Russia’s state-backed messaging app Max can secretly change how it surveils individual users, researchers at InterSecLab find

The Kremlin-backed Max messenger has broad capabilities for tracking users, but their configuration can vary from account to account and is controlled by its developer, the Russian social media company VK. That’s according to a new report from the digital security lab InterSecLab, which Meduza has reviewed. For nine weeks, the report’s authors observed how the messenger worked using real accounts, intercepted its network traffic before the point of encryption, and checked each observation agains...