French Police Arrest Telegram CEO and Owner – Source: www.databreachtoday.com

Cybercrime
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Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Pavel Durov Reportedly Detained For Complicity Over Criminal Use

Akshaya Asokan (asokan_akshaya) •
August 25, 2024    

French media reported Saturday the detention outside Paris of Pavel Durov, CEO and owner of social media network Telegram, reportedly for failing to take steps to curb criminal activity on the platform.

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French television network TF1 reported that French authorities arrested Durov when his private plane landed Saturday evening at Bourget airport, located in the outer exurbs of the French capital. Pavel is a Russia national who also holds citizenship in the United Arab Emirates and France.

Durov in July posted on his Telegram channel that the platform has reached 950 million monthly active users. The company is based in Dubai, where DUrov also lives. Although often described as a platform for encrypted chat, Telegram isn’t encrypted by default and security researchers have cast doubt on the safety of its encryption protocol.

French broadcaster BFMTV reported that French authorities allege Durov is complicit in the money-laundering, drug trafficking and child sexual abuse material activities that are rife on Telegram.

Durov is set to appear before French prosecutors on Sunday and is set to be placed in pre-trial detention if indicted, TF1 reported, citing French authorities. The Russian Embassy in France posted early on Sunday that it has demanded an explanation from the French government but had yet to receive a response. Forbes estimates that Durov is worth $15.5 billion.

In a statement posted on the official company channel Sunday, Telegram called its content moderation “within industry standards” and said it is constantly improving. “It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company also said.

Since its inception in 2013, Telegram has grown as a popular messaging and micro-blogging service, particularly in Russia and other former Soviet countries. Among its users are self-proclaimed Russian hacktivists who have used it to coordinate distributed denial of service attacks against Western targets (see: Down, Not Out: Russian Hacktivists Claiming DDoS Disruptions).

Cyber criminals have also used it to distribute malware and host command and control infrastructure. Ukrainian cyber defenders earlier this year warned that a Russian hacking group was using Telegram to infect mobile devices carried by military personnel (see: Report: Russian Hackers Targeting Ukrainian Soldiers on Apps).

Durov has previously said his decision to base Telegram in Dubai is due to the city’s “political neutrality”, adding that the platform is “about freedom of speech.”

He previously co-founded VKontakte, a Russian alternative to Facebook in 2006, but was forced to sell the platform and flee to Dubai in 2014 after he allegedly refused to comply with the Russian government’s continued pressure to crack down on political dissidents on VK.

The Russian government in 2018 attempted to block domestic access to Telegram but rescinded the formal ban in 2020, stating that the company had proved its willingness to cooperate on measures combatting “terrorism and extremism.”

With reporting by Information Security Media Group’s David Perera in Washington, D.C.