Russian entrepreneur and founder of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov while criticizing the WhatsApp service said that the messenger, owned by Meta, was hardly ever secure, in his Telegram channel.
Durov also suspects that the service may intentionally introduce vulnerabilities.
"Since the creation of WhatsApp, there has hardly been a moment when it was secure: every few months, researchers discover a new security problem in the application," he added.
Durov noted that every few months researchers find a new security issue in the application. He recalled that he had already spoken out about the danger of the service in 2020. Since then, as the creator of Telegram considered, the situation with WhatsApp has not changed.
As an illustration of his words, he cited a study by the American information technology company Boldend, which revealed a vulnerability in WhatsApp. The gap in the messenger has existed for several years and allows attackers to gain access to the correspondence of their victims unnoticed.
In addition, the creator of Telegram commented on a Forbes report, which claims that Facebook investor Peter Thiel secretly funded a startup with the ability to hack WhatsApp. "WhatsApp users' messages have been available for attacks by potential hackers for years," Durov said about the report.
"It would be hard to believe that WhatsApp technicians are so often incompetent. Telegram, a much more technically sophisticated application, has never had such serious security problems," Durov concluded.
In December, Durov said that his Telegram remains protected from the influence of third parties. He cited the example of the FBI report, which claimed that the bureau has access to Viber, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Line, but Telegram, Threema, Signal, and Wickr do not transmit correspondence to third parties. At the same time, it was noted that Telegram can, at the request of law enforcement officers, issue the IP address and phone number of the user.
Earlier, Pavel Durov's team advised the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine on cryptocurrencies. The Minister said that he actively uses the Telegram messenger for fast communications.
