Russia reached 82.3 million users, which is 31.5 million more than two years earlier. This is evidenced by Mediascope data published in December 2023.

44.2 million Russians use the messenger every day. Russia accounts for 27.2% of global Telegram traffic. Telegram ranks 2nd in the ranking of the most popular Android applications in Russia, and 4th in the App Store.

Maria Saikina, chief analyst at RAEK, says that in 2023 Telegram took 5th place among all online resources in terms of average daily coverage. The messenger is actively used both for text communication and for the consumption of media content, and it is the latter factor that most significantly affects the growth of traffic, the expert believes.

And "stories" as part of the media content certainly contributed to this growth, "Saikina added.

In July 2023, Telegram entered the top 3 services with the largest traffic volume in Russia for the first time, losing only VK and, YouTube the "representative" said. To sheetsBeeline According to him, Telegram traffic in the operator's network has been growing since the beginning of 2023 "with pronounced event bursts."

In July [2023], after the launch of stories (the format of "stories"), we recorded an increase in traffic, but whether it is connected with stories or with information consumption, it is impossible to say unequivocally. There was no explosive growth, "Bilaine told the publication.

According to Megafon, in July 2023, YouTube (19.3%), VKontakte (11.1%) and Telegram (8%) entered the top 3 applications in terms of traffic consumption. The operator has been recording Telegram's steady growth since the beginning of the year, a company spokesman added.^[1]

Telegram is used daily by more than 40% of the Russian population

In March 2023, Telegram ranked fifth among Russian Internet resources in terms of daily audience. More than 40% of the population uses it daily, more than 60% at least once a month. This is stated in a study by Mediascope, which was published in May 2023.

According to experts, during 2022 Telegram constantly increased the volume of the audience. A sharp increase in the audience and time spent on the consumption of the site fell on March 2022 under the influence of two events at the same time - the start of a military special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine and the blocking of social networks banned in Russia. Another step in the increase occurred in September 2022 when the partial mobilization was announced. The increase occurred in all classroom groups, more noticeably - in the middle and older in age, due to which the platform for the year from the youth itself became universal and similar to other main social networks and instant messengers.

Telegram combines the functions of a messenger and a social network. As of March 2023, about 70% of Telegram users read any channels, not just exchange messages. Almost a quarter of people under the age of 25 use only Telegram and do not use Whatsapp (owned by Meta, which is recognized as an extremist in Russia; its activities are prohibited). Reading channels for young people accounts for a little more than 10% of the use of the service. Middle-aged and older people spend almost half of their time on Telegram reading channels, preferring Whatsapp as the main messenger.

According to the results of the first quarter of 2023, Telegram took the sixth position in the top of the most visited sites on a daily basis in Russia. On average, users spend 39 minutes a day on Telegram, the messenger accounted for 6% of Internet consumption in the Russian Federation, the study says.^[2]

Telegram for the first time bypassed YouTube in terms of daily audience in Russia

The daily Russian audience of the messenger in March 2023 amounted to 50.9 million people, video hosting - 50.7 million. The growth of Telegram's daily audience since January 2022 was plus 104%.

2021: Leader in mobile traffic in most regions of Russia

In 2021, Telegram became the fastest growing messenger in: Russia over the year, the volume mobile internet traffic in the service more than doubled. Specialists came to such conclusions MegaFon on the basis big data of analysis and reported this on December 22, 2021. More. here

2019

At the beginning of 2019, most Telegram users live in Iran, Malaysia and Uzbekistan.

2018: Daily and Monthly Audience

2016: App audience - 100 million users

Telegram reached 100 million users per month in February 2016^[3].

Data encryption

Main article: Encryption in Telegram

The only difference between the messenger and other analogues is the desire to resist the Russian security services by refusing to provide encryption keys to access user correspondence.

2024

Telegram developers error for Windows allowed Python programs to be executed

Details of a dangerous vulnerability in the Telegram Windows client, which allowed executing programs on, have become known. Python The vulnerability provided the ability to form a Python extension for Telegram so that when you click on it, a program with the.pyzw extension in runs. operating system Windows However, for such an attack to work, you need the Python interpreter to be installed and correctly configured in Windows itself.

According to information security specialist Hieu Min Ngo, the error that led to the vulnerability is due to the fact that the Telegram developers incorrectly indicated the extension for the Python module in the form of a zip archive -.pywz. The logic of executing files with unknown extensions is simple for Telegram for Windows - they are transferred to the operating system, which itself determines the program for processing the corresponding file. As a result, files with the.pyzw extension instead of executing in the context of Telegram itself as extension modules were sent to the operating system, which launched the Python interpreter on behalf of Telegram.

Update in Telegram, where the bug has been fixed

The first error warnings were accompanied by a video with the launch of the calculator when you click on an unknown file in the Telegram interface and panic recommendations for disabling the automatic download of media files. These messages were so vague that experts perceived them as fake and discussed the details for a long time. For example, the Telegram Security Team responded to user requests as follows:

{{quote 'Good afternoon. We cannot confirm the existence of this vulnerability. The authors of the find could not provide any information that would allow reproducing such behavior. The video recording referred to in the channels is probably fabricated.

Telegram Team}}

For the exploit, vulnerabilities were even offered 10 thousand euros.

However, in a week, the world information security community figured out the reason for the problems that arose, and Telegram released an update, where the extension of executable zip archives using Python was indicated correctly. Now such programs are executed as components of the extension of Telegram itself with all the necessary control rules, and they are not transferred to the operating system for processing.

Analysts of the Russian CIA department were banned from using Telegram

At the end of January 2024, information appeared that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) banned employees of its analytical department specializing in Russia from using the Telegram messenger on personal computers. At the same time, analysts of the department are showing interest in this cross-platform instant messaging system, since it is used by many Russian military bloggers. Read more here.

In Russia, a scheme for tax evasion through Telegram bots has been identified. Damage to the budget estimated at 9 billion rubles

In Russia, a scheme for tax evasion through Telegram has been identified. It became known at the end of January 2024.

According to RBC, citing sources in law enforcement agencies and the tax service, a platform for the sale of one-day firms and fictitious VAT accrual has been identified in the Central Federal District (Central Federal District). about the investigation, services for the so-called "paper" VAT were distributed by Telegram bots. One of the interlocutors of the publication estimated the damage from the work of the site at 9 billion rubles.

Searches at ten addresses in Moscow and the Moscow region were confirmed by the publication in the Federal Tax Service. The service noted that all participants in the scheme have been identified - both the performers and their clients. Among those using the tax evasion scheme were companies that received funding from the budget, one of the sources said.

Searches in this case, in particular, are carried out in the offices of individual entrepreneur Tatyana Andreychuk, her husband Yuri Andreychuk and at the addresses of the place of residence of both, says one of the sources, noting that employees of the "K" department of the economic security service of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Tax Service.

VAT is the largest source of revenue for the Russian budget, but there is a "paper" VAT scheme that allows companies to evade paying this tax. When using this scheme, the company includes fictitious transactions with one-day firms in the relationship chain, which increases the "input" VAT and reduces the amount of tax payable.

The head of the Federal Tax Service (FTS) Daniil Egorov told RBC that by the beginning of January 2024, taxpayers rarely "themselves they construct a VAT scheme by craft method, "special shadow platforms are engaged in illegal tax reimbursement activities^[4]

2023

Moscow court sentenced Telegram channel administrator to 14 years in prison for treason

On December 27, 2023, the Second Western District Military Court in Moscow sentenced Felix Yeliseyev, administrator of two Telegram channels (included in the list of terrorists and extremists of Rosfinmonitoring), to 14 years in prison on charges of treason and public justification of terrorism. He will serve his sentence in a maximum security penal colony. The convict was fined 100 thousand rubles. Read more here.

Integration with RuTerminal platform

Company SoftWell integrated trading platform RuTerminal messenger with Telegram. The company announced this on December 25, 2023. This will allow terminal users to receive notifications about messages and calls from counterparties through the messenger at any time. Such an opportunity will be most convenient for those traders who cannot always be at, but computer do not want to miss important deals. Access to the bot will be provided on request - banks platform users. More. here

Russia has developed software to determine the owners of Telegram channels

Russia has developed software to determine the owners of Telegram channels. It was called "Comrade Major." This is a product of T.Hunter. Read more here.

Telegram has a tool that changes voices during calls

On December 11, 2023, the developers of the free voice change program Voicemod announced the release of VMgram fashion for the Telegram messenger. An artificial intelligence-based tool allows you to change your voice directly during calls or when recording voice messages. Read more here.

Fake copies of Telegram with a built-in virus hit the official Google and Samsung app stores. They are downloaded by users around the world

On August 30, 2023, Eset, a company specializing in information security issues, announced that fake Telegram and Signal applications with built-in spyware are distributed through the official Google Play and Samsung Galaxy Stores, as well as specialized websites. Dangerous programs were downloaded by thousands of users around the world. Read more here.

Ability to use the TON crypto wallet

All users of the Telegram messenger from November 2023 will be able to use the TON (Telegram Open Network) crypto wallet through the messenger settings. This was announced on September 18, 2023 by the press service of the State Duma deputy RFAnton Nemkin. Read more here.

Fraudsters fake telegram accounts of CEOs of the largest Russian companies

BI.ZONE has identified massive attacks on representatives of large Russian businesses and government organizations based on social engineering methods. Attackers contact employees of companies using fake Telegram accounts. Accounts contain F.I.O. and photos of top managers. BI.Zone announced this on September 18, 2023. Read more here.

Ministry of Digital Development of the Saratov region banned employees from using iPhone and Telegram

The Ministry of Digital Development and Communications of the Saratov Region has banned its employees from using the Telegram messenger and Apple devices for official purposes. This became known in mid-August 2023. Read more here.

Iraq blocked Telegram over national security concerns

On August 6, 2023, Iraq's Ministry of Communications blocked Telegram's instant messaging system. This is said to be for "national security reasons" and to preserve the integrity of personal data in the country. Read more here.

A scheme to deceive customers through photos of bank cards has appeared in Russia

A new Telegram fraud scheme has been recorded in Russia. Representatives of VTB shared information about this with TAdviser on July 19, 2023.

As experts found out, bank under various pretexts cybercriminals they hack into an account messenger in and ask acquaintances and loved ones of the user to transfer funds to their account in a third-party bank, using a fake design maps of large credit institutions.

Fraudsters implement this scheme in two stages. First, Telegram receives a message from a friend who asks to vote for a relative at the competition, purchase stock products, etc. When clicking on the link, the user is asked to indicate the phone number and confirm the vote with an SMS code. In fact, the client is on a phishing resource and enters a password that allows scammers to access his Telegram account.

Then, from the hacked account, fraudsters send messages with a story about the force majeure that occurred and a request to transfer money to their card number. In fact, her image is a fake created using a special Telegram bot. The card number is real, but the account is in another bank - as a rule, not so large and noticeable, so this does not cause suspicion among users.

This scheme allows scammers to buy time to withdraw stolen funds. A customer who has lost money first contacts a bank whose design was used by scammers, and only then realizes that he actually sent the money to another organization. At the same time, fraudsters manage to cash out the funds received and use them for their own purposes.

"The activity of fraudsters in Telegram has intensified in recent weeks, we receive customer messages about attempts to hack their accounts, which are subsequently used in such schemes. The innovation was a bot that allows you to fake an image of a card and send customers "on a false trail," "said Nikita Chugunov, Senior Vice President of VTB, Head of the Digital Business Department.

According to him, earlier these were isolated cases, fraudsters changed the name and substituted the design of the card of the necessary bank in manual mode using graphic editors. Now the attackers have automated the process using a Telegram bot and are making fakes many times faster. The use of such technology in the hands of fraudsters, according to the top manager, can become widespread.

