Telegram is a cross-platform messenger that allows you to exchange messages and media files in many formats. A proprietary closed-source server part is used, operating at the facilities of several companies in the USA and Germany, funded by Pavel Durov in the amount of about US $ 13 million annually, and several open source clients, including those under the GNU GPL license.
The number of monthly active users of the service as of the end of March 2018 is more than 200 million people. In August 2017, in his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov said that the number of users is increasing by more than 600 thousand daily.
According to the Romir research holding for February 2018, on average, Telegram users in Russia spend 10-11 minutes a day on it. The largest share of users is among Russians aged 18-24. In Moscow, Telegram is twice as popular as in Russia as a whole, especially among the audience from 35 to 44 years old.
In addition to the standard messaging in dialogs and groups, the messenger can store an unlimited number of files (→), maintain channels (microblogs) (→), create and use bots (→).
Since April 16, 2018, restrictions have been imposed on the use of the messenger on the territory of Russia
History
The project was created by Pavel Durov, the founder of the social network VKontakte. In an interview with The New York Times, Pavel said that the initial idea for the application came to him back in 2011, when special forces came to his door. When the latter still left, Durov immediately wrote to his brother Nikolai. It was then that he realized that he had no safe way to communicate with his brother. The service is built on the encryption technology of MTProto correspondence, developed by Pavel's brother, Nikolai. Telegram itself was originally an experiment owned by Pavel's Digital Fortress company with the aim of testing MTProto under heavy loads.
On August 14, 2013, the first Telegram client for iOS devices was presented.
On August 22, 2013, one of the participants in the Durov’s Android Challenge wrote and made publicly available the first application for the Android operating system compatible with Telegram (uses the same MTProto protocol).
In October, the project launched its website and presented the official open source version of Telegram for Android (GPL2). The previous version of the program is available under the name "Unofficial Telegram S".
On November 7, 2013, third-party clients of the service for Windows and macOS with limited functionality appeared. The concept of the client's web version was also developed.
In November, the program had, according to TJournal, about 1 million installations.
In January 2014, an unofficial web version of Webogram was released from the former VKontakte developer Igor Zhukov.
On July 21, 2014, the Telegram HD application for iPhone and iPad appeared in the App Store, which was downloaded by Telegram Messenger LLP.
The new application received a special version for Apple iPad, improved support for high-resolution video and photos, added the ability to send animated images in.
On October 15, 2014, support for pseudonyms was added to Telegram, by which it is possible to contact users without even knowing their phone number, and a web client was launched.
On January 2, 2015, support for stickers was added to Telegram. Initially, there are 14 stickers in the application, but any user can modify them or add their own. Unlike many apps, stickers on Telegram are completely free.
In February 2016, one of the creators of Telegram, Pavel Durov, said that more than 100 million people already use the messenger, while the service delivers about 15 billion messages daily. Back in September 2015, Telegram was transmitting 12 billion messages a day.
In April 2016, it became known that in May 2015, Google was considering buying a messenger for more than $ 1 billion.
In May 2016, it became possible to edit sent messages. Changes can be made within two days from the date of sending. In this case, a special label will appear in the message.
On November 22, 2016, the developers launched the Telegraph project - a blogging platform, a free publishing tool that allows you to create publications, reviews, insert photos and all kinds of embedded code. Telegraph is a hybrid of a blogging platform, messenger and platisher (like Medium), with the concept of anonymous imageboards.
On January 3, 2017, one of the developers added the ability to delete their sent messages. After the sender deletes the message, the interlocutor will not be able to see the deleted message.
In March 2017, V. D. Solovey, citing an anonymous source, said that the Russian special services had gained access to user messages and their archive for three years. Pavel Durov called this statement a duck.
On May 15, 2017, it became known that the desktop version of Telegram was able to make calls.
On May 16, 2017, the Telegram administration announced that it would not provide information to Russian government agencies.
On May 19, 2017, along with the new Telegram update for iOS, built-in HTML5 games were removed. According to the founder of the messenger Pavel Durov, representatives of the App Store did not approve the publication of a new version of the messenger with built-in games, threatening the Telegram team with removing the application from the store.
On June 28, 2017, Roskomnadzor entered the program into the Register of Information Distributors.
On September 27, 2017, Durov announced the FSB's request on July 14 to provide "information necessary to decode received, transmitted, delivered and (or) processed electronic messages", as well as the subsequent drawing up of an administrative protocol for failure to comply with this requirement.
