Telegram CEO: Apple and Google are also responsible for the Pegasus hack

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The Pegasus hacking scandal rocked the tech world with the targeting of many prominent names, as the phones of politicians, journalists, and activists were targeted by the Pegasus monitoring program of the Israeli company NSO, and since phones are the heart of the hack, Apple and Google face a large number of accusations Not providing enough secure software.

Pavel Durov, the founder of the instant messaging app Telegram, said that both Google and Apple had left backdoors open in their systems for such attacks to occur, and in a post on Durov's Telegram channel, he said, both Apple and Google are part of a global monitoring program that suggests these companies have to, among other things, implement backdoors into their mobile operating systems. These backdoors, usually masquerading as security holes, allow agencies to American access to information on any smartphone in the world.”

He said, the problem with such backdoors is that they are never exclusive to one party, anyone can exploit them, so if the US Security Agency can hack an iOS or Android phone, any other organization that discovers these backdoors can do the same, and exactly what the NSO did with Pegasus, according to Durov.

For some time now, Durov said, he's been asking governments to act against Apple and Google, that's why I've been calling on the governments of the world to start working against the Apple-Google duopoly in the smartphone market and force them to open up their closed ecosystems and allow for more competition.

And this isn't the first time Durov has spoken out against Apple. In May, when it was reported that Apple had different rules for China, Durov said that owning an iPhone makes you a digital slave to Apple, you're only allowed to use the apps that Apple lets you in. You install them via their App Store, and you can just use Apple's iCloud to back up your data natively.