"In order not to fall victim to such schemes, we ask our users to carefully check the messages that even your friend or relative may send. Remember that his account can already be hacked, so at the slightest doubt, it is better to check this information with him personally and in alternative channels - for example, with a simple phone call. To restore access to your account, a person always needs the time that scammers use for their criminal purposes. It is important to know this and not give them a chance to catch you on this trick, "warns Nikita Chugunov.

To protect your account, experts advise setting up two-step authentication in the "Privacy" section and setting a cloud password, which will be requested when logging in from a new device in addition to SMS code.

If the Telegram account is still hacked, do not panic. You must complete all active sessions first. To do this, select the "Privacy" item, then in the "Devices" menu click "End all other sessions" and change the password. You can also write on other social networks or instant messengers that the account was hacked so that subscribers would not fall for the tricks of scammers. To control the access of third parties to the Telegram account, it is necessary to periodically check the application settings in the messenger.

The number of phishing data theft schemes through Telegram in Russia has grown 67 times

The number of phishing data theft schemes through Telegram in Russia increased 67 times over the year - from 7 in May 2022 to 470 a year later. This was announced at the end of May 2023 by RTK-Solar.

According to the expert "RTK-Solar" Alexander Vurasko, a powerful wave of attacks on Telegram users does not stop from the fall of 2022. Scammers most often use social phishing resources to steal access to an account. Since the beginning of 2023, experts have recorded fake sites that offered to vote at the children's drawing competition, sign a petition, donate money for the treatment of a child, receive social benefits, etc.

In another scenario, a fraudster under the guise of an advertising manager of a large company writes to the Telegram channel administrator about the desire to regularly post ads in the community. To get paid for these services, they offer to register in the "partner network," but after entering data on a phishing site, the administrator loses access to the account and/or channel, Asya Shabalina, digital director of the iTrend communication agency, described the scheme.

Sometimes the channel administrator is offered to authenticate in resources that simulate the TGStat and Telemetr analytics services, and as a result, his login and password fall into the hands of criminals, added Vadim Shelest, a leading MTS Red expert.

According to Vurasko, blocking a phishing resource that steals Telegram user accounts takes from 4 to 24 hours. According to BI.ZONE estimates, from January to May 2023, almost 4,000 phishing domains were identified.

Andrei Arsentiev, head of analytics and special projects at InfoWatch Group, told the publication that the number of Russian-speaking Telegram users in 2022 doubled to 75 million people, which led to a trend towards an increase in phishing attacks.^[5]

Telegram overtook WhatsApp for the first time in terms of traffic in Russia

Telegram for the first time overtook WhatsApp (owned by Meta, recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) in terms of traffic in Russia. This happened in 2022, Vedomosti writes on January 23, 2023, citing data from the largest Russian mobile operators.

Thus, the representative of MTS told the publication that the share of Telegram at the end of 2022 amounted to about 80% in the total volume of user traffic of instant messengers, and in terms of user activity it bypasses WhatsApp. The company clarified that WhatsApp is ahead of other messengers in terms of the number of users.

According to MegaFon, Telegram has maintained its leadership position in traffic since March 2022. In the last two weeks of December of the same year, its share in the total volume of traffic in instant messengers reached 61%, WhatsApp - 28%. VimpelCom reported that the volume of Telegram traffic in 2022 exceeded WhatsApp.

Tele2 reported that Telegram accounts for about 75% of all messenger traffic. On WhatsApp - 19%. At the same time, Telegram has not yet overtaken WhatsApp in terms of the number of users and is in second place, the operator added.

According to Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications, Telegram will overtake WhatsApp in terms of the number of users in the country very soon.

Since WhatsApp has almost the entire mobile audience in Russia. Even if they catch up to overtake, the number of WhatsApp users should decline, "Ghazaryan said.

From the Mediascope statistics provided to the publication, it follows that by the beginning of January, compared to last year, the Telegram audience increased from 25.5 to 48.8 million users per day. Thus, by January 2023, the Telegram audience in Russia amounted to about 40% of all Internet users in the country, Vedomosti notes^[6]

2022

Increase in the average cost of an advertising post in Russian news Telegram channels by 341%

The average cost of advertising in Telegram news channels in Russia in 2022 amounted to 55,940 rubles, which is 341% more than a year earlier, when the figure was measured at 12,680 rubles. This is evidenced by data from the BeSeed native advertising platform, which was released at the end of May 2023.

As Vedomosti writes with reference to BeSeed materials, in all thematic categories in total, the cost of advertising in Telegram, in 2022, increased by an average of 76.5% and reached 29,050 rubles. The study analyzed advertising prices for about 350 Telegram channels - from small blogs (less than 10,000 subscribers) to large ones (more than 500,000), a BeSeed representative told the publication.

According to the study, a multiple increase in advertising prices was recorded in Telegram channels about real estate - by 143% to 30,775 rubles, health - by 138% to 11,978 rubles, job search - by 124% to 22,075 rubles and about urban communities - by 102% to 17,608 rubles). However, news channels showed "the most abnormal dynamics," BeSeed points out.

According to Mediascope, cited by the publication, news channels make up 43% of the top 30 Telegram channels in terms of average daily coverage among Russians over 12 years old.

Among channels with an audience of 500 thousand subscribers in the news segment, the largest increase in the price of an advertising post, according to BeSeed analysts, was shown by Moskvach (665,580 subscribers) and Baza (911 800 subscribers). Moskvach's price increased by 72.8% - to about 198 thousand rubles, Baza's - by 66.7% to 180 thousand rubles.

Mash (1.8 million subscribers) in 2022, the cost of advertising increased by 71%, to about 600 thousand rubles, said Arthur Karapetyan, head of the Social Mind digital agency.^[7]

Telegram channels of Russians began to "steal" in a new way. Scheme

At the end of December 2022, it became known about the new scheme of "hijacking" Telegram accounts in Russia. It's about using fake contests.

According to Kaspersky Lab, someone from the user's contact list asks him to take part in some online voting and sends a link to the site. To count votes, you need to enter your phone number and verification code. If a user does this, their account is likely to be stolen, experts warn.

In fact, there is no competition, and the messages are written not by a friend from the contact list, but by an attacker who previously stole his account , "Kaspersky Lab said in a statement.

The user is convinced to take the necessary actions by talking about the child participating in the competition, or write "vote for me," without going into details.

The polling site looks simple. On the first page - the message "Come in and vote for the contestants," the field for entering the phone, the proposal to authenticate for counting the voice and the field for entering the confirmation code, which was allegedly sent to the user in Telegram.

After the user specifies the phone number, the attackers log into his account using special scripts from the new device. When disabled two-factor authentications , the confirmation code comes to the device where the account is already activated. If a user enters a code on a phishing page, his account becomes the property of cybercriminals.

"Hijackers" will have the right to manage the victim's account and can link it to another phone, experts say. Fraudsters can also use the account to send fraudulent links through the victim's account, can export her contact list, personal data, correspondence history, files.^[8]

The Ministry of Digital Development warned of a massive "theft" of accounts in Telegram

In mid-December 2022, Ministry of Digital Development warned of a massive "theft" of Telegram accounts and talked about the scheme used by scammers:

• the user receives a message from someone from the contact list that he sent the user a gift - a subscription to Telegram Premium;
• the user clicks on the button, and at that moment he receives an authorization code. The gift screen says that this code must be entered to activate the premium subscription;
• the user enters this code, and his account is immediately opened from the attacker on the computer;
• the new account immediately sends such messages throughout the contact list and deletes them from the sent list. At the same time, the message remains with the recipients.

As noted in the Ministry of Digital Development, when stealing an account, it is not clear whether all the correspondence is downloaded and what other actions are taking place. To protect yourself from account theft, turn on two-factor authentication in the messenger and do not follow suspicious links, the department advises.

How to install two-factor authentication in Telegram: 1. Go to Settings → Privacy. 2. Select the section Two-step authentication and enable it. 3. Enter a password that will additionally protect your account. 4. Click Finish.

The Ministry of Digital Development also gives recommendations to those who have already clicked on the malicious link and sent the code: you need to go to Settings → Active sessions and click the End all other sessions link, and then enable two-factor authentication.

On June 19, 2022, a Premium subscription became available in the Telegram messenger. According to the developers, this option "will continue to develop and improve Telegram so that it remains free, independent and user-oriented."^[9]

Russia has learned to de-anonymize channel administrators in Telegram

In November 2022, it became known that law enforcement agencies in Russia have learned to de-anonymize channel administrators on Telegram. The corresponding methodological manual for employees of the Investigative Committee was developed at the Moscow Academy of the Investigative Committee.

The Investigative Committee has developed a number of methods that allow you to receive significant information from various messengers. These methods are intended exclusively for investigators and criminologists, the press service of the RF IC told Vedomosti, adding that messengers can be used by attackers to commit crimes.

According to the newspaper's sources, the methodology explains how to find the owner of an anonymous Telegram channel if there is no information about it in the description or a chatbot, email or Jabber of any of the administrators is left for feedback.

The manual also describes the methodology for collecting and analyzing data in the public domain. For example, experts look at the history of the channel, archival messages and try to calculate grids, that is, a number of communities created by one group of people to promote materials. And in one of the abandoned communities, the username of the owner can be found - and then the entire group of administrators is found along the chain.

Many attackers use Telegram because of the myth about the anonymity of users and channel administrators. For the same reason, a lot of insider information and compromising evidence on famous people and companies began to appear in the messenger.

Businessmen and politicians who have published registered articles with the possibility of paid removal are rare, but they are ready to pay a lot, "said Yevgeny Antipov, creator of Eye of God (a Russian platform specializing in providing information security solutions and services[10]

Telegram recorded the growth of the market for criminal cyber services

Positive Technologies specialists analyzed publications on cybercriminal topics in Telegram channels and chats. The study showed that most of the messages in the messenger are devoted to compromising user data, including buying and selling them. Experts recorded a record number of messages on hacker topics in the second quarter of 2022. This was announced by Positive Technologies on October 11, 2022. Read more here.

Sberbank asked employees to remove Telegram from work computers

At the end of August 2022, it became known that Sberbank employees were being asked to remove the Telegram messenger from their work computers. Instead, the bank proposes to use the Sberbank corporate messenger. Read more here.

Start selected links

On August 31, 2022, it became known that messenger Telegram it had launched support for links such as username.t.me. This is part of the big changes announced. Pavel Durov

Now each user will be able to use public links like tginfo.t.me (works in the messenger) or cossaru.t.me.

The fundamental difference from links of the form t.me/username is only that the address of the personal profile, group or open channel is located at the beginning of the short link.

Selected links such as cossaru.t.me already work in all browsers.^[11]

A service has been launched in Russia that finds Telegram users by IP address

In mid-August 2022, it became known about the creation of a service in Russia that finds Telegram users by IP address. This is a joint project of Internet Search and T.Hunter. More details here

Beta version of the ability to partially or completely block voice messages in the Android app

The Telegram messenger has the ability to partially or completely block voice messages. So far, the innovation is available only in the beta version of the Telegram application for Android. This became known on July 15, 2022.

The timing of this function in the beta version of the Telegram iOS application has not been set. There is also no data when developers will open access to it to ordinary users.

Telegram has integrated a fairly flexible system for configuring voice message blocking. You can allow all interlocutors or those who are on the contact list to send them. The messenger also allows you to create a personal "black list." For example, if one of the interlocutors turned the entire chat into a collection of voice messages, you can deprive him of such an opportunity in two clicks.

You can also create a "white list." To do this, it is enough to prohibit sending voice messages for all but selected users.

Not all Telegram users will be able to appreciate all the advantages of freedom from voice messages. The right to use this function costs 300 rubles. per month.

