Telegram is down

Quite concerning. IIRC Telegram is based in Russia. And Russia has been trying to ban the app. Maybe they just decided to shut down the company itself. It's within the state's power anyway.

Let the speculation about Russian involvement begin!

EDIT: I am still able to send and receive messages through the app. Looks like a partial outage only.

Seems like this could be related to Russia's attempt to block the service [1].

Since the 500 message is served under a valid TLS certificate, it seems likely that Russia managed to down their backend, leaving nginx with nothing to proxy to.

Since Russia has attempted to force Google and Amazon's hands by blocking wide swaths of cloud subnets in the country, they might have caved under the pressure and suspended Telegram's VMs. Alternatively, perhaps the FSB pulled off a successful hack.

1. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/in-ef...

Damn :/

I have come to love Telegram. Its mobile client is impeccable, which is all the more impressive after you look at its open source code..

Web and native osX clients are just as great (the OsX client is even a great example of a native app done well).

And sadly, not being owned by FAAMG is a big plus nowadays.

If the worst happens and Telegram is definitively down, what do you suggest I use to replace it ?

The Verge is reporting Russia has blocked all their hosting IP addresses. Where by "their" I mean AWS IP addresses they might use. only 15 mullion of them. No biggie, right?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/17/17246150/telegram-russia-...

I wonder if there's some low level network tech who knew _exactly_ what he was doing when his bosses bosses boss _demanded_ to know every IP address Telegram's hosting company used, and just happily handed over a bunch of /15s and went to buy popcorn? (That's what _I_ would have done...)