Telegram founder Pavel Durov commented on information about Pegasus spyware, which was used to hack smartphones running iOS and Android and spy on tens of thousands of famous people around the world.
Both Apple and Google are part of a global surveillance program that implies that these companies should, among other things, implement backdoors into their mobile operating systems. These backdoors, usually disguised as security bugs, allow US agencies to access information from any smartphone in the world. The problem with these backdoors is that they are never meant for just one side. Anyone can use them. Therefore, if the US security agency can jailbreak an iOS or Android phone, any other organization that finds these backdoors can do the same. Unsurprisingly, that’s exactly what happened: An Israeli company called the NSO Group was selling access to surveillance tools that allowed third parties to hack tens of thousands of phones.
According to him, Pegasus allows you to jailbreak any iOS and Android phone, and there is no way to protect your device from that. It doesn’t matter what applications you use, because the system is hacked at a deeper level.
I have known since at least 2018 that one of my phone numbers was included in the list of potential targets for such surveillance tools. Personally, this did not bother me: since 2011, when I was still living in Russia, I used to assume that all my phones were jailbroken. Anyone who has access to my personal data will be extremely disappointed – they will have to go through thousands of conceptual projects for Telegram functions and millions of messages related to our product development process. They will not find any important information there.
Durov argues that the existence of backdoors in critical infrastructure and software creates a huge problem for humanity. Therefore, he calls on the world’s governments to act against the Apple-Google duopoly in the smartphone market and force them to open their closed ecosystems and create conditions for increased competition.
So far, government officials have been very slow. I hope that the news that they themselves have become the target of these surveillance tools will prompt politicians to change their minds.
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