On October 11, 2017, an updated version of the Telegram messenger for iOS and Android appeared in Russian, prepared using the new translations.telegram.org platform, with the help of which the messenger interface was translated into Ukrainian, French, Malay and other languages. The appearance of the media player has also changed and there is an opportunity to share your location.
An example of the attitude of Russian security agencies to the messenger can be the following fact: on October 16, 2017, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow fined Telegram 800 thousand rubles for refusing to provide the FSB with information to decode messages for 6 numbers that use this messenger. Commenting on the situation, Pavel Durov said that he considers the FSB's requirements on Telegram to be contrary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and asked lawyers who want to deal with the issue to contact him.
In November 2017, the Telegram channel was blocked for the first time due to audio piracy.
On March 20, 2018, the Russian Supreme Court upheld the FSB's requirement to provide keys to decrypt Telegram correspondence. On the same day, Roskomnadzor notified Telegram of the need to comply with the requirements of the law on the provision of information to the FSB of Russia. If Telegram does not provide the FSB encryption keys within 15 days, it may be blocked on the territory of Russia. The creator of the messenger announced the refusal to issue the FSB with encryption keys for correspondence in Telegram.
On March 29, 2018, the messenger crashed. The problem affected both the application and the web client. According to representatives of the company, the problem has affected residents of Europe, the Middle East and the CIS. Users lost the ability to exchange messages, make entries in group chats and channels, and also make calls. According to Pavel Durov, the reason is a power outage in one of the data centers. According to Kommersant, the backup channels probably did not work due to errors in the system configuration.
Number of users
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Technology
For the messenger, the MTProto protocol was created, which involves the use of several encryption protocols. For authorization and authentication, RSA-2048, DH-2048 algorithms are used for encryption; when protocol messages are transmitted to the network, they are encrypted with AES with a key known to the client and server. SHA-1 and MD5 cryptographic hash algorithms are also used.
Since October 8, 2013, the (Secret Chats) mode has appeared in the messenger. This mode implements encryption, in which only the sender and the recipient have a common key (end-to-end encryption), using the AES-256 algorithm in the IGE (Infinite Garble Extension) mode for forwarded messages. Unlike the usual mode, messages in secret chats are not decrypted by the server, the history of correspondence is saved only on the two devices on which the chat was created.
When exchanging files, you can both send files from the device and search for media content on the Internet, if the mobile version for iOS or Android is used. The size of the transferred files is limited to 1.5 GB. The program uses the system to resume files after a connection break.
It is possible to change the formatting of the text, making it: bold, italic and monospaced. In addition, using a special bot, you can check spelling.
In 2018, in version 4.8 for Android, innovations were introduced: watching videos in parallel with downloading files and an automatic night theme that turns on at late time of day, in low light or when the battery charge is less than 25%.
Features of the
All functionality in Telegram is divided into tabs. Each tab is designed as a chat. Telegram has 5 types of such chats:
· Dialogues (→);
Groups (→);
· Saved messages (→);
Channels (→);
· Chats with bots (→).
Dialogues
The design and functionality of dialogs is not very different from other messengers. There are standard features: voice messages, attaching files, stickers and emoji, the ability to see that the interlocutor has read the message, preview links, etc.
Dialogue design in Telegram
Groups
It is possible to organize groups of up to 200 participants, starting from November 2015, supergroups up to 1000 participants, from March 14, 2016 - supergroups up to 5000 participants. From June 30, 2017, the size of supergroups increased to 10,000 members, from January 30, 2018 - supergroups to 100,000 members.
Saved messages (favorites)
All necessary messages can be saved in a separate tab. You can also upload an unlimited number of files there, that is, the messenger provides an endless cloud.
Channels
The most important feature that distinguishes Telegram from its competitors is a communication tool in the format of public channels. This method allows an author or a group of authors to share information with an unlimited number of people with a minimum distance between the reader and the content, while maintaining anonymity.
Telegram channels have three key differences from standard microblogging (such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr …):
· Lack of algorithmic news feed.
· Lack of feedback.
· Anonymity.
Lack of algorithmic news feed
In most popular social networks, all publications that are shown to the user are displayed in the form of a news feed that automatically adjusts to the interests of the user, that is, it shows those publications that, as the algorithms assume, are most interesting to him (the user). It can be flipped endlessly.
