Ukrainians warned of robot attack on Telegram channels

Telegram channel owners have started complaining about a new method of hacker attacks. Attackers attack popular communities on the messenger by adding a large number of bots, which opens up further opportunities for fraudsters.

The new scheme of the attackers is quite simple: after bots start subscribing to a Telegram channel en masse, the channel owners make them private for a while. This is to preserve their image in front of advertisers. At this point, fraudsters create their own open community with the same name, and users subscribe without noticing the differences.

«I didn’t notice the fraud right away. As soon as I looked at the statistics, I decided to close the channel for a few days, and when I opened it, I found that my nickname was already taken,» said Evgenia Timerbayeva, owner of a Telegram channel with 20,000 subscribers.

Most often, fake channels are used to advertise fraudulent crypto projects and publish phishing links. Sending such links is another popular method of stealing digital assets. Telegram users' accounts are hacked and links to phishing sites are sent on their behalf. Usually, the message says something like «I'm participating in a contest, please vote for me.» If the user has two-factor verification, the phishing site directs the victim to the next subdomain, where questions «for user verification» are listed in Russian. If the hack is successful, the attackers will have full access to the Telegram account, all correspondence, including media files.