In this amount, the Telegram developers estimate the monthly subscription to the premium capabilities of the messenger, although at first they stated that they would never take money from users.

Voice messages themselves appeared in instant messengers relatively recently, much later than audio and video calls. This method of communication is very convenient for the sender, since it eliminates the need to type on a virtual keyboard. This allows you to talk messages, for example, while driving, so as not to be distracted from the road.

The recipient, on the contrary, can experience a lot of inconvenience when interacting with voice messages. Listening to them is not always possible - they can come, for example, during a lecture or at the height of the working day. In addition, not everyone uses headphones, but few people want others to hear the contents of such a message^[12].

Launch a paid subscription

On June 19, 2022, the Telegram team announced the launch of a paid subscription - Telegram Premium. With its help, messenger users will be able to support the further development of Telegram and access additional functions. In turn, this will allow developers to add all the resource-intensive functions that users asked for and save free access to the messenger.

As reported, after registering a Telegram Premium subscription, almost all limits in the application are doubled. Subscribers will be able to download files up to 4 GB, download files at maximum speed, send unique stickers  and reactions, use additional management tools chats - and will receive many other features.

At the same time , all existing functions remain free for everyone. Moreover, even those who do not have Telegram Premium will be able to get some of the features available to subscription holders. For example, all users can download very large files and view stickers sent by subscribers, as well as join previously added reactions to a message, increasing the counter next to them. Below are details about the added capabilities of Telegram.

Download files up to 4 GB into the application

All users have access to free download of photos, videos and other files up to 2 GB each and unlimited space cloudy storage on Telegram. With the Telegram Premium subscription, the maximum size of the downloaded file will increase to 4 GB - which is 4 hours of video with a resolution of 1080p or 18 days of audio in proper quality.  All Telegram users will be able to download larger files, regardless of the availability of a subscription.

Faster download

Subscribers can download photos, videos and documents at maximum speed without restrictions. The download speed of any files now depends only on the Internet connection.

Half as many restrictions

For users with a subscription, almost all limits in the application have been doubled. For June 2022 , up to 1000 channel subscriptions can be issued with Telegram Premium; create up to 20 folders, each of which will fit up to 200 chats; connect the fourth account in the application; pin   down up to 10 chats on the main list and keep up to 10 selected stickers.

 In the "About yourself" section , you can leave a longer description, as well as use any links. In addition, the subscription allows you to add a longer caption to a photo or video. And when there are 400 selected GIF animations in stock. Finally, Telegram Premium owners can simultaneously use up to 20 short public links like t.me for their groups and channels.

Voice Message Recognition

If the user has no time (or does not want to) listen to a voice message, you can simply click on the decryption button next to him to get a text version. By evaluating the decryption, you can optimize the quality of recognition.

Stickers

Dozens of stickers have become even more spectacular thanks to full-screen animations. By sending such stickers, subscribers can express their emotions in any chat: animation is played for all users. Telegram artists will replenish the collection monthly. It is easy to find exclusive stickers from the user's sets: they are all grouped on the sticker panel separately, under "Recent."

Reactions

Telegram Premium owners have more ways to respond to messages: more than 10 additional emoji are available to them.

More Chat Management

Telegram Premium opens access to updated tools to keep order in the list of chats. Now you can make  any folder a default folder - so the application will always open, for example, in the "Work" or "Unread" folder instead of "All chats." To set the default folder, you need to hold down the name of any folder in the chat list > select "Change Order" > and move it to the first place in the list. In addition, by selecting the appropriate setting in the "Privacy" section, subscribers will be able to automatically put chats in the archive  and turn off notifications about them - so that even the longest lists of chats always remain in order.

Always active video avatars

 Subscribers' video avatars will be played to all users in all sections of the application, including chat lists  and chats themselves. Looping animation is a way to demonstrate an image or make a creative statement.

Subscriber icon

      A special icon will be displayed next to the name of each subscriber in the chat list, top chat panel and group member list , symbolizing the contribution to Telegram support and membership in the club of privileged users who are the first to access exclusive functions.

Application icons

A set of special icons for the Telegram application has been created on the main screen of the phone. You can choose the one that best reflects preferences or fits the wallpaper color. The set for subscribers includes a star - the Telegram Premium symbol, the night sky and a jet paper plane.

Disabling ads

In some countries, messages may appear in public channels with a large number of subscribers, which advertisers post through the official Telegram platform. These minimalist ads help Telegram cover running costs while maintaining complete user privacy. For Telegram Premium subscription holders, they will be hidden.

The contribution of subscribers helps not only to pay additional costs associated with the provision of Premium functions, but also makes it possible for everyone to use Telegram for free.

Updated capabilities for all users

In the future, other features will be available to Telegram Premium subscription holders. However, the updated features will continue to open up to all users. This update is no exception: users are waiting for applications for joining public groups, an animated screen for downloading files from third-party applications, more informative descriptions of bots and much more.

Applications to join public groups

Public group administrators can now enable application entry mode - and check prospective members before allowing them to send messages to the chat. When the user first enters the group, he will see the "Apply" button. The submitted application will be included in a list that only administrators see.

Administrators can also write to future members in person to talk about the rules of the group, understand whether the group and the user are suitable for each other, or even conduct an exam on knowledge of the rules of cultural communication on the Internet. At the same time, Telegram notifies the user that the group administrator has contacted him.

Public group owners can enable application entry under Group information > Edit > Group type > Who can send messages? > Select Members Only > and include Membership Requests.

Confirmed Chat Account Icon

Public persons and organizations can confirm the authenticity of their group, channel or bot. In this case, a special icon appears next to the name, signaling to users that they are receiving information from a confirmed source. Now the icon is displayed not only in profiles, search results and chat list, but also at the top of the chat. Thanks to this, distinguishing genuine sources of information has become even easier. If the user already has confirmed accounts on at least two social networks, you can send an application for verification of your group, channel or bot.

Changes for bots

Telegram bots are able to conduct quizzes and tests, accept payments - and are even able to replace entire sites. Developers can now post a photo or video  in the "What can this bot do?" Section to clearly demonstrate the purpose or capabilities of their bot.

Bots added  to the attachment menu used to connect only to personal chats, and can now be modified to work in groups and channels.

The Bot API is a free platform available to everyone.

Updated preview of Android chats

In this update, the developers have added a more convenient preview of chats, like owners of devices on the iOS platform. Now in this mode you can view the entire chat by flipping through messages - without them being marked as read. In addition, buttons have appeared that allow you to disconnect notifications from chat, mark a chat as read, pin or delete it. To preview the chat, just hold down and hold the profile photo in the chat list.

Automatically save to the gallery on Android

The function of automatically saving images and videos to the gallery has appeared again - now with additional settings. You can enable or disable gallery saving separately for personal chats, groups, and channels.

Download from third-party applications on iOS

Telegram allows users to upload large photos, videos and other files up to 2 GB (or 4 GB), including directly from third-party applications.

When sending large files from other applications to Telegram for iOS , an animated download bar now appears.

Animated Avatar Designer in macOS App

Owners of macOS devices can now quickly create video avatars: you just need to choose the appropriate sticker or animated emoji and add a bright background with a gradient. This function is also available for profile video groups and channels, which means that you no longer have to waste time looking for a stock image for a thematic chat.

To design an animated video avatar, go to Settings or the chat page, choose Edit > Profile Photo > Sticker or Emoji.

Fast and stable application

This update generally includes more than 100 fixes and changes for mobile and computer versions of the application. Fixed errors, optimized the work of the messenger, improved some functions. As of June 2022, owners of the latest iPhone and iPad models will be able to use smoother animations (at 120 frames per second). Owners of Android devices will notice how the quality of audio and video has changed in voice and video messages, and will also be able to change the application icon on the home screen of the phone, clear the entire list of recent stickers at once and translate the recordings of other users in the "About" section and chat descriptions.

As the Telegram developers specified, the update is being released at different times for different platforms.

Secret transfer of user data to security officials

Messenger Telegram can secretly transmit to data law enforcement agencies. This became known on June 6, 2022. According to information the publication, the messenger fulfilled several requests for the provision of data sent to it by the Federal Criminal Police Department (Germany Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). All of them concerned suspects in the harsh treatment of children, as well as in. terrorism

According to the source of the publication, Telegram really refuses the overwhelming majority of requests for the transfer of user data by the authorities and government agencies. Still, some are still satisfied. Meanwhile, not a word was said about this on the messenger's website - a note was found in the FAQ section that Telegram did not transfer a single byte of information about users to third parties.

The privacy policy of the messenger also contains a clause on the transfer of data to authorities and government agencies. It says the service will only provide IP addresses and phone numbers of users to authorities if it is presented with evidence that a particular user is accused of terrorism.

Meanwhile, Telegram's privacy policy was updated in August 2018. The messenger also promised to publish statistics of calls to it by law enforcement agencies every six months, but, as the Android Police portal writes, it has not yet fulfilled this promise.

At the time of publication of the material, Telegram representatives did not comment on the Der Spiegel^[13] article^[14].

Integration with Admin24 - Service Desk

The domestic system for accounting and processing Admin24-Service Desk applications can now be integrated with Telegram. This became known on June 6, 2022. Read more here.

Hong Kong considers blocking Telegram

Hong Kong is considering blocking Telegram. This became known on May 18, 2022.

For the first time, the Commissioner for Privacy of Personal Data is considering the possibility of applying rules to restrict access to the platform due to the allegedly large distribution of doxing in the messenger. Widespread doxxing - or online exposure of sensitive and personal data - has targeted both government officials and citizens.

Experts believe that blocking the messenger and similar decisions by local authorities will lead to complete state control over the Internet, as implemented in China. Hong Kong first began discussing restrictions on access to the global network in 2020, then the district passed a national security law. This event took place against the backdrop of the protests of 2019-2020.

In recent years, Hong Kong authorities have managed to suppress pro-democracy movements, but they have avoided Internet restrictions until recently. It is not known exactly how the administration will block sites and applications, since this will require the authorities to cooperate with local operators. It is likely that officials will completely restrict access to the Internet or force the removal of services from stores. Hong Kong has already taken measures to combat doxing in 2019, when protesters published information about police officers and officials. In September 2021, the administrative district tightened the data privacy law to prevent leaks. This event caused concern for large technology companies^[15]

Ability to create your own notifications and next-generation bots

On April 18, 2022, it became known that Telegram developers continue to change the service, making it convenient for users. The next update brought the ability to create your own sound notifications, as well as their flexible configuration, a redesigned menu for automatically deleting messages, tools for creating next-generation bots, etc.

One important addition is the ability to use any audio file as a notification sound. It is enough to select the appropriate audio file or voice message (up to 300 KB and up to 5 seconds) in the chat, add it to the list of notification sounds and assign it as a notification for any chats.

The user can set the sound for both an individual chat and for conversations of the same type (personal, channels, groups). In addition to this, the function of disabling notifications for any period appeared (previously this could be done for 1 hour, 8 hours or 2 days).

Even in Telegram, a redesigned menu for automatically deleting messages has appeared. This feature is available for any chat, so the user can make the conversation more confidential. The update simplifies the activation of this feature and allows you to more flexibly configure the timer for deleting messages.

Telegram already had a function of responding to messages with attaching part of the text of the original message. After the update, this feature works even when forwarding a response to other chats.

Bots in Telegram have existed since 2015 and during this time they managed to evolve significantly. The update will take them to the next level, as developers can now create a variety of JavaScript interfaces. Simply put, Telegram bots will actually become a replacement for websites. In addition, configuring bot administrators for groups and channels has become easier: you can do this without leaving the bot profile.

