The investigation by Important Stories, as reported by The Moscow Times, claims that all messages on Telegram, unlike WhatsApp and Signal, are not protected by end-to-end encryption: they are decrypted and stored on servers. According to the journalists, the servers themselves belong to Global Network Management (GNM), registered in Antigua and Barbuda. GNM has provided Telegram with over 10,000 IP addresses. The company's owner is named as Vladimir Vedeneyev.
In 2018, Vedeneyev testified in a Miami court, where he confirmed that GNM installs client equipment for the messenger and provides technical support. According to him, half of the company's employees work in Russia, and the office is located in St. Petersburg. Court materials indicated that Vedeneyev also held the position of chief financial officer at Telegram itself.
Change of IP Address Owner
Until 2020, the IP addresses now controlled by GNM belonged to the St. Petersburg company Globalnet, a backbone telecommunications operator with fiber-optic networks spanning over 18,000 km. Its clients include the Main Research Computing Center of the Presidential Administration (GlavNIVTs). Officially, GlavNIVTs supports summits and direct lines involving Vladimir Putin, but according to Important Stories, it is unofficially a closed analytical center working in the interests of the FSB, the Federal Protective Service (FSO), the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense, including surveillance of internet users and facial recognition systems.
In the same year, 2020, Globalnet became the first among Russian peering platforms to implement, at the request of Roskomnadzor, a system for monitoring user traffic. After that, State Duma deputy Oleg Matveychev said: “Durov has found a compromise with the FSB. Requests within operational activities are passed there if terrorists or someone is under surveillance. Telegram has installed equipment to monitor all dangerous subjects.”
Expert Assessment
Digital security expert Mikhail Voznyak explained that each message in Telegram is appended with a device identifier, auth_key_id, which is used to select the decryption key on the server. According to him, anyone through whom the traffic passes can track these identifiers and, in combination with IP addresses and sending times, determine the user's location and contacts.
Before publication, Important Stories sent a request to Pavel Durov asking for comment on the information, but he reportedly ignored it.
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