Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the Telegram instant messaging platform, has been charged by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office with a long list of serious offenses.
The man was arrested on Saturday upon his arrival at the Le Bourget airport and taken into custody, but the exact reasons for this action remained unclear until earlier today when the law authorities in France made their case.
According to the press release, Durov is implicated in various forms of complicity related to illegal activities facilitated through the Telegram platform and will be thoroughly investigated with the involvement of France’s Centre for the Fight against Cybercrime and the Anti-Fraud National Office.
The 12 charges against Durov are summarized as follows:
- Complicity – web-mastering an online platform for enabling illegal transactions in an organized group.
- Refusal to communicate information or documents necessary for lawful interceptions.
- Complicity – possessing pornographic images of minors.
- Complicity – distributing, offering, or making available pornographic images of minors in an organized group.
- Complicity – acquiring, transporting, possessing, offering, or selling narcotic substances.
- Complicity – offering, selling, or making available tools or programs for illegal access to data systems.
- Complicity – organized fraud.
- Criminal association with a view to committing a crime or offense punishable by 5 or more years of imprisonment.
- Laundering of proceeds derived from organized crime or offenses.
- Providing cryptology services without certified declaration.
- Providing a cryptology tool without prior declaration.
- Importing a cryptology tool without prior declaration.
Durov’s custody is extended by another 96 hours, until August 28, to allow the authorities to perform a comprehensive investigation on the above.
Telegram’s “grey” status
Telegram has gained massive popularity among cybercriminals in the past couple of years, especially after several law enforcement operations that have resulted in the dismantling of large dark web platforms.
The communications platform currently serves as a hub for the distribution of various illegal materials, and its API is being abused extensively to set up command and control servers on the platform that facilitate data exfiltration for info-stealer malware, etc. There are even malware-as-a-service operations that set up bots to build custom malware payloads for paying cybercriminals.
Despite multiple calls for better moderation on the platform, Telegram has shown no signs it’s willing to put in the effort to curb illegal activity and take decisive action against it. It is characteristic of the mentality of the people behind Telegram, that in its statement about Durov’s arrest, it is mentioned that holding the owner accountable for abuse on the platform is “absurd.”
RestorePrivacy has previously warned about Telegram’s lack of end-to-end encryption in anything but ‘Secret Chats,’ and even there, its code and mechanisms aren’t verifiable. Also, we have noted that the platform logs sensitive user data, including IP addresses, and may share data with government agencies.
On that front, the French accused Telegram of not collaborating with Western authorities when interceptions to perform investigations were required, but there have been previous, unconfirmed reports about Telegram sharing data with the Germans and Russians.
There have been multiple cases of security experts pointing the finger at Telegram for planting backdoors on its app or allowing stealthy exfiltration of group chats that even include messages deleted years ago.
If you’re troubled by these developments and looking to jump ship, check out our list of the best secure messaging apps here.