As is often the case, the Telegram update will bring with it other animated emojis. The iOS app has improved its message translation function, which has received support for additional languages. Telegram for Android has the ability to change the size of the window when using the picture-in-picture function. The animation also changed when changing the phone number in the application.^[16]

Start testing webbots

Telegram has begun testing webbots. This became known on March 31, 2022.

Despite the general principle of working with inline bots, they have a number of differences:

• Clicking on the button opens a third-party site inside Telegram.
• The site receives the main colors of the installed theme and can adapt its appearance to the application.
• The web bot can be pinned to the paper clip menu. By clicking on the bot, Telegram transmits to the site information about an open dialogue/chat and the like.
• Avatars are transmitted by direct links to images, which makes them easy to embed into the site.
• The site can transmit data to the bot up to 4096 bytes: inline buttons have such a limit of 64 bytes.
• The web bot can send messages of any type (with any attachment available for inline) on behalf of the user with the postscript "via @ bot."
• Bot developers will have to develop APIs for communicating between the bot and the site on their own^[17].

Telegram will not be closed

While Telegram is politically neutral, they will not touch it. This became known on March 13, 2022 from the words of Oleg Matveychev, deputy chairman of the committee on information policy, information technology and communications.

The founder of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov found a compromise with the FSB, and the platform will not be blocked after other social networks.

The parties managed to agree that people's lives are important, because terrorists are talking through Telegram.

Telegram has installed equipment to track dangerous subjects, and responds to requests as part of operational measures.

The State Duma deputy stressed that Telegram "is just a platform with various bloggers." It has no censorship or manipulation of information like Facebook and Instagram. Of course, everything will change if Telegram allows the publication of calls for the murder of Russians.

Earlier, Pavel Durov urged users from Russia and Ukraine to doubt any data that is being distributed in Telegram at this time. He is against Telegram being used as a tool to exacerbate conflicts and incite ethnic hatred.

On April 16, 2018, Roskomnadzor began blocking access to Telegram on the territory of the Russian Federation. However, almost all day the messenger continued to work without proxy servers and VPN services. In order to bypass the blocking, the Telegram team used a well-known scheme in which the blocking by IP addresses used by Roskomnadzor becomes useless.

In June 2020, Roskomnadzor unblocked Telegram. As Durov assured, there will be no changes in terms of the safety of personal data - the right to privacy and privacy of personal correspondence will remain the fundamental principle of Telegram in all countries^[18].

Swiss army bans military from using foreign messengers

The Swiss Armed Forces banned military personnel from using Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal messengers for information security reasons. This became known on January 7, 2022. Read more here.

2021

Signal founder calls Telegram security 'grossly exaggerated'

Durov accused Signal and other messengers of introducing backdoors on the orders of the US government. Read more here.

Disabling advertising on Telegram, but only for officials and government agencies

On November 24, 2021, it became known that Pavel Durov he promised to turn off advertizing Telegram on channels belonging to Russian officials and various. He to state agencies stated this after, for example, resources about began to be advertised on the FSIN channel. cryptocurrencies Earlier, Durov promised never to run advertising on Telegram, but he could not keep this word. The advertising platform started working messenger in test mode in November 2021.

Channels run by private companies or ordinary users were not among the "favorites." What prompted Durov to disconnect the channels of officials and government agencies from the advertising platform remains a mystery.

Durov's advertising platform in the version that was launched in November 2021 did not always distinguish "state" channels from ordinary ones. This manifested itself in the publication of advertising posts, either in no way, or very indirectly related to the topic of the channels.

The list of conditions for advertising in Telegram includes the mandatory availability of free 2 million euros (169 million rubles at the Central Bank exchange rate as of November 24, 2021). Exactly so much is the minimum budget for an advertising campaign in this messenger. The advertising post cannot be longer than 160 characters, and it will be published only on channels with an audience exceeding 1000 people^[19].

Integration with Talantix

• the Cloudy CRM recruitment system Talantix (part of the HR ecosystem) hh.ru has expanded the opportunities for HR teams to communicate with candidates within the service. Viber WhatsApp Telegram has been added to the existing integrations - from and. HeadHunter announced this on November 22, 2021. More. here

Announcement of the appearance of advertising messages in the messenger

On October 27, 2021, it became known that the creator of Telegram announced the appearance of official advertising messages. According to Pavel Durov, the messenger will not use personal data of users for advertising.

The first advertisements will be placed in open channels, to which at least 1,000 people are subscribed. According to Pavel Durov, most of Telegram's resources are spent on supporting such channels. Advertising revenue should recoup the costs so that users can continue to use the messenger for free.

According to the owners of Telegram, user privacy will not suffer. Advertisements will be added to the channels of the corresponding topic. At the same time, the messenger will not use personal data for more relevant setting up of impressions. It is planned that one announcement will contain no more than 160 characters. It will not place xrefs or images.

As of October 2021, the messenger is supported by its creator's own funds and investor money.^[20]

Blackmail of Russians using data collected by Telegram bots

In early March 2021, it became known that fraudsters Russia in began to use, personal data collected - Telegramboats to blackmail users.

As the head of the information security department of "SearchInform" Aleksei Drozd told Kommersant, one of the sources of information for fraudsters was the MailSearchBot service of LeakCheck, which was originally created to check the "leaked" passwords.

This bot for a fee invites the user to find their logins and passwords by phone number, which were in the public domain. Fraudsters use this data to blackmail users by email, explains Drozd.

Victims are invited to pay so that their data is not disclosed to friends, relatives or colleagues, he said.

In addition, criminals can also introduce themselves as the service security service and after changing the compromised password, they can eventually get full access to the account, said Igor Bederov, founder of Internet Search.

In his opinion, in 2021 the scale of such fraud will increase. He believes that attackers can start extorting money from companies under the pretext of violating new laws. One of the reasons may be a ban on collecting data on people without their direct consent. Igor Bederov claims that business can start sending letters with fake fines.

Services use data that is already in the public domain, so the principle of their operation can be compared with a search engine, says Alexander Dvoryansky, director of strategic communications at Infosecurity a Softline Company. He stressed that if you use the same password for several years, the user risks becoming a victim of intruders.^[21]

Coalition for a Safer Web requires the removal of the Telegram messenger from the App Store

The American non-profit organization Coalition for a Safer Web ("Coalition for a Safer Internet") through a court in California demanded that Apple remove the Telegram messenger from the App Store. A similar lawsuit is planned to be filed with Google^[22].

Coalition for a Safer Web accuses Telegram of not taking sufficient restrictive measures against users who spread racist content, extremist messages and calls for violence in connection with the riots in the US Congress.

At the same time, Apple is accused of "causing moral harm by negligence." The company is required not only to remove Telegram, but also to compensate for the damage.

Comparison of functionality with other messengers

Discovery of a vulnerability that allows you to determine the location of the user

A vulnerability in Telegram allows you to locate the user. This became known on January 6, 2021.

The Telegram messenger provides users with the "People Nearby" function, thanks to which you can determine the location of a social network client with an accuracy of several tens of meters.

The post about the vulnerability was published on his blog by enthusiast Ahmed Hassan. A few years ago, he already reported a similar drawback to the Line messenger development team. The creators of the messenger paid Hassan a bonus of a thousand dollars and fixed the problem.

Although Telegram shows only the distance to a particular user in the list, you can determine its exact location using triangulation. To do this, you need to change your location twice, marking the distance to the user each time, and then map three circles with a center in their coordinates and a radius equal to the found distance. You will be at the intersection of the circles. At the same time, you can only find those who use the "People nearby" function.

Alternative solutions in other applications for calculating the distance between users provide for adding a random number to the coordinates, which makes it impossible to determine the real geoposition, but in the case of Telegram, the developers decided to neglect this additional security measure^[23].

2020

The European Commission has included VKontakte and Telegram in the list of pirated resources

In mid-December 2020 European Commission , she published an updated list of pirated sites - the "Watch List for Counterfeit and Piracy." For the first time messenger Telegram , the social network "" also entered it.Vkontakte

The list is formed on the basis of reports from groups of copyright holders. They reported that Telegram users, including public channels, "exchange illegal content, in particular music, books, news publications, films and television programs." In addition, subscribers share links to other sites that host pirated content, according to the European Commission.

The European Commission believes that Telegram does not respond quickly enough to pirated content, and VKontakte provides users with the ability to access pirated books and films, including through built-in players.

New Telegram channel fraud scheme

On November 25, 2020, Roskachestvo spoke about a new Telegram fraud scheme. It consists in the fact that attackers turn to channel administrators in the messenger under the guise of negotiations on advertising. Then they offer to download an archive file with a "presentation" of the product whose advertising they want to pay for. The archive contains a virus that transfers data and account management to hackers.

Among those who faced attempts by scammers to "hijack" the channel: Baza, "Durov Code," "Dvacha," etc. The Reddit channel suffered from the malicious link, this case helped reveal the "selection" scheme for managing the account.

Also, experts reported fake fraudulent channels that disguise themselves as well-known. In such cases, it is recommended to be careful about the actions required by administrators.

Among the signs of fraudulent channels in Telegram mentioned by Roskachestvo are proposals to follow an external link to a site with a dubious address, options for easy earnings, links to "secret chats," statements about the "move" of the channel and a link to an allegedly new resource.

In addition, attackers can offer to download files from external archives and attached archive files and executable files.

They do not need to be downloaded in any way, whatever they are called. Such files may contain malware that will easily penetrate your computer or phone and steal personal information or payment information. For channel administrators, there is an additional risk - through such a phishing message, they can steal the channel, - summarized in Roskachestvo.

Ilya Loevsky, deputy head of Roskachestvo, recommends always keeping the antivirus on your phone and computer turned on, as well as "thinking about digital security before clicking on something."^[24]

Inclusion of "anti-censorship tools" in Belarus

Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the launch of "anti-censorship tools" in the messenger in Belarus. This became known on August 11, 2020.

We have included our anti-censorship tools in Belarus so that Telegram remains available to most users there. However, communication is still unstable, since sometimes the Internet in the country is completely turned off, "Durov said on Twitter.

In his message, Durov cites a tweet according to which Telegram is still working in the country, although WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram services are no longer available.

Interruptions in work Internet in Belarus have been observed since August 9, 2020, when the country had the main voting day in the presidential elections. Almost in the morning, residents of the country and journalists began to report interruptions in the work of both home and mobile Internet. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that the problems are related to "disconnections from abroad," and the state operator of the country "reported" Beltelecom on multiple cyber attacks varying degrees of intensity "[^[25].

TalkBank Express Checkout Availability

On August 10, 2020, TalkBank announced the launch of an instant transfer service by phone number in instant messengers.

According to the company, the TalkBank fast payment system for August 2020 is available to users of five messengers: WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Vkontakte, Facebook. You can even make translations using Alice's voice assistant. Read more here.

Leaked database with information about several million users

On June 24, 2020, it became known that Internet flowed away base with a information few million messenger Telegram users. The 900 megabyte file contains unique identifiers users and phone numbers. The file contains more than 40 million records.

The press service of the messenger said that such information is collected through the built-in function of importing contacts during registration. According to them, this happens through the import of contacts during user registration. The company assured that most of the merged accounts are no longer relevant. More than 84% of the data was collected until mid-2019. Almost 70% of the accounts in the database are users from Iran, 30% are from Russia.

In the summer of 2019, after reports of a search for Hong Kong user numbers, the setting "Who can add me to contacts by phone number" appeared on Telegram. It, according to the press service, makes it difficult for ordinary users to use the messenger (they become "invisible" even for those who know their number), but allows "dissidents and activists of protest movements to completely hide the connection between their account and phone number^[26].

