Russian police might be involved in hacking Telegram accounts, says Pavel Durov

Russian police have apparently begun pressuring mobile phone operators to intercept authorization text messages generated by the messaging app Telegram, according to the service’s creator, Pavel Durov.

Durov said in a characteristically colorful statement published on the radio station Echo of Moscow that such policing measures are usually adopted by the “cannibalistic regimes that don’t care about their own reputations” in Central Asia and sometimes in the Middle East.

Durov was addressing a scandal last week where oppositionists Oleg Kozlovsky and Georgy Alburov reported several attempts to hack their Telegram accounts.