Last Updated on 22/11/2021 by Anamika
Telegram is one of the fastest-growing messaging applications in today’s time. Having a very simple User-Interface, Telegram started gaining popularity some two or three years back.
Although, just messaging is not the case for Telegram. Telegram is being explored by many cybercriminals as a platform where they can attempt malicious activities such as cybercrime, ransomware, data hacking, etc.
In an investigation by Cyberint, a cyber intelligence group, along with Financial Times, found a network of hackers sharing data leaks, in groups, and/or channels of more than thousands of subscribers. The content is known to be found on the dark web, accessed by many popular hackers using easily hidden software.
Tal Samara, cyber thread analyst at Cyberint said in a statement, “We have recently been witnessing a 100 percent-plus rise in Telegram usage by cybercriminals.”
The main reason for this rise was the changed and improved encryption rules by its topmost rival WhatsApp making it difficult to carry such crimes on it. That’s why the hackers tried to try their luck on Telegram.
According to reports, Telegram has more than 500 million active users and had a whopping 1 billion downloads in August.
One incidence of cybercrime is reported in which a channel named “Combolist”, having more than 47000 subscribers, just simply dumb sensitive information in the group for its subscribers which contains leaked usernames and passwords of uncountable people. It is believed that some of the data contained the names and ids of various players for video game platforms such as Minecraft, Origin, or Uplay.
Telegram supposedly removed this channel from the platform some days back but it is one of many channels that are out there, doing exact same criminal activities.
Even though Telegram is updating its privacy policies vigorously, this system of cybercrime is spreading at an alarming rate. Reportedly, recently Telegram has removed more than 10,000 public accounts from the platform which were found to be suspicious.