Unblocking Telegram will not affect the safety of personal data

On June 19, 2020, it became known that the creator of Telegram Pavel Durov commented on the removal by Roskomnadzor of restrictions on access to the messenger. As Durov assured, the stability and speed of Telegram mobile applications in Russia will increase, and direct web links to channels and services will become available without VPN. In terms of the safety of personal data, there will be no changes - the right to privacy and privacy of personal correspondence will remain a fundamental principle of Telegram in all countries.

I think that unlocking will be a good signal for IT entrepreneurs and investors. Such actions of the Russian authorities in this and other areas inspire optimism. I hope that the positive trend will be preserved, and Russia will be able to realize its potential in the digital sphere, - said Durov.

Roskomnadzor lifted the requirements to restrict access to the Telegram messenger in agreement with the General Prosecutor's Office. Attempts to block the messenger have been carried out for more than two years, but Russian users bypassed the blocking without any problems.

In April 2018, the Tagansky District Court Moscow satisfied the claim of Roskomnadzor to block Telegram on the territory. RUSSIAN FEDERATION On April 4, the 15-day deadline provided to the Telegram administration for the transfer of keys expired. enciphering FSB According to representatives of the service operator, this requirement could not be fulfilled for technical reasons.

In May 2020, State Duma deputies from "Fair Russia" Fedot Tumusov and Dmitry Ionin proposed a bill to stop blocking Telegram. According to the authors, unsuccessful attempts to block the messenger did not damage its development, but the prestige of the state power of the Russian Federation^[27].

Roskomnadzor will unblock Telegram

Roskomnadzor on June 18, 2020 announced the unblocking of Telegram. A message about this appeared on the regulator's website. The supervisory authority explained this by the fact that the Telegram leadership expressed its readiness to counter terrorism and extremism

"In agreement with the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation, Roskomnadzor removes the requirements for restricting access to the Telegram messenger. We are ready to interact with all Internet companies operating in the country to promptly suppress the spread of terrorist and extremist information, child pornography, propaganda of suicide and drugs, "Roskomnadzor.

Durov recalled that the messenger was blocked "under the auspices of the fight against terrorism."

"Although we did not have sympathy for terrorists even then, we have since come a long way to overcome these threats. During this time, methods of detecting and removing extremist propaganda have been improved, and now the Telegram team is stopping tens of thousands of attempts to spread public calls for violence and terror every month, "he wrote.

According to him, the mechanisms created to prevent terrorist attacks do not violate the secrecy of user correspondence and the company's experience in dozens of countries has shown that "the fight against terrorism and the right to privacy of personal correspondence do not exclude each other."

Recall that according to Russian legislation, Telegram is obliged by the FSB to provide encryption keys to the correspondence of all users.

The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications did not support the initiative of the deputies to unblock Telegram

The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation did not support the initiative of the Just Russia deputies to unblock the Telegram messenger during a period of high alert, Interfax reports.

"The amendment proposed by the bill to Article 15.4 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ, if adopted, may entail abuse of the right by dishonest organizers of the dissemination of information on the Internet, who will deliberately disseminate information about the activities of state and local authorities in order to avoid persecution," the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications said in its recall.

As explained in the department, the terms used in the bill, such as "official service," have no disclosure in the text and are not subject to use, and the wording "current situation" is doubtful and has an expansive interpretation.

The State Duma has prepared a bill to stop blocking Telegram

Deputies of the State Duma from "Fair Russia" proposed a bill to stop blocking the Telegram messenger. This was reported by the Kommersant edition, which had at its disposal the corresponding document^[28].

According to the information provided by the source, the draft bill on Tuesday, April 21, was sent to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, as well as to Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation. The department confirmed the receipt of the document, but refrained from any comments.

According to the initiators of the bill, Telegram, despite the blocking, is widely used by many government services, including the operational headquarters of the governments of Moscow and the Moscow region to inform about the current situation with the coronavirus. In addition, in most cases, the messenger functions without problems in Runet and enjoys well-deserved popularity among Russian users. All this casts doubt on the feasibility of blocking Telegram.

"Further declarative blocking of the messenger, thus, damages not its development, but the prestige of the state power of the Russian Federation," the authors of the bill note, expressing confidence that their proposal will receive wide support from State Duma deputies. However, according to experts interviewed by Kommersant, the likelihood of such a development of events is close to zero, and the prospects for adopting an initiative in parliament are extremely vague.

Yandex.Money launched transfers through Telegram

On March 16, 2020, it became known that Telegram users were able to send money transfers to other people through Yandex.Money. The messenger now recognizes the card number among the text of the message. Read more here.

The expert urged to abandon Telegram due to security risks

There are a number of secure messengers (WhatsApp, Viber, Jabber, Wickr or Signal) that allow encrypted messages to be exchanged, and while many of these tools mostly do their job, some raise security concerns, particularly Telegram.

Security expert Neil Krawetz conducted his own research and found out that Telegram does not meet the criteria related to network connection security, storage and encryption of data on the server, as well as local storage and encryption of Not^[29][30]

The first problem is that Telegram uses its own protocol for connection (port 443/tcp), and also always connects only to its servers (149.154.160.0/20). Thus, companies that do not allow employees to use personal secure instant messengers during working hours can block access to Telegram servers and use traffic verification tools to calculate the IP address of an employee who violates the company's policy, Kravetz writes.

The second problem is due to the fact that Telegram receives, stores and caches messages in unencrypted form on its servers, as well as gains access to confidential URLs and caches their contents. Although Telegram transmits data to the server in encrypted form, the server decrypts information and processes unencrypted text. According to Kravetz, "this means that someone with a search warrant can get a copy of your data in unencrypted form."

Finally, the third problem concerns local file storage and encryption. As it turned out, if you have access, locally encrypted data stored is enough to simply decrypt using the Telegram-desktop-decrypt or TelegramStorageParser tools. In addition, you can determine exactly when Telegram was used, or how exactly (sending text, images or video).

2019

The head of Roskomnadzor Zharov began to use Telegram

At the end of December 2019, it became known that Alexander Zharov began to use Telegram. As you know, it was Roskomnadzor, which he heads, who initiated the blocking of the messenger. Read more here.

Illegal access to correspondence content on iOS and Android devices

On November 29, 2019, the company Group-IB reported a number of incidents related to obtaining illegal access to the contents of correspondence in Telegram on devices iOS Android and from customers of different operators. In cellular communications all cases, on devices, the victims were the only authorization factor. SMS The danger is that in this way attackers can gain access to other,,, to messengers social networks e-mail various services or, where mobile applications banking only SMS is used for authorization.

According to the company, at the end of 2019, several Russian entrepreneurs turned to the Group-IB cybercrime investigation department, who faced the problem of unauthorized access of unknown persons to their correspondence in the Telegram messenger. The incidents occurred on iOS and Android devices, regardless of the client of which federal mobile operator the victim was.

The attack began with the fact that the user received a message from the Telegram service channel (this is the official messenger channel with a blue verification tick) with a confirmation code that the user did not request. After that, SMS with an activation code fell on the victim's smartphone - and almost immediately a notification came to the Telegram service channel that the account was logged in from another device.

In all cases that Group-IB is aware of, attackers logged into someone else's account via the mobile Internet (one-time SIM cards were probably used), and the attackers' IP address was in Samara in most cases .

Group-IB specialists emphasize that Telegram has already implemented all the necessary cybersecurity options that will nullify the efforts of the attackers, but not everyone uses them.

I recommend that you install an additional authorization factor in Telegram as soon as possible in the form of a password, in addition to mandatory SMS, this is important for everyone. Next, it is necessary to check other applications, as well as services that use SMS messages for authorization as the main or second factor or to restore the password to email, social networks, access to mobile banking applications, to deliver one-time passwords. told Sergey Nikitin, Deputy Head of Group-IB Computer Forensics Laboratory

Group-IB warns that such an attack can be successful only if the "Cloud password" or "Two step verification" option is not activated in the Telegram settings on the smartphone. That is why on iOS and Android devices for Telegram, you need to go to the Telegram settings, select the "Privacy" tab and assign "Cloud password\Two-step verification" or "Two step verification."

Group-IB experts add that it is advisable not to set an email address to recover this password, since, as a rule, password recovery to email also occurs via SMS.

A study by the Group-IB Computer Forensics Laboratory, where the victims' electronic devices were transferred, showed that harmful trojan the equipment was not infected with spyware or banking, the accounts were not hacked, and no substitution SIM cards was made. In all cases, attackers gained access to the victim's messenger using SMS codes received when logging into an account from another device.

This procedure is as follows: when activating the messenger on another device, Telegram sends the code through the service channel to all user devices, and then (upon request) an SMS message goes to the phone. Knowing this, the attackers themselves initiate a request to send an SMS with an activation code by the messenger, intercept this SMS and use the received code for successful authorization in the messenger.

Thus, attackers gain illegal access to all current chats, except for secret ones, as well as to the history of correspondence in these chats, including files and photos that were sent to them. Having discovered this, a legal Telegram user can forcibly terminate the attacker's session. Thanks to the implemented protection mechanism, the reverse cannot occur, the attacker cannot end the older sessions of the real user within 24 hours. Therefore, it is important to detect an extraneous session in time and complete it so as not to lose access to the account. Group-IB specialists sent a notification to the Telegram team about their investigation of the situation.

The study of incidents continues, and as of November 2019, it has not been established exactly which scheme was used to bypass the SMS factor. At different times, the researchers cited examples of SMS interception using attacks on SS7 or Diameter protocols used in mobile networks. Theoretically, such attacks can be carried out with the illegal use of special technical means or insider in mobile operators. In particular, on hacker forums in Darknet, fresh ads with proposals for hacking various instant messengers, including Telegram.

Specialists in different countries, including Russia, have repeatedly stated that social networks, mobile banking and instant messengers can be hacked using a vulnerability in the SS7 protocol, but these were isolated cases of targeted attacks or experimental research. In a series of incidents, of which there are more than 10 as of November 2019, it is obvious that the attackers want to put this way of making money on the stream. In order for this not to happen, it is necessary to increase your own level of digital hygiene: at least use two-factor authorization wherever possible, and add a mandatory second factor to SMS, which is functionally laid down in the same Telegram. told Sergey Lupanin, Head of Cybercrime Investigations at Group-IB

Vice: Telegram is a safe environment for right-wing extremists

In October 2019, Vice accused Telegram of creating a safe environment for white nationalists. It analyzed over 150 (mainly English-speaking) ultra-right channels and found that about a third of them were created since the beginning of 2019.

In addition, Vice writes, the rhetoric of such telegram channels is beginning to radicalize. For example, many of them began to practice the philosophy that building a new white civilization can only be done by resorting to violence and undermining social stability. In many right-wing radical channels, instructions for the manufacture of homemade bombs, concealment of weapons and preparation for mass shooting began to be actively distributed.

In support of its arguments, Vice cites statistics according to which 50 people died at the hands of white nationalists in the United States in 2018, which is 35% more than a year earlier. At the same time, right-wing radical groups, according to the publication, also arise after high-profile terrorist acts. For example, after the shooting in Christchurch (the terrorist attack that occurred in New Zealand on March 15, 2019, then 51 people died and 49 were injured), 22 new radical telegram channels appeared.

Probably, Telegram attracts nationalists by the fact that with the help of the messenger they can exchange an unlimited number of photo, video and audio materials. And these are the most popular tools of extremist propaganda, clarifies Vice. Other useful features of the messenger, the publication includes the possibility of mutual reposts and the creation of closed chats.

Because of its policies, Telegram becomes the refuge of radicals expelled from other platforms, Vice heats up. As an example, he cites the 8chan forum, which quietly exists on Telegram even though all other Internet companies blocked it after several terrorists fired at once, having previously published their manifestos on this platform.

Pavel Durov did not talk to Vice.