Telegram channel is designed as a chat; if a publication appears in it, the subscriber receives a notification. Except for two cases:
1. The user has turned off notifications from this channel or turned off notifications in principle.
2. The author of the publication used "quiet mode".
This feature has several advantages and disadvantages. For example, in such a system, the value of information increases, since users are less likely to subscribe to a channel with low-quality content.
Lack of feedback
Telegram channels lack the ability to like and write comments. The only way to contact the author is through a private message, if he gave a link to his profile in the channel description. In this case, the author of the channel can use the bots @like, @vote and @CommentsBot to add a vote, a poll or the ability to comment on a specific entry in the channel.
Anonymity
Telegram does not provide anyone, except the channel administrators themselves, with information about who runs the channel and who subscribed to it.
From a conceptual point of view, channels give readers, on the one hand, the opportunity to feel on the same level with the author (channel publications look the same as the exchange of private messages, only without the possibility of readers posting responses), and on the other hand, they allow users to consume content in convenient coordinate system in the format of a separate dialogue (starting from the chronology of the publication of materials).
Bots
With the help of a special API, third-party developers can create "bots", special accounts controlled by programs. Typical bots respond to special commands in personal and group chats, they can also search the Internet or perform other tasks, are used for entertainment or business purposes.
In September 2015, Pavel Durov announced the imminent appearance of opportunities for monetization and advertising in bots.
On May 18, 2017, a payment API was introduced for bots. In order for users to test this function, the Telegram team created a test bot that offers to buy a Time Machine (no money was charged from users).
Multilingualism
Telegram has been translated and continues to be translated into the following languages:
· Windows version: Belarusian, Czech, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Turkish and Russian;
· For Android: Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Czech, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Tatar, Uzbek and Russian;
For iOS (iPhone and iPad): Belarusian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, Turkish and Russian;
· For OS X: Belarusian, Polish and Russian.
At the moment, there is a joint translation into English, Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Malaysian, Persian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian.
Telegram Open Network platform and cryptocurrency Gram
Telegram Open Network
For a long time Telegram existed as a project only at the expense of Pavel Durov and its monetization scheme was not clear. In 2017, Pavel Durov discloses his plans and attracts $ 850 million in investments for his business plan, which is officially registered with the US Securities Commission. In the second round of attracting investors, it was possible to attract another $ 1.7 billion. At the same time, before the third round of placement, Durov rejected about half of the investment applications, investors wanted to immediately invest $ 3.7 billion in the project. Pavel Durov's refusal to receive new investments is due to the fact that his plan to attract them was many times overfulfilled. The cost of creating the Telegram Open Network is estimated by him at $ 400 million.
Pavel Durov does not hide that his idea to build a darknet is not original and is based on many I2P concepts. In the figure, a bot application from the "shadow Internet" is invisible in the ordinary Internet. I2P is an overlay distributed system that uses the existing Internet channels only as a transport and does not already use its IP addresses internally as a means of connecting nodes. Government regulators cannot set rules or filter content within the darknet.
It follows from Pavel Durov's business plan that Telegram as a messenger was, in fact, only the first phase of a larger project and was created mainly to form a huge client base. The real goal of the project is precisely the Telegram Open Network platform, which offers currency with fast processing, as well as various paid services from Proxy for bypassing locks to bots and file storage that can be paid with this Gram cryptocurrency.
Darknet Telegram Open Network
TON is a darknet with full-featured services from payments to file storage and applications, which is based on the paradigm of a distributed system without dependence on constant connection to control servers. In his business plan, Durov calls the I2P system the closest analogue of the darknet.
The architecture of the TON platform, like other darknets, has several levels of protection against attempts to establish any type of government regulation over it (protection "from censorship" in the text of Pavel Durov's business plan). According to media reports, the real reason for blocking Telegram in Russia is precisely the plan to create the Telegram Open Network, where the state completely loses control over payment transactions and data, therefore it will not be able to collect taxes on transactions, protect the interests of copyright holders, etc. traditional regulation.
TON component
Appointment
Analogue
TON Storage
Distributed "torrent-like" storage for files and services
Torrents, eMule
TON Proxy
Proxy and anonymizer architecturally similar to I2P and Tor
Tor, I2P
TON Services
Platform for creating distributed applications for TON
I2P
TON Payments
Payment system, including for micropayments with deferred display in the TON Blockchain
VISA, Mastercard
Cryptocurrency Gram for fast settlements
Gram
Gram is a cryptocurrency based on the Telegram Open Network or TON blockchain platform developed by Telegram. A feature of the Gram blockchain platform is the fast speed of transactions. Cryptocurrencies implemented on blockchain platforms of the initial generations, due to the low speed of transactions, are more suitable for investment than for use as a payment instrument. For example, Bitcoin can provide only 7 transactions per second, Ethereum - 15. The speed of the Gram blockchain platform is expected to be millions of transactions per second. As conceived by the developers, Gram should become a cryptanalogue of Visa and Mastercard.
