When Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram, was arrested on August 24, French authorities did not respond to requests for comment. The

This blog is reserved for more serious things, and ordinarily I wouldn't spend time on questions like the above. But much as I'd like to spend my time writing about exciting topics, sometimes the world requires a bit of what Brad Delong calls "Intellectual Garbage Pickup," namely: correcting wrong, or mostly-wrong ideas that spread unchecked…

The messaging app says “it is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform” after CEO Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities.

• Check Point Research (CPR) recently uncovered Styx Stealer, a new malware capable of stealing browser data, instant messenger sessions from Telegram and Discord, and cryptocurrency. Even though it only recently appeared, it has already been noticed in attacks, including those targeting our customers.
• The developer of Styx Stealer was found to be linked to one of Agent Tesla threat actors, Fucosreal, who was involved in a spam campaign also targeting our customers.
• During the debugging of Styx Stealer, the developer made a fatal error and leaked data from his computer, which allowed CPR to obtain a large amount of intelligence, including the number of clients, profit information, nicknames, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as similar data about the actor behind the Agent Tesla campaign.

A Telegram for Android zero-day vulnerability dubbed 'EvilVideo' allowed attackers to send malicious Android APK payloads disguised as video files.

Last week, a security researcher sent me 122GB of data scraped out of thousands of Telegram channels. It contained 1.7k files with 2B lines and 361M unique email addresses of which 151M had never been seen in HIBP before. Alongside those addresses were passwords and, in many cases, the website the data pertains to. I've loaded it into Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) today because there's a huge amount of previously unseen email addresses and based on all the checks I've done, it's legitimate data. That's the high-level overview, now here are the details:

WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram among apps cut from iPhone app store to comply with censorship demand

La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme a donné raison à un utilisateur de l’application Telegram visé par une demande du FSB, le service de sécurité intérieure russe. La décision pourrait avoir un impact sur certaines lois en cours de discussion en Europe.

Explore the shift in phishing from Dark web to Telegram, where cybercriminals trade tools and data, and uncover Guardio's insights on countering this menace.

À partir du 8 décembre, les membres du gouvernement devront utiliser les applications de messagerie françaises Tchap ou Olvid.

ESET research shares insights about groups operating Telekopye, Telegram bots that scam people in online marketplaces, their internal onboarding process, different tricks of trade that Neanderthals use, and more.

It’s not every day that you discover a new Russian hacking group complete with a song and dance routine (performed live), a sleek user interface (with dark mode!) and a clearly thought-out business model. But that is exactly what our security research team discovered with “AlphaLock,” a “pentesting training organization” that trains hackers and then monetizes their services through a dedicated affiliate program.
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We originally discovered their group through a public Telegram channel that has since become private. This post will serve as a detailed investigation and description of one of the most brazen, strange, and best marketed cybercrime groups to appear in 2023.

• Cybercrime sophistication and commoditization continues to grow: We now have a real life example of a threat group that seeks to create its own talent pool through a training program, goes to extensive lengths to market itself, and plans to monetize this through a hacker-for-hire scheme. The level of technical sophistication required to do this isn’t very high, but the level of organizational sophistication and business acumen is quite interesting.
• Ransomware isn’t the only game in town: Cybercriminals typically choose the path of least resistance that is most likely to prove profitable, this has been increasingly the case as the cybercrime ecosystem has evolved into a functional market economy. However AlphaLock represents another potential method to both monetize and democratize cybercrime. This could be a particularly interesting model alternative for ransomware groups if the U.S. follows through with the proposal of banning ransomware payments.
• A Technical Threat Actor Supply Shortage? One of the most fascinating things about AlphaLock is they want to create a pipeline of talent to populate their hacker marketplace. This suggests that there may be limitations on the supply of talented threat actors that have the required degree of sophistication to the point where they have tried to build their own pipeline of actors.
• The Brand: Our researchers have noted an increasing focus on group “brand” and identity among financially motivated threat groups. AlphaLock has clearly made significant investments in time to create a brand and reputation for itself. Notice in the final post they even advertise that they are looking to hire someone to market themselves on Telegram and social media.
• Blurred Lines: Many security practitioners have often assumed that threat actors primarily operate on the dark web. In most cases today this isn’t the case. There are increasingly blurred lines between clear web sites, Tor, and social media applications such as Telegram that create easy avenues for threat actors to congregate and communicate.

An emerging infostealer being sold on Telegram looks to harness generative AI to streamline cyber attacks on cloud services.

The hacker collective called GhostSec has unveiled an innovative Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) framework called GhostLocker. They provide comprehensive assistance to customers interested in acquiring this service through a dedicated Telegram channel. Presently, GhostSec is focusing its attacks on Israel. This move represents a surprising departure from their past activities and stated agenda.

Musk's mega-app-in-waiting goes from chopping headlines to profile URLs
An ethical hacker has exploited a bug in the way X truncates URLs to take over a CIA Telegram channel used to receive intelligence.

Kevin McSheehan, who uses the online handle "Pad," spotted the issue after hovering over the link to the CIA's Telegram channel displayed on its X social media profile.

ESET researchers uncover a toolkit that operates as a Telegram bot and helps scammers target victims on online marketplaces, mainly in Russia.

A macOS infostealer being sold on Telegram, Atomic Stealer has a second variant that appears primed to target users directly on YouTube.

CRIL analyzes AMOS, a stealthy new information stealer targeting macOS and disseminating stolen information via Telegram.

How links between ‘hacktivists’ and official military are becoming blurred on both sides in the war.

As the U.S. deals with a nationwide swatting wave, Motherboard has traced much of the activity to a particular swatting-as-a-service account on Telegram. Torswats uses synthesized voices to pressure law enforcement to specific locations.