Edward Snowden discourages officials from using WhatsApp and Telegram

On September 16, 2019, Edward Snowden warned senior officials against using WhatsApp and Telegram. According to a former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA), these messengers are unsafe. Read more here.

Roskomnadzor distributed Telegram blocking equipment to operators

In mid-September 2019, it became known that Roskomnadzor distributed equipment to telecommunications operators to block Telegram and other Internet resources prohibited in Russia. Two sources in the telecom told Reuters about this.

According to one of them, testing will take place in Tyumen on real users. According to the results of the tests, which will last until the end of September 2019, it is planned to understand how the devices work, what failures there are, etc.

The new blocking equipment was produced by "РДП.ру." 15% of this company belongs to Rostelecom. In March 2019, it was reported that the RDP.RU 's decision to block prohibited resources was recognized as the most effective during a laboratory experiment.

Representatives of telecom operators declined to comment. Roskomnadzor did not respond to the agency's request. The "РДП.ру" said that they do not know where the testing is taking place.

Earlier in 2019, the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov , in an interview with RIA Novosti, said that Roskomnadzor was working on new tools to completely block Telegram. He noted that he would be able to name the cost and characteristics of the equipment in October.

By September 2019, the messenger is still available to users, despite the fact that Roskomnadzor blocks Telegram by court order due to the messenger's refusal to transfer  encryption keys to the FSB.

On November 1, 2019, a law on "ensuring the safe and sustainable functioning" of the Internet in Russia will enter into force. The law obliges operators to establish technical means on their networks that will limit access   to resources prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.  These include the DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) traffic filtering system. Testing of equipment for blocking resources in Tyumen will probably take place within the framework of this law.^[31]

Full Phone Number Concealment Feature

September 5, 2019 in Telegram there was an opportunity to hide the phone number. To gain access to this function, you need to update the application to the latest version and in the privacy settings choose who can see the phone number: anyone, only contacts or no one.

Earlier, when choosing the option "do not show my number to anyone," the user's phone remained available to those who saved it in their contacts, regardless of the privacy settings. Now you can completely hide your phone numbers.

The messenger issued an update amid concerns from protesters in Hong Kong. Demonstrators who use group chats believe authorities could take advantage of a shared phone base, add numbers to the list and find them in protest chats. And it was this defect that the service developers eliminated. Although this had to be done for a long time, says Anton Rosenberg, ex-director of special directions of the Telegram messenger.

Groups in Telegram are increasingly being used to communicate with users who are being oppressed. We believe that all people have the right to express their opinion and communicate privately, the Telegram message says.

In addition, delayed sending of messages, more animated emojis, as well as the ability to create and share your own themes were added to the updated application. Up to 200 thousand participants can now be added to public Telegram groups.^[32]

Earlier it was reported about the development of Telegram new privacy settings in order to protect protesters in Hong Kong. So updating the messenger will prevent the authorities from identifying participants in group chats of the application. Telegram founder Pavel Durov also accused the Chinese authorities of DDoS attacks on the messenger during protests in Hong Kong.

Telegram gives security officials participants in rallies and protests

The Telegram messenger can issue users' phone numbers to third parties without their consent. A breach in the security system of the popular service was discovered in the summer of 2019 by software developers from Hong Kong^[33].

According to experts, the loophole they discovered can be used by the authorities and special services to collect phone numbers of those who participate in rallies and protests. The ZDNet resource writes that the personal data of those who participate in the protests in Hong Kong and coordinate their actions through Telegram can be calculated in this way.

How does it work

Attackers can bypass the privacy settings in the messenger, in which you can hide the visibility of your phone number. It works even if you hide your phone number from everyone, including your contact list. In order to find out whether a person is in protest groups and chats on Telegram, third parties just need to add thousands of numbers to their address book, after which they can connect to the necessary groups and synchronize their contacts with the Telegram client. After synchronization, the messenger will immediately show which of the owners of the added numbers is in "unpopular" groups.

For Hong Kong, the possible de-anonymization of Telegram users is now of great importance. Numerous protests have been taking place across the country since the beginning of June 2019 against a bill to consider extradition requests for criminal suspects from the territory of Hong Kong filed by the authorities of Macau, Taiwan and China. The document was accepted for consideration, which prompted the people of Hong Kong to express their dissatisfaction. Protesters staged a procession, built barricades and blocked traffic on major highways and roads. On the first day of protest against the bill, more than 240 thousand people spoke, which was the largest demonstration in Hong Kong in the last 20 years.

Telegram has built in tools to bypass locks of a new type

The Telegram messenger has the ability to disguise traffic under the HTTPS protocol. Information about this appeared on the GitHub resource. To disguise as HTTPS, the developers added the secret prefix "ee" to the client code. In addition, in addition to the base16 coding method, it was possible to encrypt the secret in the proxy server address using base64^[34].

In the protocol between the Telegram client and the proxy server, an additional encapsulation layer was added over the TCP protocol. This turns the data into TLS records. Data transfer to HTTPS takes place on top of this cryptographic protocol. TLS handshake emulation was also added at the beginning of work. Telegram has already launched proxy servers in Python and Erlang, where masking is implemented.

Geochats appeared in the Telegram beta for iOS

On June 19, 2019, it became known that geochats appeared in the beta version of Telegram for iOS. People who are next to each other and united by common interests will be able to correspond in them.

Any user can create a geochat, you need to specify its theme and geolocation radius - from 100 meters to 6 kilometers. Chat history is available to all users, even messages created before a particular user joined the conversation. The number of geochat participants is not limited.

Any user can find a specific geochat if it is not far from the place to which it is tied. In such chats, "checks" appeared - tags that will indicate that the user appeared in a place tied to geochat^[35].

Durov suspects China of involvement in Telegram malfunctions

On June 13, 2019, it became known that the founder of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov suspects a possible connection between China and the malfunctions of the service. He noted this on his Twitter. According to him, this country may be involved in the conduct of DDoS attacks on Telegram, which caused its temporary inoperability in June 2019.

"All DDoS attacks of such a serious scale (attack power from 200 to 400 Gbps), which we recorded, indicate state involvement and coincide in time with the protests in Hong Kong (their coordination is carried out in Telegram)," noted Pavel Durov, founder of the Telegram messenger

Earlier, a message appeared on the official Twitter of the service about possible interruptions in work due to a major one. hacker attack Telegram representatives assured that data all users are in. safety

Problems in the work of Telegram began on June 11, 2019 and affected the whole world. According to Downdetector, instability in the messenger was observed in the United States, South America, a number of European countries, the Middle East, and also partially in the Asia-Pacific region. Most users (95%) could not connect to the service, and 4% did not work sending messages.

As of June 13, 2019, failures in Telegram are still observed in South America, certain American states, as well as in, and Kiev St. Petersburg. To Moscow Globally, the service managed to restore work.

Pavel Durov linked the DDoS attack on his messenger with the protests that began in Hong Kong on June 9, 2019. Citizens of the country took to the streets to protest a bill to consider extradition requests for criminal suspects from Hong Kong territory filed by authorities in Macau, Taiwan and China.

The document was accepted for consideration, which prompted the people of Hong Kong to express their dissatisfaction. Protesters staged a procession, built barricades and blocked traffic on major highways and roads.

According to preliminary police estimates, on the first day of protest against the bill, more than 240 thousand people spoke. It marked the largest demonstration in Hong Kong in 20 years. The protest action bore fruit: on June 12, 2019, it became known that the consideration of the bill had been postponed indefinitely.^[36]

Someone else's correspondence in Telegram can be bought at the price of a SIM card

A resident of Belarus discovered a dangerous vulnerability in the Telegram messenger that allows access to all user correspondence without requesting special services and transferring encryption keys. The identified scheme operates regardless of the country, and every user of the service can become a victim^[37].

The defect of the Telegram security system allows you to buy the entire history of the user's correspondence in the literal case at the price of a SIM card. According to the Onliner portal, a resident of Belarus, whose Telegram account was originally tied to a Belarusian phone number, moved to another country and bought a new SIM card. The Telegram application was reinstalled, and the account owner re-registered it to a new number. After receiving all the verification messages, the correspondence of a complete stranger appeared in her smartphone, and her name and photo in the profile were changed to others.

How is this possible?

Gaining access to the correspondence of another user became possible due to the fact that the purchased Belarusian phone number previously belonged to this person, who at one time registered his own Telegram account and used the service. Subsequently, the telecom operator probably returned the number for sale due to the lack of activity of the previous owner (this practice also exists in Russia).

What happened may mean that none of the Telegram users, positioned as one of the most secure messengers, can be completely sure that his correspondence will not fall into the wrong hands.

2018

In the list of 20 most secure instant messengers according to Artezio

The analytical department of Artezio (part of the LANIT group of companies) on November 26, 2018 published a list of 20 messengers capable of providing a high level of privacy. The rating was compiled based on the results of comprehensive testing of programs, while the quality of data encryption and the reliability of information protection tools were the key criteria in the formation of the final expert assessment, representatives of Artezio told TAdviser. Telegram is in third place on the list. Read more here.

De-anonymization of Telegram users

On October 1, 2018, it became known that a serious vulnerability was identified in the mobile client of the Telegram messenger, which, under certain conditions, can issue IP addresses of users.

As the researchers have established, by default Telegram routes voice calls via P2P connections. In this case, the IP address can be displayed in the console. True, not all versions of Telegram support the console, for example, it is not visible under Windows, but it is quite available under Linux.

Experts have found that if you redirect calls through the servers of Telegram itself, the IP address will not be visible. But this will require manually changing the settings: Settings - > PrivateandSecurity - > VoiceCalls - > Peer-To-Peern values ​ ​ Never or Nobody, and at the same time the sound quality will decrease slightly.

In addition, it will be easy to turn off calls via P2P in iOS and Android, and, for example, on the desktop version of Telegram for Windows, this turns out to be impossible.

A security expert known as Dhiraj has already received a reward of 2,000 euros from Telegram developers for discovering this problem.

The vulnerability was received by the CVE-2018-17780 index. At the moment, it has been fixed in versions Telegram for Desktop 1.3.17 beta and 1.4.0; now it is possible to disable P2P calls there.

Telegram developers initially argued that the problem with P2P communications is neutralized by the fact that the My Contacts option is set by default, limiting the ability to view the user's IP address with a list of his contacts.

However, it later turned out that the Telegram API contained an error that leads to the fact that for several hours after the next login, P2P connections remained open to everyone. According to the company, as of October 1, 2018, this problem has been fixed.^[38]

Roskomnadzor is ready to unblock Telegram with the consent of the FSB

Representatives of Roskomnadzor announced at the end of August their readiness to unblock Telegram if the Federal Security Service recognizes the changes made to the privacy policy by fulfilling the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation. This was reported by the TASS news agency.

"According to

the decision of the Tagansky District Court of Moscow of April 13, 2018, restriction of access on the territory of Russia to Internet resources, the functioning of which is provided by Telegram Messenger Limited Partnership, is carried out before the specified organizer of information distribution on the Internet fulfills the obligation to submit to the federal executive body in the field of information security, necessary to decode received, transmitted, delivered and (or) processed electronic messages, "the press service of the ILV explained

.

Thus, the decision to comply with the requirements of the legislation will be made by the FSB. If there is a positive decision, Roskomnadzor is ready to start unblocking, the department noted.

Telegram promised to issue numbers and IP addresses of terrorists

As it became known on August 28, 2018, Telegram published an updated privacy policy on its official website, according to which the messenger administration undertakes to issue information about users to law enforcement agencies if requested.

As follows from paragraph 8.3 of the updated policy, Telegram can issue a person's IP address and phone number, but only if there is an appropriate court decision proving the user's involvement in terrorist activities.

