Distributed Denial of Service attack on Telegram causes service outages

Telegram messenger faced a DDoS attack, and it resulted in service outages and connection problems for users across the globe, but on a smaller level.

The countries primarily affected were in South and North America. The users in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Australia, and China also faced connection issues and network disruptions.

“We’re currently experiencing a powerful DDoS attack, Telegram users in the Americas and some users from other countries may experience connection issues,” Telegram tweeted.

A network of compromised computers targeted Telegram servers with a DDoS attack. A botnet formed of compromised computers sent huge traffic to Telegram servers which resulted in unstable connections as the messenger could not handle all the requests.

According to Pavel Durov, Founder and CEO of Telegram, the DDoS attack has been originated from China.

“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,” Durov tweeted.

The connection problem has been resolved by the Telegram and it stated its users that Telegram is sage to use.

“There’s a bright side: All of these lemmings are there just to overload the servers with extra work – they can’t take away your BigMac and coke. Your data is safe,” Telegram tweeted.