Telegram is heavily DDoS-heavy, but no significant damage is recorded

Telegram Messenger, one of the world's largest online messaging platforms, has recently been attacked by DDoS (distributed denial of service), but the problem has quickly been resolved by security teams. Things seem to have gradually returned to stability.

A report by ZDNet, posted at the end of June 13, 2019, said: 'Telegram Messenger has recovered and returned to normal operation after suffering a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). ) large-scale targeting their platform on the night of Wednesday 12 June '.

In a related move, the Telegram side also officially confirmed the case and secured more than 200 million of its users that at present, everything seems to have returned to stability, and people will still be able to Use the service completely normal.

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Telegram has suffered from a DDoS attack

More specifically, on June 12, Telegram broadcast an emergency message via its Twitter account, saying the online chat platform is suffering from a wide-ranging DDoS attack. The original tweet is as follows:

'We are currently dealing with an unprecedented scale DDoS attack, users of Telegram platforms in the Americas and from some other countries may have trouble connecting.'

However, Telegram's security team did not flinch at the attack, but even explained the incident to users about how DDoS attacks work in a fun and humorous way. interesting - 'DDoS is' a distributed denial-of-service attack': of online users: On a good day, your server suddenly receives a billion companies asking for access to 'junk' ', and they will make the server overload, unable to handle legitimate requests anymore. Imagine the image of a bustling, noisy 'ghost army' rushing to the fast food store. They are beats, pushes and pushes people who are lining up to steal food. They are so crowded and so crowded that the salespeople panic and cannot serve legitimate buyers. That is how a DDoS attack takes place '.

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Currently all Telegram activities have returned to normal.

According to information from Telegram, cyber criminals behind the incident used a botnet to perform a DDoS attack similar to a "zombie army invading the earth." However, the main purpose of these botnets is only to overload servers, so there will be no impact on data security.

Finally, Telegram fixed the problem and assured users that all was well and everything seemed to have returned to stability.

Another noteworthy point is that the time of the DDoS attack targeting the Telegram platform coincides with the protests against the extradition law in Hong Kong that are happening to the climax. In particular, Telegram itself was used by many Hong Kong protesters as a communication tool and called for struggle.

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For this reason, there has been a lot of inferences about whether this DDoS attack was launched primarily from mainland China, to prevent the protesters in Hong Kong from continuing to use Telegram to communicate and call for protests. The founder and CEO of Telegram, Mr. Pavel Durov posted on his personal Twitter as follows: 'The IP addresses found in the DDos attack on our platform in the past are mainly coming. from China. Historically, all 'national' DDoS campaigns have scale of 200-400Gb / s of garbage access, so is the campaign. Meanwhile the attack we suffered coincided with the time with the Hong Kong protests (coordinated on @telegram). So this case is no exception '.

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Diagram of areas affected by the attack

Violent and fierce protests are taking place in Hong Kong to protest against the regional government's plan to pass a bill that would allow extradition to mainland China. Remarkably, the protests are largely organized and called on major social networking platforms such as Telegram, Facebook, Twitter and many other messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal.

The South China Morning Post reported that protesters are using encrypted messaging applications to organize themselves, share intelligence and avoid police detection. The report also showed that a protesting group administrator on Telegram was arrested for suspecting a plot to provoke real-life incidents.

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Telegram has played an extremely important role in organizing protests because it allows the creation of maximum chat groups of up to 200,000 members, as well as allowing the creation of channels to play unlimited content. viewers. Moreover, the use of Telegram is also considered a safe way to communicate and avoid strict monitoring from Chinese authorities, the reason is that this application supports the ability to encrypt local messages. the set.

The South China Morning Post pointed out that although news about the protests is currently being shared on Facebook and Twitter, most of the sharing and coordination of the most 'sensitive' information of the protesters is possible. done mainly through Telegram and Signal. At the same time, the report also said that technology users in the world's most populous country are now more interested in privacy, especially after Cambridge Analytica's Facebook data breach was exposed, and the Rapid development of big data monitoring and data collection technology in the mainland.

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Telegram said the attack originated in China

To conclude the issue, the South China Morning Post cited a speech by Lokman Tsui, a professor at the University of China, who studies media and technology, said: 'At present, everyone is more and more knowledgeable about technology, at the same time possessing a way to use technology in a smart way, and getting more and more concerned about protecting one's own privacy. ' According to Professor Lokman Tsui, some applications, including Telegram, are not absolutely safe as many Hong Kong protesters still think. He pointed out that regular Telegram messages will not be encrypted by default and most people are unaware that they must actually enable encryption.

Currently all Telegram activities have returned to normal.