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Telegram Faces Major DDoS Attack; Claims China is Behind it

Telegram, one of the most secure encrypted messaging service took it to Twitter, Today, to reveal that it was dealing with and has recovered from a powerful DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on Wednesday. The company tweeted that the users in the U.S. and the other countries may face issues in the connection, due to the attack.

Telegram
Image Source: fortune.com

On Wednesday, the platform was hit by DDoS, and it took down the app for over an hour. While dealing with the attack, the company even went to Twitter to explain to its 200 million users how the attack works.

Telegram tweeted through its official account, “A DDoS is a “Distributed Denial of Service attack”: your servers get GADZILLIONS of garbage requests which stop them from processing legitimate requests. Imagine that an army of lemmings just jumped the queue at McDonald’s in front of you – and each is ordering a whopper.” The company stated in the next tweet, “The server is busy telling the whopper lemmings they came to the wrong place – but there are so many of them that the server can’t even see you to try and take your order.”

The company also Tweeted about how the attackers accomplish a DDoS attack, and then, it also confirmed that users that the users’ data is safe.

The company has been the main target of countries like Russia, Iran and Indonesia, providing the reason that the app has been used to encourage terrorism and political protestors. These companies even blocked the service for a long time. But this time, Telegram has clearly indicated that the attack has come from China.

The CEO of the company, Pavel Durov, tweeted, “IP addresses coming mostly from China. Historically, all state actor-sized DDoS (200-400 Gb/s of junk) we experienced coincided in time with protests in Hong Kong (coordinated on @telegram). This case was not an exception.”

The protesters in Hong Kong are protesting in response to the law that gives China the authority under the “one country, two systems” principle, through which it can extradite its citizens to China. According to the sources, these protesters used Telegram for communication, and even, the Telegram group administrator had been arrested in Hong Kong claiming that he conspired to commit public nuisance.