Telegram sees sharp increase in cybercrime activity

Telegram is very popular with cybercriminals, so much so that there is a huge increase in messaging for this type of activity. This is what an investigation by the Financial Times and the cyberespionage group Cyberint.

Hackers like Telegram very much

The survey tells us that there has recently been a more than 100% increase in the use of Telegram by cybercriminals. The increase in criminal activity on messaging is explained by the influx of users following a change in WhatsApp’s privacy policy. As a reminder, WhatsApp has announced that it is sharing more data with Facebook, which has prompted users to switch to Signal or Telegram.

There is a thriving network of hackers who share and sell leaked data on groups with tens of thousands of subscribers. The number of times the terms “email: pass” and “combo” were mentioned in the app in the past year is said to have quadrupled. Some data leaks circulating on the application contain 300,000 to 600,000 combinations of e-mails and passwords for games and messaging services. Cybercriminals also sell financial information, such as credit card numbers, passport copies, and hacking tools.

Telegram has removed the group where datasets with combinations of emails and passwords are sold after the Financial Times notified the courier. In a statement, Telegram also said it “Has a policy of deleting personal data shared without consent” and that she has a “Ever-growing force of professional moderators” which removes 10,000 public communities every day for violating its general conditions of use. In early 2021, these moderators had to monitor hundreds of groups in order to be alert to calls for violence following the attack on the Capitol in the United States.

As a reminder, Telegram offers an option to encrypt conversations. But this is not enabled by default, unlike Signal.