Vulnerability search contests
In December 2013, Pavel Durov announced a competition until March 1, 2014 to “hack” Telegram's security with a prize fund of $ 200,000. The terms of the competition were aimed at decrypting Pavel's personal correspondence with his brother Nikolai through "secret chats" using encrypted data exchanged between applications and the server. Their messages, sent daily, contained a secret email address that would be decrypted to claim the prize.
The attack model required for such a "hack", the attack based on the ciphertext, is the weakest and, at the same time, the most difficult and inconvenient for the cryptanalyst. There are extremely weak algorithms that may be robust in a given model but vulnerable to other methods. Usually, when analyzing new cryptographic algorithms, stronger attack models are used, in which the attacker can know the text before encryption, be given the opportunity to send any texts for encryption, or the ability to change the data sent over the network. Thus, in the event that no one wins the competition, it will not prove the cryptographic security of the protocol.
On December 23, 2013, just a few days after the start of the competition, the user "Habrahabra", who is not an expert in cryptography, discovered a vulnerability in the fact that the client received parameters for generating DH keys (constants for determining the deduction field) from the server without verification, thanks to which the proprietary MTProto server could transfer incorrect parameters that did not provide cryptographic strength, and secretly conduct a MITM attack on secret chats. Since he was unable to read the correspondence, the amount of the prize was only 100 thousand dollars. After that, the client was updated, it added checking the parameters received from the server in order to significantly reduce the likelihood of such an attack.
In November 2014, a new three-month competition was organized, in which the attack model was expanded, the attacker had the opportunity to act as an MTProto server, changing the data sent. According to the terms of the competition, it is required to hack the "secret chat", while the chat participants verify the keys agreed upon when the chat was opened via independent communication channels.
According to researcher Moxie Marlinspike and others, such contests cannot prove the security of encryption and are only misleading. The lack of winners does not mean that the product is safe, many of these contests are generally dishonest, the analysis is not monitored and conducted by random people, and the rewards are often too small to justify the many years of work of several competent cryptanalysts.
Criticism and conflicts with the authorities
User accounts are linked to phone numbers, which is one of the most significant arguments of Telegram critics, since it does not provide complete anonymity in communication. When registering with the service and subsequent authorizations of new devices, the phone number is checked by sending an SMS message with a code (on some OS, it is intercepted by the application) or a phone call.
WhatsApp founder Jan Kum pointed out in a comment for Cossa.ru that the ideas implemented in his application are used in Telegram.
Telegram servers do not save messages from secret chats, but they save the history of regular chats and the contents of the user's address book for the period of use of the service and for the period of inactivity specified in the account settings (from one month to a year). The encryption used in the messenger does not provide PFS in all cases.
By default, official Telegram clients actively send all contacts meta information about opening and closing an application, and any user can subscribe to this meta information. To disable such mailing, you need to change your account settings.
Also, doubts about the security of the MTProto protocol have been repeatedly expressed.
There are reports that the messenger can be used by various terrorist groups for both communication and propaganda. In particular, the terrorist group ISIS (ISIS) used Telegram to disseminate its statements to more than 14 thousand subscribers in more than 30 channels in various languages. However, the Telegram team is actively looking for and further blocking such channels.
Censorship
Telegram has selectively applied censorship. In particular, the messenger has been used for some time in Iran to distribute pornography and satirical comments about the government. Telegram's management has restricted the activities of some bots and banned certain sets of sticker images at the request of the Iranian government. At the same time, Telegram chats were not censored. In October 2015, Durov said that Telegram Messenger LLP refused to help Iran in spying on citizens and in censorship, which caused the application to be blocked for some time. On April 30, 2018, the Iranian authorities completely banned the use of the Telegram messenger, by a court decision in connection with "complaints from citizens" and "security requirements." At that time, Telegram was one of the most popular applications, it was used by about half of the country's population. After the ban, the messenger was available without using blocking bypass tools.
The messenger was blocked by the authorities in some regions of China, where it could be used to coordinate anti-government protests.
On November 4, 2017, Telegram was temporarily blocked in Afghanistan.