Telegram can secretly read user messages

Telegram, a popular messenger developed by Pavel Durov, founder of the Vkontakte social network, can monitor the correspondence of users of cloud chats. This conclusion was reached by the authors of the Telegram channel Mediatube, having analyzed the mechanism for authorizing users^[39] messenger^[40].

When installing the application on a new device, the user receives an SMS message with a five-digit authorization code. In addition, the same code is duplicated in the service notification chat. It can be seen on each device of the owner of the Telegram account. This code must be entered on a new device to start using the application.

Users noticed that if you copy the authorization code or enter it manually and send it to any chat, the code will lose its relevance and will not work when you try to log in with it on a new device. Cancellation of the authorization code will occur even if a mixed message is sent - any characters can be added to the code, and this will not affect Telegram's ability to isolate it from the character sequence. However, when sending a code to a secret chat, this cancellation procedure will not work.

The results of the experiment may be evidence that user correspondence is analyzed by a certain algorithm on the server side, at least during authorization. This theory is supported by the fact that the authorization code is not canceled when sent to a secret chat, since messages in such chats are subjected to end-to-end encryption, are not stored on Telegram servers and are available only to the sender and recipient.

This feature can be called an interesting approach to protecting your account from theft of authorization codes and preventing unauthorized access to it. Nevertheless, this approach leaves a field for speculation and suspicion: does Telegram read other user messages?

ILV asked to change the Telegram code to obtain encryption keys

Before the start of blocking Telegram in Russia, the FSB and Roskomnadzor tried for a year to convince the leadership of Telegram to change the architecture of the messenger and provide keys for decrypting user correspondence. According to the departments, the company has a technical opportunity for this. This was announced in June 2018 by a representative of Roskomnadzor during the consideration of the complaint of Telegram representatives against the decision of the Tagansky District Court to block the service in Russia.

"The FSB and Roskomnadzor have been trying for a year to encourage Telegram to change the architecture of the messenger. We believe that the structure of any messenger can be changed to be brought in accordance with Russian law. Therefore, we believe that Telegram has the technical ability to provide keys for decryption, "the TASS representative of the supervisory service quotes a statement.

8 million IP addresses used by Telegram have been unlocked. The company spent $75,000 an hour to combat the blocking of the ILV

Roskomnadzor has unblocked about 8 million IP addresses that are part of the Amazon and Online Sas subnets. All of them were previously used by the Telegram messenger to bypass locks, Interfax writes.

Later in 2021, a former representative of Roskomnadzor, Vladimir Ampelonsky, said that Telegram used 8,000 IP addresses before blocking, and within a short time from the moment of blocking, their number increased to 15.5 million IP addresses. According to Ampelonsky, renting one IP address cost about $0.05 per hour, and the company spent $75,000 per hour.

Putin spoke out against blocking Telegram

At the annual Direct Line with, Vladimir Putin the President, Russia answering questions from viewers, commented on the situation as a result of attempts to Roskomnadzor block the Telegram messenger^[41]

'I'm very aware of the situation around the Telegram. But I am worried about the safety of people in my place. I myself worked in the special services and I know: it is easiest to ban, it is harder to find civilized solutions. I will convince my colleagues to follow this path, "the president said.

The same, according to him, applies to the possibility of banning YouTube and Instagram in Russia. Putin said that Russia is not going to close popular social networks and Internet resources. In his opinion, law enforcement officers should look for such ways to combat terrorism that will not be to the detriment of freedom on the Internet. He intends to encourage the security forces not to restrict this freedom. The president proposes to practice the use of various tools, not blocking them.

Telegram revealed proxy sources to bypass locks

Telegram has posted^[42] on the GitHub portal the source code of a proxy server running over the MTProto protocol. Instructions for setting it have been published^[43] on Docker Hub. The protocol works only inside the messenger and is not compatible with other services^[44].

To create your own proxy server, you need a computer with Docker installed and a provider connected to the network that does not block access to Internet resources. Port 443 must be free.

It is noted that one proxy server process supports tens of thousands of connections. In order to improve performance, the developers have set a limit on connection processing - up to 60 thousand per processor core.

At the moment, only users of Android devices can connect to the MTProto proxy. The new MTProto proxies do not work on Telegram and Telegram X clients on the iOS platform, since Apple has been blocking Telegram app updates in the App Store since mid-April.

Apple bans Telegram updates for iPhone and iPad

Apple has not allowed the Telegram messenger to update its app in the AppStore for a month and a half. The creators of the messenger reported this on the project website in the "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) section^[45].

Answering a question about Telegram's compliance with the "General Data Protection Regulations" (GDPR), European Union the authors of the project reported that "users Android received an update GDPR in version 4.8.9, while Apple has been globally blocking Telegram updates for its iOS application since mid-April."

Roskomnadzor demanded that Apple remove Telegram from the AppStore

Roskomnadzor sent a letter to Apple demanding to stop distributing the Telegram messenger through the App Store, as well as sending its service push notifications to Russian users.

"In order to avoid possible actions of Roskomnadzor to disrupt the functioning of the above services, Apple, Inc. please inform us as soon as possible about the Company's further actions aimed at resolving these problematic issues," the letter says (spelling and punctuation preserved).

The head of the department, Alexander Zharov, added that Roskomnadzor will wait for a response from Apple "within a month," since we are talking about "a company with a high degree of bureaucracy," Interfax reports.

Roskomnadzor armed itself against Telegram with new technologies

The head of Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov promised to continue to introduce new technical solutions to block Telegram in Russia. As Zharov told Interfax reporters on the sidelines of SPIEF 2018, the department already has certain technical solutions at its disposal, ready for implementation^[46].

What kind of decisions are in question, the head of Roskomnadzor did not specify, but the regulator will no longer block the subnets of any companies. Now Roskomnadzor "works pointwise" without harm to "respectable resources."

According to Zharov, a number of companies have already taken appropriate steps to deprive Telegram of the opportunity to bypass the blocking. For example, Microsoft it no longer provides the messenger with the ability to use the configuration file of its Microsoft Download service. Telegram has stopped providing its IP addresses. Google In addition, a dialogue continues on Telegram. Amazon Negotiations with the company are not going as quickly as we would like, and it is too early to talk about the results, but "we are patient people," Zharov said.

Telegram has built tools to bypass locks of a new type

On the localization page of the Telegram application for Android OS in May 2018, new lines of text appeared for translation from English to other official application languages, which indicate that proxy server support will be implemented in the popular messenger in the near future (services in computer networks acting as an intermediary between the user and some resource in the network) a new type called MTProto Proxy^[47].

This solution was developed specifically to ensure the functioning of Telegram in the context of blocking the messenger by communication service providers.

The advantage of the new solution over the HTTP and SOCKS5 proxies, whose support is implemented in stable versions of the messenger, is higher performance and security.

In addition, servers on MTProto will be much more difficult for providers to block.

Telegram ban in Iranian government agencies

On April 18, 2018, a Telegram ban was announced in Iranian state bodies after the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stopped using this messenger for national security reasons.

In accordance with the protection of national interests and to eliminate the Telegram monopoly, Ayatollah Khamenei will cease his activities in this network, - says his last message in Telegram.

Iranian civil servants have been banned from using Telegram, according to news outlet ISNA. What measures will be taken in relation to those who violate this requirement is not specified.

Ali Khamenei is an active social media user, even though Twitter and Facebook have been blocked in Iran. His office constantly publishes photos and information from the speeches of the leader. After blocking, Telegram users are invited to read Khameneni's messages in Iranian-developed Soroush and Gap messengers.

Telegram has already been blocked in Iran - at the end of 2017 after a series of anti-government demonstrations. However, two weeks later, the service resumed operation.

By mid-April 2018, about 45 million residents use the Telegram messenger, while the entire population of Iran is 80 million people. Telegram is popular in the Middle East and the former USSR, the agency notes. Reuters

Iranian media in their Telegram channels a few weeks before the refusal of Khamenei's office to use Telegram also offered their subscribers various options where current news reports will be published. Iranian news outlets and television, however, continue to use the Telegram messenger.

In April 2018, a representative of the Supreme Court of Iran said that Telegram and other foreign messengers will be able to work in the country only if they receive permits from the government and store citizens' data inside the country.^[48]

Removing from App Store and Google Play

Roskomnadzor sent a demand to the App Store and Google Play to remove Telegram, RBC reports on April 17, citing representatives of the regulator. Stores must remove the application as soon as possible. Earlier, Roskomnadzor also demanded that Telegram be removed from the largest APK Mirror. Telegram disappeared from the apkpure.com website, where the installation files of the programs are posted, and the Telegram discussion thread disappeared from the 4pda forum.

Durov will allocate "millions of personal funds to save Telegram"

The creator of Telegram Pavel Durov announced his readiness to allocate millions dollars of personal funds for grants for administrators of proxy/services, VPN which help bypass the blocking of the messenger. He wrote about this on his page "" Vkontakte^[49]

"As part of the Digital Resistance - a decentralized movement to protect digital freedoms and progress - I began to pay bitcoin grants to proxy and vpn administrators. During this year, I will be glad to donate millions of dollars of personal funds for these purposes, "Durov said

.

During the hunt for Telegram, the ILV blocked 19 million IP addresses, in the hours of Google, Amazon, Microsoft

Main article [[Censorship (control) on the Internet. Russian Experience]

According to the head of Diphost, at the moment, in connection with the blocking of Telegram, about 18 million IP addresses are included in the register. In particular, address pools belonging to cloud services Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others were blocked.

Roskomnadzor blocked subnets OVH, Hetzner, Online.net, Microsoft, etc.:

• 18.236.0.0/15 - Amazon.com, Inc.
• 54.64.0.0/13 - Amazon Technologies Inc.
• 23.251.128.0/19 - Google LLC
• 174.138.0.0/17 - DigitalOcean, LLC
• 188.166.0.0/17 - Digital Ocean, Inc.
• 159.203.0.0/16 - DigitalOcean, LLC
• 128.199.0.0/16 - DigitalOcean Cloud
• 159.65.0.0/16 - DigitalOcean, LLC
• 52.32.0.0/16 - Amazon Technologies Inc.
• 54.212.0.0/15 - Amazon.com, Inc.
• 18.218.0.0/16 - Amazon Technologies Inc.
• 13.230.0.0/15 - Amazon Data Services Japan
• 35.176.0.0/15 - Amazon Data Services UK
• 195.154.0.0/17 - Iliad Entreprises Customers
• 51.136.0.0/15 - Microsoft Limited UK
• 46.101.128.0/17 - Digital Ocean, Inc.
• 185.166.212.0/23 - Clouding.io Virtual Machine Hosting
• 178.63.0.0/16 - Hetzner Online GmbH
• 51.15.0.0/16 - Online.net Dedicated Servers NL
• 91.121.0.0/16 - OVH SAS
• 18.204.0.0/14 - Amazon Technologies Inc.

On April 21-22, Roskomnadzor blocked several IP addresses, Google follows from an unofficial copy of the registry upload, which Roskomnadzor transfers to telecom operators to block sites. Access is restricted to IP addresses 74.125.131.101 and 64.233.165.106. According to the ipinfo.io service, they belong to Google. According to the general director of the Diphost provider Philip Kulin, about 60 IP addresses of the site are blocked in total google.com. A malfunction of the Google search engine on April 22 is observed in several cities of Russia, according to data from the Downdetector service, which tracks the work of popular Internet resources. Problems in the work of the search engine began at about one in the morning on. To Moscow The search engine site did not open in 69% of users, another 30% reported that they could not log into their accounts.

