Die wahren Gründe für die Festnahme von Pawel Durow

Eine Leserin meint, sie gefunden zu haben.

Die israelische Zeitung Haaretz nämlich schreibe, 21.8.2024: After Iran Steals Sensitive Israeli Data, Israel Tries to Censor the Internet

Anti-Israel hackers stole troves of sensitive Israeli data and are now publishing gigabytes of secret and classified information. Unable to stop the hacks, Israel is waging a futile war to against the leaks

A few months ago, foreign hackers managed to break into a computer linked to Israel’s Justice Ministry. Tens of thousands of classified files and sensitive emails were leaked. Links allowing anyone to download the breached files were published on Telegram, the popular instant messaging app.

However, they soon began to disappear. One by one, the hacker’s Telegram channels were taken down, their users deleted and posts that shared the download links gone.
Since October 7, Israel has faced an unprecedented onslaught of cyber-attacks: accounts of officials and key figures from Israel’s security establishment, servers of private firms, military and defense contractors, municipalities, hospitals and even government ministries and key bodies they interact with were all targeted, if not successfully hacked, in a seemingly endless string of attacks, the full extent of which has not yet been made public. […]

Sources say the true extent of the damage to Israel’s security and economy caused by these leaks is not yet fully known, not even to those in charge of dealing with the issue in Israel. They say that despite massive investment in defensive cybersecurity measures, the scale of the leaks is likely the most severe in Israel’s history – “an unprecedented looting of gigabytes upon gigabytes of information of all sorts.”
Local cyber security experts explain that many times, the surfacing of hacked materials is just the public crescendo of a clandestine hack that began some time ago.

[…]

After their intelligence value is maxed out, or their operation is caught, the hackers shift gears and begin very loudly trying to publicize the stolen digital goods. Their goal: cause financial and reputational damages to Israel and Israeli firms, especially those who work with the military or state.
In other words, after the hacks come the leaks. Accordingly, once hacked, Israel works to prevent the leak and try to minimize its spread, and thus try to mitigate the long term damage caused by its online existence.
According to a number of people knowledgeable on the matter, Israel is waging a digital war on a number of fronts to try to stem the seemingly endless leak of its information. These efforts include monitoring the web and social media sites for leaks and using legal take-down requests to tech firms like Google, Amazon, Meta and even Telegram, to have them removed or blocked.

In some cases, the policy proves quite successful. Websites hosted by Western firms have been taken down for providing a home for digital loot flagged by Israeli authorities. Recently, a number of accounts were taken down by Telegram after posting links to hacked materials, including the hackers’ own official channels, but also that of a well-known leaks website that frequently works with journalists and has recently started hosting leaked Israeli data.

[…]

In recent months, for example, Israeli requests flagging violations of Telegram’s terms of use have led to at least 10 takedowns of hacker groups’ users and channels. Many times, it’s the same hacker group who, undeterred, have opened a new channel and posted new links to the same leak.

Telegram has proved a massive challenge for Israel since the start of the war. While many tech firms have streamlined mechanisms through which states can reach out to them, Telegram is considered the least cooperative of them all.

More than that, while many social media platforms have invested heavily in moderation, allowing people and organizations to help monitor content – for example, the removal of antisemitic content or posts inciting terrorism or even the removal of videos from the October 7 massacre – Telegram has not. States and users alike have a single email address to which they can send their grievances.

Telegram emerged at the start of the war as a key platform utilized by Hamas’ information warfare against Israel, one Israel was unable to properly address, lacking both monitoring capabilities and an understanding of the platform.

Concerned by the wave of pro-Hamas content, which included videos from the actual attack as well as a constant stream of propaganda materials, Israelis in the high-tech industry tried late in 2023 to reach Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov.

Though they successfully contacted Durov, who lives in the UAE, he was unreceptive to these private requests to improve moderation on the platform. Though a few pages linked directly to Hamas’ military wing were locally blocked at a later stage, the private initiative failed to gain any real traction with the app’s founder.

[…]

Sources explain that Google or Meta will take down a page if it is shown to be directly linked to Hamas and Amazon will remove a website for hosting terrorist materials. On Telegram, content cannot be taken down with such arguments.

[…]

In fact, the Iranians are using Russian providers not beholden to Western legal standards. Somewhat in line with its influence goals, Ben Ami notes that one of the Russian hosting sites the Iranian hackers utilize was recently exposed as a key hosting provider for the Russian Doppelganger campaign, in which websites across the world were forged using AI.

Na, sieh mal einer an.

Mir war doch gleich so, als kämen da die Informationen erst verzögert ans Licht.

Und auf einmal ergibt die ganze Nummer einen schönen großen Sinn. Da ist Telegram wohl für Iran und Hisbollah zu nutzen, was vielleicht auch damit zusammenhängen könnte, dass die Russen von den Iranern so etwas wie Drohnen brauchen, und die Iraner dafür dann auch gerne was hätten, und sich das Ganze vielleicht etwas mehr dem amerikanischen Einfluss entzieht, als die Amerikaner das noch gut finden. Und dann noch so Sachen wie die gehackten Daten aus Israel, großes Datenloch, großes Problem.

Da könnte man durchaus auf den Gedanken kommen, dass die Amerikaner mal Durow eine Einladung zum 5-Uhr-Tee geschickt haben – eine von der Sorte, die man nicht ablehnen kann.

Das sieht alles so aus, als gäbe es da „Gesprächsbedarf“.

Im Prinzip die XXL-Nummer von dem, was man mit vorwitzigen kleinen Kryptologen macht.

Sagen wir es so: Es wäre die erste plausible Erklärung, die mir unterkommt. Und an der halte ich jetzt mal fest, bis mir (was ich allerdings für unwahrscheinlich halte) etwas noch Plausibleres unterkommt.

Es wäre durchaus denkbar, dass Telegram eine Art anti-amerikanische Alternative zu US-kontrollierten Social Media ist, und der vielleicht auch gar nicht so zerstritten mit Russland ist, wie das nach außen hin scheint (oder scheinen soll), und das so eine Art antiamerikanisches Facebook ist, und das den Amerikanern jetzt zu bunt wurde, oder sich der nicht ausreichend kooperativ gezeigt hat und man da einfach Überzeugungsdefizite pragmatisch beheben wollte.

Wie es so schön heißt: Ein Meinungsaustausch. Man geht mit seiner Meinung zum Chef, und kommt mit dessen Meinung wieder raus. Wenn überhaupt.