Telegram blames China for "powerful DDoS attack" during protests in Hong Kong

Founder of telegram Pavel Durov suggested that the Chinese government may have been behind a recent attack by DDoS on the encrypted mail service. Writing on Twitter, the founder called this document "DDoS at the size of a state actor", which came mainly from IP addresses located in China. Durov noted that the attack coincided with ongoing protests in Hong Kong, where people are using encrypted email applications such as Telegram to avoid being detected when coordinating their protests.

The attack raises questions about whether the Chinese government is attempting to disrupt the encrypted mail service and limit its effectiveness as an organizing tool for the hundreds of thousands of protesters taking part in the attacks. events. Bloomberg According to some information, encrypted email applications such as Telegram and Firechat would be fashionable in the Hong Kong App Store, as protesters try to conceal their identity to the Hong Kong government backed by Beijing.

In addition to using encrypted email applications, Bloomberg notes that protesters in Hong Kong are also covering their faces to avoid face recognition systems. They also avoid the use of transit cards to link location to identities.

Telegram's Twitter account said that the service had been affected by "gadzions of waste", mainly from IP addresses originating in China, as part of the DDoS attack that had prevented the service from processing legitimate requests from users. He said these spurious queries were typically generated by botnets, networks of computers infected with malware. "This case was not an exception," tweeted Durov without giving further details.

The Hong Kong protests follow a bill that would allow the city government, backed by Beijing, to extradite its citizens to China. Critics fear that the law will be used to consolidate Beijing's authority over the semi-autonomous city-state, where citizens generally have a higher level of civil liberties than mainland China.

Telegram said Wednesday at 8 pm, Hong Kong local time, that the DDoS attack seemed to be stabilizedand assured users that their data is safe.