Cyber criminals and hacktivists are increasingly using the Telegram messaging app for their activities following the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
According to Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point Research, the user volume grew a hundred fold daily on Telegram related groups, peaking at 200,000 per group.
The most prominent among the groups are anti-Russian cyber-attack groups, including the Ukraine government-backed IT Army, which has urged its 270,000 members to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Russian entities.
Check Point researchers stated that other hacktivist-oriented Telegram groups that were used to coordinate the attacks on Russian targets via DDoS, SMS or call-based attacks are Anna_ and Mark_.
It seems that many of the hacktivist groups are more focused on building self-reputation and receiving credit for supporting Ukraine or Russia, than to cause real damage to the countries.
The cyber criminals are looking to capitalize on the conflict through Telegram groups containing tens of thousands of users that aim to “raise funds for Ukraine” and broadcast unverified news reports in an attempt to circumvent mainstream media.
Telegram said that it may potentially consider partially or fully restricting certain channels in order to prevent malicious actors from abusing the platform to “deepen conflicts.”
The messaging app, with over 500 million active users, has been used for black market activities in the past.
Image Credits : IT Security Guru
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