By noon on April 17, in the unloading of the blacklist Roskomnadzor that controls the blocking of resources with illegal content by telecom operators, the number of blocked IP addresses exceeded 4,500,000. Of these, a million are blocked subnets of the company (Amazon 52.58.0.0/15, 18.196.0.0/15, 18.194.0.0/15 and 35.156.0.0/14 were entered into the registry simultaneously, later subnets 18.184.0.0/15 and 54.160.0.0/12 were additionally entered into the registry) providing cloud service, and AWS more than one and a half million - companies Google and holdings (Alphabet subnets 35.192.0.0/12 and 35.184.0.0/13, a little later - 35.224.0.0/12).

In one day on April 16, 2018, Roskomnadzor blocked in Russia about 0.04% of all IP addresses of the IPv4 space (a total of 2³² addresses). For the second - the same amount.

As a result of these actions, in less than two days from the beginning of Telegram blocking, such large companies as Microsoft (Xbox), including pages with an officially distributed ON company (http://software-download.microsoft.com/), Evernote a popular and compliant enciphering messenger with key transfer legislation, Viber SkyEng English school, "Bird" courier delivery service, payment service Cloudpayments and numerous proxies - and - and VPNservers services. It was also reported about failures in the work of banks from the top 20, private clinics, gateways. 3-D Secure

According to the head of the supervisory authority, Alexander Zharov, "there is a struggle between armor and shell," which has led to the inaccessibility of not only communication providers and hosting services, but also legitimate services and products of numerous companies, both Russian and foreign.

Qrator Labs notifies you about the need to monitor the state of your own services and the possible ingress of used IP addresses into blocked subnets - there is no technical solution to this problem, except for changing the used IP address. In the situation of further blocking of subnets of large providers, the problem can trigger the'domino effect' and affect services indirectly related to blocked subnets. If subnets such as GitHub, GitLab, DigitalOcean and many others get blocked, the infrastructure of open-source modules, applications and extensions used by developers when creating their own systems and applications will be disrupted.

Telegram bypassed blocking in Russia in a new way that cannot be banned

Initially, Telegram bypassed Telegram blocking Russia using the company's IP addresses, Amazon but Roskomnadzor blocked more than half a million of them in advance in order to prevent the service from working for the sake of fulfilling Russian legislation. Nevertheless, the administration of the messenger found a way out of this situation. Now it is simply useless to block individual IP addresses, because the service will continue to work^[50]

The Telegram application for all platforms has a built-in service push DC_Update, which is used to update the address of the data center with which communication is carried out. At normal times, it is used to increase stability and speed up the sending/receiving of messages, but it can also be used to bypass locks, which the messenger administration decided to do. Previously, no one has ever used this method.

The push system DC_Update works so that the request does not come from the Telegram server, which is blocked in Russia, but with the server of Apple, Google and Microsoft. Every time the push is updated, and this happens constantly, the application can secretly receive the addresses of the new messenger servers from everyone. To block this workaround, Roskomnadzor will have to block tens of millions of IP addresses, which will lead to complete isolation of the entire Russian Internet from the world.

Even if suddenly, by some miracle, Roskomnadzor will be able to find out the IP addresses accessed by Google, Apple and Microsoft using DC_Update, then it will still not block them, because in this case all third-party applications, including WhatsApp, Viber and others, will stop working correctly. The web version of the Telegram messenger does not use this push due to restrictions, so it will remain blocked forever.

Court rules to immediately block Telegram in Russia

The Tagansky District Court of Moscow decided to restrict access to the Telegram service in Russia. This was stated by judge Yulia Smolina, RBC correspondent reports from the meeting^[51] in^[52].

The court also granted the petition of Roskomnadzor for the immediate entry into force of the decision to block the messenger. Now Roskomnadzor must send a court decision to telecom operators indicating the need to take measures to restrict access to the service. The domain names of telegram.org, web.telegram.org, t.me and IP addresses of Telegram servers can be entered in the registry of blocked pages. After that, providers will have to restrict access to messenger resources within 24 hours from the moment the registry is updated (updated daily at 09:00 and 21:00 Moscow time).

Businessman and programmer Pavel Durov has published detailed instructions for Telegram users on how to continue to stay in touch in the popular application. According to him, the messenger will use built-in methods for bypassing locks that do not require actions from users, but it does not guarantee the availability of the service without using a VPN.

The Tagansky Court of Moscow ruled to block Telegram on the territory of the Russian Federation. What users should keep in mind:

• Telegram will use built-in methods to bypass locks that do not require action from users, but 100% availability of the service without VPN is not guaranteed.
• In the first hours of blocking, third-party VPN/Proxy services can be overloaded and are likely to work slowly.
• Regardless of the blocking, Telegram will retain the ability to centrally send notifications to all Russian users, informing about the development of the situation.

Important: Do not uninstall or reinstall Telegram when there are communication problems. Try to download Telegram updates in a timely manner in the AppStore or Google Play.

Anyone can edit other people's entries in Telegram

A security researcher known in the IT blog Habrahabr under the pseudonym w9w spoke about the vulnerabilities he discovered in the Telegram messenger^[53].

In the course of the study conducted by the author, it turned out that t.me links familiar to Telegram users can lead to phishing sites, private chats are actually not so private, and anyone can edit articles in the Telegraph, a publishing service closely integrated with Telegram.

Editing other people's messages

The vulnerability affects the Telegraph publishing service, developed by Pavel Durov and the Telegram messenger team in 2016. After analyzing the HTTP request sent to the Telegraph servers, the author came to the conclusion that in order to edit absolutely any article, an attacker only needs to know its unique identifier, which can be found directly in the HTML code of the page with this article.

As a rule, protection against such attacks comes down to checking the token (random set of bytes) generated by the server with the user sent when clicking on a link or clicking a button. If the server and client tokens do not match, the server denies the user the requested operation. According to the author of the study, in the case of the Telegraph, this approach, like other methods of protection, is not used.

Private chats in danger

It was possible to discover one of the vulnerabilities in the process of testing a third-party resource interacting with the t.me domain, which belongs to Telegram and is used to create short public links to user accounts, channels and groups in the messenger. The site offered paid advice on investing in cryptocurrencies, and Telegram-bot acted as one of the channels for obtaining such information. The bot could be connected by clicking on a link like t.me/Another_bot?start=CODE, where CODE is a secret sequence of characters associated with the user's account on the site. Having decided to check the "sensitive" data in the URL (a single resource index on the Internet) for the fact of indexing by search engines, the researcher discovered the first of three vulnerabilities in Telegram.

Having formed the so-called "dork" (Google Dork Query - a special request to the search engine that allows you to find public information hidden from prying eyes) of the following type: site: t.me inurl:Another_bot?start=, the author of the study discovered the publicly available personal code of a random paid subscriber of the very resource about cryptocurrencies. From this, it was concluded that on t.me there is no ban on indexing confidential data. The author's reason for this misunderstanding is the absence of the robots.txt file in the root directory of the resource associated with the t.me domain. This file is used by webmasters to specify site indexing settings. For example, using this file, you can prevent search robots from indexing certain sections of a web resource, thus completely excluding their appearance in search results.

2017

Due to the threat of blocking, Telegram has become the fastest growing messenger

From May to December 2017, user interest in the Telegram messenger showed the highest growth compared to other similar services popular in Russia, according to the research company ​SimilarWeb, prepared at the request of RBC^[54] to the ^[55] of ^[56].

If in May Telegram from Google Play (for the nine months of 2017, the share of Android in the smartphone segment in Russia was 88%) was downloaded 833.2 thousand times, then in November more than 1.682 million installations were recorded: from May 1 to December 1, the increase in the number of downloads amounted to 168%. The share of active messenger users has almost doubled during this period (considered as the share of application users per day of the total number of all users of devices running on the Android operating system in Russia) - from 3.17 to 5.51%, which made it possible to overtake, for example, Skype (3.9% in November).

For comparison, WhatsApp, the most popular communication application in Russia, was downloaded 2.7 million times in May, and 3.8 million in November (the active audience during the same time increased from 29.97 to 33.27%).

The increased popularity of Telegram in recent months in Russia is also confirmed by the App Annie ratings for downloads. From October to December 2017, Telegram was one of the top 3 apps for communication in both the App Store and Google Play, and in June and November it was at the top of the download lines among all App Store apps. ​

Payment functionality

Telegram developers have launched the online payments function Bot Payments in the messenger. The function is intended for creators of bots who will now be able to accept payments from their customers from around the world.

"If you have Telegram 4.0 or newer installed, you can order goods or services through the bots that offer them. When you click Pay, you will be prompted to enter your credit card information, complete your shipping information, and confirm your payment. And you will receive the ordered, "the developers write. In this case, if the Telegram user account is protected by two-stage authorization (confirmation by SMS and entering a password).

Card details can be saved for future purchases. Thus, the procedure for ordering through bots will be easier next time. Since Telegram is an open platform, the developers clarified that the creators of bots can use the necessary APIs and accept payments without prior approval procedure.

The money transfer platform will allow users to make purchases through bots inside the messenger. Bots will have a special button for ordering and paying for goods and services.

To pay the customer for the bot, you will need to enter your credit card information and confirm the payment. At the same time, the card will be tied to bots from which the user has already made purchases.

The text says that the payment will go directly from the client to the bot developer, bypassing Telegram itself. The messenger will not charge any commission from transactions. In addition, the service will not accept complaints and demands to return money to users, as it will not store bank card data.

Most payments will be made through the Stripe payment system, which is not yet developed in Russia. However, the description emphasizes that the platform is open to payment systems from other countries.

Beta with Voice Calling

On March 13, 2017, Telegram Messenger announced the release of a beta version of the Telegram messenger, in which the voice calling function became available. The full functionality of the service is not yet available and the timing of its launch is unknown.

With reference to the Telegram News group on the social network, the media reported on the presence of an end-to-end encryption mode for voice calls and the availability of only personal calls. The functions of disconnecting the microphone and turning on the speakerphone are available, the ability to apply personal permissions for calls (for example, only to users specified in contacts)^[57].

The Disconnected Calls feature is available. Presumably, there will be calls to the official application of the messenger for desktop OS - Telegram Desktop.

The functionality is not finally approved and some functions may not be available. The possibility of calls is called the "main update of the year," but the launch period of the full-featured mode is not commented on by any official.

It is not known about the official comments of the developers of the Telegram messenger on March 13, 2017.

As of March 13, 2017, the current stable version of the messenger for Android 3.17. For iOS - 3.16.1.

2016: How Telegram works: Technology overview

The global service uses a proprietary server part with closed code and several open source clients, including under the GNU GPL.

User accounts are linked to phone numbers. When registering in the service and then authorizing devices, the telephone number is checked by SMS messages with a code or a telephone call.

To ensure security, the messenger message created the MTProto protocol. It involves the use of multiple encryption protocols. Authorization and authentication use RSA-2048 algorithms DH-2048 for encryption, when transmitting protocol messages to the network, they are encrypted by AES with a key known to the client and server. Cryptographic hash algorithms SHA-1 and MD5 are also used.

Protection against interception of forwarded messages from the Telegram server is provided in Secret Chats mode (available from October 8, 2013). In this mode, encryption is performed, in which only the sender and the recipient have a common key (end-to-end encryption), using the AES-256 algorithm in the Infinite Garble Extension (IGE) mode for forwarded messages. Messages in secret chats are not decrypted by the server, and the correspondence history is saved only on two devices, initiators of chat creation.

When exchanging files, you can send files from your device, search for media content on the Internet, if you use the mobile version for iOS or Android. The size of the files transferred is limited to 1.5 GB.

The program uses a system to continue transferring files in the event of a disconnection.

Using a special API, third-party developers can create "bots," special accounts managed by programs. Typical bots respond to commands in personal and group chats, can perform Internet searches, other tasks, are used for entertainment purposes or in business.

Notes