The encrypted email application Telegram was affected by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, while protesters used it to communicate in recent protests in Hong Kong. The DDoS attack also appears to have affected the messaging service's 200 million users in the Americas, as well as a few other countries, according to a tweet sent out by the company in which it also confirmed the security of user data. Unlike traditional cyberattacks that target enterprise systems or data, DDoS attacks are designed to take a service offline by flooding it with traffic, rendering it unusable. Telegram compared a DDoS attack to ordering a McDonald's Whopper in a tweet, stating: "A Denial of Service attack is a 'Distributed Denial of Service Attack' - your servers receive GADZILLION requests preventing them from processing legitimate requests. Imagine that an army of lemmings just lined up at McDonald's in front of you, and they're all ordering a whopper. The waiter is busy telling the big eaters they've come to the wrong place, but there are so many of them that he can't even see it to try to figure it out. take your order. There's a silver lining: all these lemmings are there to overload the servers with extra work, they can't take away your Big Mac and Coke. Your data is safe."
Origin of the attack.
Although Telegram humorously explained the DDoS attack on social media, the attack is actually more sinister. According to Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, most of the IP addresses originating from the attack came from China, he said in a tweet: "Historically, all DDoS (200-400 GB/s junk) the size of a state actor coincided with the protests in Hong Kong (contact details at @telegram). This case was no exception. The demonstrations in Hong Kong started peacefully, but things turned violent when hundreds of protesters clashed with police in front of to the city parliament. The events themselves were organized on Telegram, WhatsApp and other similar applications. However, Telegram has proven very useful in these situations due to its encryption and the fact that users can create groups of up to 200,000 people and distribute to an unlimited audience The South China Morning Post first reported on the role played by the messaging app in the events where a Telegram Group director was arrested for conspiring to commit a public nuisance. The man reportedly contacted 30,000 users who planned to take control of the legislative council complex and block the roads leading to the building. We'll likely learn more once a thorough investigation is done, but if China is behind the DDoS attack, it shows the country is willing to ingest foreign services to keep its population in check.- Do you need to access the internet without restrictions? Discover the best VPN.