Founder of messaging app on which anything goes is now being questioned by French police: what will come out of Pavel Durov's arrest?

The recent arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov will have other messaging app operators and owners around the world head-desking and facepalming in unison, as it will inevitably be seen as another broadside in the war against encryption.

This is the situation: on the one hand, messaging operators have to provide secure services. We're talking about the Internet, an incredibly hostile environment, after all. You can't even browse the web without HTTPS encryption enabled nowadays.

If a messaging service is not secure, people will fall victim to all sorts of badness and eventually abandon the platform in question.

If it is secure however, bad people might use it and cause serious harm. This is unacceptable for society at large and the police, naturally enough.

Telegram is one of those platforms, used by Islamic State, nazis, you name it extremists on it, along with CSAM, money launderers etc.

The existence of that kind of horrific filth on Telegram is why Durov was arrested in France. 

Not that the Russian-born Telegram founder has lived in France, having gained citizenship in a manner that sounds similar to how fellow tech tycoon Peter Thiel became a New Zealander. 

It's a celebrity case, with the French president Emmanuel Macron stepping in to comment that there's no political motive behind it, and the Russians hinting heavily that there is while demanding an explanation. This despite Durov having upped sticks and left Russia in an apparent stoush with the Putin regime in 2014. 

At the time, Durov was forced out of his original business, the VKontakte social network which remains popular in Russia and former Soviet satellite nations. His comeback with Telegram has been stunning though, and he's supposedly worth a whopping US$15.5 billion now.

That's due to Telegram being hugely popular, with an estimated one billion users. It's more than just messaging as well, with its channels and social networking features, which Durov and his team have added to turn Telegram into a very attractive proposition for users.

And, it's encrypted. This is a big part of why authorities globally don't like Telegram - or Signal, Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp and other messaging platforms. Encryption, particularly if it's end to end between devices, keeps users' communications secure. If implemented correctly, it means nobody can eavesdrop on messages. That covers all messages, as in both legit and illegal ones.

Having end-to-end encrypted communications doesn't necessarily mean they are unbreakable, because the tech is difficult to get right at every level. The criminals who used the end-to-end encrypted EncroChat found that out the hard way, as the police compromised the service and gained access to huge amount of information passed on freely by criminals who thought they were free to say whatever they want.

Similarly, how encryption protected Telegram messages are, is unproven as cryptographer Matthew Green noted.

The protocol used, MTProto, is developed by Durov's brother Nikolai. It is proprietary, as in not open source like the Signal protocol, but cryptographers have dug into it and not found many glaring flaws although they have noted that the Telegram architecture with centralised servers throughout the world probably is a weakness.

This especially so as you have to opt in for end-to-end encryption, without which it would be possible to intercept communications at the servers. That is, Telegram could intercept the communications.

That's academic now, because information leaks out and the French authorities have gathered evidence of what has been taking place on Telegram. It's a long list of horrific stuff. In that scenario, the French did what they had to do and hauled in Durov for questioning because he is ultimately responsible for not taking action against it.

Next up, nobody should be surprised if further evidence of wrongdoing appears, thanks to weaknesses in how Telegram is designed. Watch this space, but maybe not via a Telegram channel?

Update The comments on this story are becoming problematic, and may be turned off if the disinformation and irrelevant conspiracy theory messages continue. Regurgitating all sorts of wild and completely misleading stuff that's been published online somewhere simply spoils the experience for others who aren't into that kind of material.

Interestingly enough, Macron is an avid Telegram user, Politico reports, along with many French politicians. One of the developers of the Signal messaging app, Moxie Marlinspike, commented on that:

"Telegram messages are not encrypted. France is trying to arrest the CEO of a Russian team that has plaintext access to every message the French president has ever sent or received."