Telegram's Desktop App Exploited to Mine Cryptocurrency, Seed Spyware: Kaspersky

Telegram has been in hot waters lately. It was recently reported that the Telegram app was removed from the App Store for facilitating the distribution of agonizing content like child pornography. Now, a fresh report from renowned cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, has revealed that a vulnerability in Telegram's desktop app was exploited by cybercriminals to seed malware and mine cryptocurrency for months.

According to a detailed security study by Kaspersky Lab, Russian cybercriminals take been exploiting a vulnerability in the Telegram app'southward Windows client to install crypto jacking malware and spyware on users' systems since March 2017. The flaw was spotted by Kaspersky Lab's cybersecurity experts in October, which ways users have been falling prey to the exploit for months.

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Kaspersky Lab proceeded to notify Telegram of the 'Goose egg-twenty-four hour period vulnerability', and the latter stock-still it soon afterward. The flaw was associated with Telegram'due south software mechanism which is used to handle Unicode characters, specifically those for languages which follow a contrary lodge of writing such equally Arabic and Persian. The hackers used this linguistic holding to tweak the gild of characters in the cord to rename a file, sending a JavaScript file of .js filetype disguised as a PNG file. In one case users downloaded the file and executed the script, it would keep to install crypto jacking malware and spyware, and also granted the hackers backdoor admission to the unsuspecting user's system resource.

Co-ordinate to Kaspersky Lab's report, the cybercriminals leveraged the exploit to mine cryptocurrencies similar Monero, Zcash, and Fantomcoin. Afterwards being notified of the critical vulnerability, Telegram stock-still the flaw, and no such incidents take been reported after that.

On the other hands, Telegram'southward founder Pavel Durov has downplayed Kaspersky Lab'due south report, stating that the cybersecurity house'south finding was not a real vulnerability on Telegram's desktop app. "As always, reports from antivirus companies must be taken with a grain of salt, as they tend to exaggerate the severity of their findings to become publicity in mass media.", he added, further assuring that as long every bit users haven't downloaded a malicious file, they're safe.