Telegram Responds to IStories Investigation on Messenger Servers

Telegram’s press service, responding to the IStories investigation into the ties between the messenger’s infrastructure contractor and Russian security agencies, stated that the company works with dozens of contractors worldwide, but none of them have access to user data or critically important infrastructure.

“All Telegram servers are Telegram’s property maintained by Telegram employees. Unauthorized access is not possible. Telegram has neither employees nor servers in Russia. In the entire history of Telegram, it has never handed over private messages to third parties, and its encryption has never been hacked,” the press service of the messenger replied.

Contradictions

More than 10,000 IP addresses of servers storing Telegram messages belong to the company Global Network Management (GNM) from the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda, according to data from the European internet registrar RIPE.

In 2018, GNM filed a lawsuit against the owner of a data center in Miami. We reviewed the case materials and learned how Telegram’s infrastructure is organized from the inside and who maintains it. In the case files, Telegram servers are listed as the property of GNM.

The owner of GNM is Vladimir Vedeneev, Russian citizen born in Tolyatti, a city on the left bank of the Volga river. He also served as CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of Telegram and maintained its equipment on behalf of GNM.

“GNM installs client equipment — in this case for the Telegram messenger — and subsequently provides technical support for this equipment,” he explained in court.

According to court materials in Florida, Vedeneev has physical access to Telegram’s servers. The Florida court hearings concerned unauthorized access to Telegram’s servers — someone broke into the server room and stole nearly 1,500 memory cards from Telegram equipment.

Vedeneev himself and several employees of his company are physically contantly present in Russia or visit the country on a regular basis. According to his statements in court, half of GNM’s employees are located in Russia, where the company has an office in St. Petersburg.

Read the investigation on the IStories website or watch it on YouTube.