Post by @rysiek@mstdn.social

Independent audit confirms my analysis of Telegram's protocol from last year:
https://istories.media/en/stories/2026/05/18/independent-review-confirms-critical-telegram-vulnerability/

The audit was ordered by one of the main characters of IStories' investigation into Telegram's network infrastructure, man called Vedeneev. My analysis was done in connection with that journalistic investigation.

Presumably, Vedeneev ordered the audit in order to discredit my analysis and Istories' investigation. Instead, the report confirms my findings.

#Telegram #InfoSec

Важные истории — IStories

Independent Review Confirms Critical Telegram Vulnerability Previously Exposed by IStories

The privacy of hundreds of millions of users is at risk, experts say

#Telegram #InfoSec

Dźwiedziu

@dzwiedziu@mastodon.social · 2 hours ago

@rysiek
Telegram: still shit.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@rysiek@mstdn.social · 2 hours ago

@dzwiedziu

🌏 🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀°o( always has been )

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@rysiek@mstdn.social · 3 hours ago

You can find my original analysis here:
https://rys.io/en/179.html

tl;dr: for every device, Telegram generates a long-term identifier, auth_key_id, that is then prepended *cleartext* (or at best, trivially obfuscated) to every encrypted packet; this allows anyone with sufficient visibility into global Telegram traffic to spy on its users.

Songs on the Security of Networks

Telegram is indistinguishable from an FSB honeypot

Many people who focus on information security, including myself, have long considered Telegram suspicious and untrustworthy. Now, based on findings published by the investigative journalism outlet ISt

⁂

More from

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

@rysiek@mstdn.social · 2 hours ago

And you can find IStories' reporting from last year here:
https://istories.media/en/stories/2025/06/10/telegram-fsb/

tl;dr Telegram seems to be using a single networking provider globally, and that provider seems to be connected to FSB.

Which would provide the FSB just the kind of visibility into global Telegram traffic that would be needed to be able to spy on users using the long-term identifier.