Telegram, a popular cloud-based messaging app which stands second after Facebook-owned WhatsApp is reported to have fallen victim to a distributed denial of service(DDoS) attack early today. News is out that many of the telegram users from different countries apart from America might observe connection issues until early tomorrow i.e June 13.
The multimedia sharing app which has over 200 million active users on a monthly note was founded in 2013 by Russian developers and since then has flourished in the app market as a platform where the exchange of text, photos, videos, audio, and files of any type can take place.
Telegram employees who are now based in Dubai have admitted via Twitter that their service witnessed a surprise disruption for over an hour on Wednesday. However, they denied news reports which say that the services might remain unreachable till early Thursday.
Note 1- DDoS attack is nothing but fake internet traffic which floods a server and blocks the process of legitimate requests.
Note 2- After the political data scandal of Cambridge Analytica came into light, online messaging app users started showing a kind of dislike towards Facebook-owned WhatsApp. This is where similar other app services started to gain user traffic and Telegram happens to be one such service which became popular among politicians as it offers highly encrypted communication.
Note 3- Telegram has also faced censorship and ban from some countries as its use is facilitating illegal activities like terrorist communication, drug dealing, and those involved child S## trade.
Note 4- Telegram boss Pavel Durov said that the attack could have originated from China linking the incident to the political unrest which is currently taking place in Hong Kong. As the DDoS attack measuring 200-400GB/s coincided with the protests taking place in Hong Kong, Mr. Durov feels that the incident which took place on telegram could have been the result of the unrest.
