It is unclear why Telegram was targeted or who was behind the DDoS attack.
The popular privacy-focused instant messaging application service Telegram has suffered a massive DDoS attack in which its service in the United States and several other countries has been disrupted, the company has revealed.
The DDoS attack began targeting Telegram’s servers around 12:20 PM – Jun 12, 2019. The company then sent out a series of tweets revealing the cause of service disruption. One such tweet stated that:
“We’re currently experiencing a powerful DDoS attack, Telegram users in the Americas and some users from other countries may experience connection issues.”
We’re currently experiencing a powerful DDoS attack, Telegram users in the Americas and some users from other countries may experience connection issues.
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) June 12, 2019
Several Telegram users on Twitter also confirmed that they have been facing connectivity issues with the messenger. “Ohhhhh that explains it. I thought my ISP was throttling the service or something. Paranoia, activate,” one of the tweets said.
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. Some of the powerful DDoS attacks in history includes victims like Dyn DNS, Sucuri, Google, PlayStation, NRA, and Github, etc.
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. (1/2)
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) June 12, 2019
In Telegram’s case, it is unclear why the service was targeted and who was behind the attack. However, speculations on Twitter are that the DDoS attack on the messenger service was launched due to its use by tens of thousands of activists protesting against Hong Kong’s extradition law.
“A few if not all Hong Kong protesters’ news channels were on Telegram. The attack may have come from local authorities or even mainland. Anyway, thank you Telegram for your wonderful service,” said one Telegram user.
A few if not all Hong Kong protesters’ news channels were on Telegram. The attack may have came from local authorities or even mainland.
Anyway thank you Telegram for your wonderful service!— Derek (@_dragonair_ex) June 12, 2019
“People from Hong Kong are fighting for #NoExtraditionToChina and they use telegram to communicate. Is there any connection with this attack?,” another user tweeted.
people from Hong Kong are fighting for #NoExtraditionToChina and they use telegram to communicate. Is there any connection with this attack?
— kkTsd (@vkoolp) June 12, 2019
At the time of publishing this article, there was no new tweet or update from the company. The last tweet was posted 12 hours ago stating that “For the moment, things seem to have stabilized.”
However, according to Telegram’s outage map displayed on DownDetecter, the scale of this outage can still be seen affecting users in Hong Kong, Brazil, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hungry, etc.
If you are a Telegram user and facing connectivity issue with the app follow the company’s Twitter account for related updates.
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