Much more than "30 engineers": Telegram commented on the fears of security experts

After the publication of the material "Durov boasts that Telegram serves "about 30 engineers" - security experts call this a "red flag" for users," the ITC.UA edition contacted a representative of Telegram and commented on the main points that caused concern among security experts.

As stated by the Telegram representative, the article of the TechCrunch resource, on which the ITC.UA material is based, is largely based on a misunderstanding of what Pavel Durov meant. He noted that the company has a significantly larger staff than the "about 30 engineers" mentioned in the video.

"In Telegram, there are 30 developers who create applications and their infrastructure, but the main Telegram team consists of approximately 60 people. This team is intentionally small and filled with experts in their fields. As a result, Telegram can react much faster than companies with huge teams and long management chains."

It is separately noted that in addition to the main team of 60 people in Telegram, there are also separate moderation and abuse response teams.

In addition, the Telegram representative pointed out some inaccuracies in the TechCrunch article:

• Telegram does not have data centers in the UAE, and user data is not stored there.
• Telegram's encryption protocols are fully documented, and the programs are open source. Any researcher can verify the integrity and implementation of Telegram encryption. Many researchers have done this, including researchers from the University of Udine, Italy.

"To date, no viable way to hack the encryption used by Telegram has been found," the company representative said in a statement.

In addition, Telegram supports reproducible builds on both iOS and Android, allowing researchers to verify that the applications are built based on the same code.