Conflict with Roskomnadzor
On May 16, 2017, Russian media reported for the first time that Roskomnadzor was threatening to close Telegram. On June 23, 2017, the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, publicly sent an appeal to Pavel Durov with a requirement to provide information about the company for the subsequent inclusion of the Telegram messenger in the Register of organizers of information dissemination on the network. The following data were required from Durov: full and abbreviated name, country of registration, tax identifier and / or identifier in the trade register of the country of registration, location address, postal address, email address, domain name, email address of the resource administrator, hosting provider and a description of the service provided services. Durov refused to comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor, in response to which he received a warning about blocking the messenger in Russia. According to the creator of Telegram himself, the actions of Roskomnadzor were another sabotage of state interests. On his page on the VKontakte social network, Durov pointed to the political neutrality of his messenger, in contrast to the US-controlled WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Nevertheless, the department hinted at Durov's neutral attitude towards terrorists, who, according to the official statement of the FSB of Russia, used Telegram when preparing a terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro. In this regard, Roskomnadzor demanded that Pavel Durov issue keys for decrypting correspondence in order to identify potential terrorists.
On June 26, 2017, Pavel Durov said that Telegram is not the only possible means for preparing terrorist attacks, and for this purpose one can limit ourselves to disposable phones. The creator of the messenger also stressed that the decryption of correspondence required by the department is contrary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation and will not in any way protect the world from terrorists, since it will endanger millions of Telegram users. Later, the chairman of the board of the Institute for the Development of the Internet, German Klimenko, called Pavel Durov's position "mockery." The Kremlin, however, announced the use of other messengers in the event of blocking Telegram in Russia, refusing to comment on the very conflict situation between Durov and Roskomnadzor. For example, Dmitry Peskov said that Kremlin employees actively use the messenger.
A warning about the possible closure of the messenger was sent personally to the Telegram administrators, and they, in turn, disseminated information among the administrators of the most popular Telegram channels. Immediately after the first messages about the possible closure of the messenger, active users created a petition on change.org, which was signed by eight thousand people. Users of the messenger believe: “it is useless to ask government departments: they follow orders and execute laws, whatever these laws may be”, “to ask those who give orders is even more useless - in Russia laws too often do a part of society that is in need of a protected and free territory for the exchange of information”.
According to the amendments to the law "On information, information technologies and information protection", from January 1, 2018, the organizers of the dissemination of information on the Internet are obliged to store on the territory of Russia information on the facts of receipt, transmission, delivery and / or processing of voice information, written text, images, sounds, videos or other electronic messages of users and information about these users within a year, and the content itself - up to six months. Services are required to provide this content at the request of federal executive authorities and provide them with the ability to decode information.
Independent expert of leading aggregators Pavel Khramtsov, interview to Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper:
On June 27, 2017, Alexander Zharov explained that the priority requirements of the department for Durov in no way imply access to personal correspondence of users. Soon, Roskomnadzor recorded cases of receiving inaccurate information with data about Telegram from random Internet users. On June 28, Pavel Durov agreed to provide the department with authentic data, saying that all the necessary information is in the public domain. However, the creator of Telegram clarified that he would not take any additional obligations from the Russian special services. On the same day, the messenger was entered into the Register of Information Distributors under the number 90-RR.
Blocking Telegram in Russia
Blocking Telegram in Russia
On March 20, 2018, Telegram's lawsuit against the FSB of Russia was dismissed. The messenger was required to provide the technology for decrypting users' private messages within 15 days. Roskomnadzor has promised to immediately block Telegram if the requirements are not met. In response, Pavel Durov said on Twitter that threats to block Telegram would not bring results.
On April 13, 2018, the Tagansky Court of Moscow ruled in favor of Roskomnadzor, thereby allowing it to start blocking the messenger in Russia.
On April 16, 2018, Roskomnadzor began the procedure for blocking Telegram. In response, Durov announced the creation of the "Digital Resistance" and the beginning of the payment of bitcoin grants to administrators of Proxy and VPN services.
After the start of blocking Telegram, an increase in its use in Russia was recorded.
On April 30, 2018, a campaign was held in the center of Moscow in support of the Telegram blocked in Russia, which gathered (when counting those who passed through the established framework) over 12 thousand people.
On May 28, 2018, Roskomnadzor demanded that Apple stop distributing the Telegram application in the App Store in Russia and sending its push notifications, and also threatened to “disrupt the functioning” of the App Store.
