Carlson this weekend and said that as the only product manager from the company, he has only employed “about 30 engineers.”. This news came as a surprise to all internet users, which made the interview video famous on X.
However, this news did not come as expected for the app users. Durov presented its company as being super efficient, only needing one project manager, himself, and only one equity holder, him being the sole director as well. Even more so, the company does not have any HR teams, and new team members are being recruited after resolving very complex engineering problems resolving them getting them the status of “the best of the best of the best”. Some of them even received an offer to work at Telegram.
The company that has now its HQ in Dubai was founded in 2013 by Nikolai and Pavel Durov, two brothers who formerly created the biggest social network app from Russia – VK. The social app was later taken over by the Russian government, and Pavel Durov sold his VK stakes and left the country, moving forward with the development of Telegram.
The instant messaging app has an estimated user base of over 1.5 billion and an estimated monthly active user base of 800 million. Security experts have some serious concerns over the number of engineers operating the app. Matthew Green, a cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University, reported for TechCrunch that “Without end-to-end encryption, huge numbers of vulnerable targets, and servers located in the UAE? Seems like that would be a security nightmare,”.
The cryptography expert refers to the process of encrypting Telegram messages, which are not encrypted by default. The encryption of messages is on other platforms such as WhatsApp and Signal. For messages to be encrypted, Telegram users must start a “SecretChat” and shock on the end-to-end encrypted feature. This feature allows users to send messages and start chats without anyone but the receipt knowing the content of the message.
Even more so, in the interview, Pavel Durov said that his brother was the one who had developed the encryption algorithm. Eva Galperin, Cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also reported for TechCrunch:
“What makes Telegram different (and much worse!) is that Telegram is not just a messaging app, it is also a social media platform. As a social media platform, it is sitting on an enormous amount of user data. Indeed, it is sitting on the contents of all communications that are not one-on-one messages that have been specifically [end-to-end] encrypted, (...) Thirty engineers’ means that there is no one to fight legal requests, and there is no infrastructure for dealing with abuse and content moderation issues. (...) And I would even argue that the quality of those 30 engineers isn’t that great.”
Galperin continued. “Also, if I was a threat actor, I would definitely consider this to be encouraging news. Every attacker loves a profoundly understaffed and overworked opponent.”.
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