Telegram chief associates cyber-attack during Hong Kong protests in China

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Manuel Blondeau – Corbis

The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, said that a massive cyber attack against his courier service came from China.

On Wednesday, the company confirmed that it had a "powerful" distributed denial of service attack that disrupted services for about an hour.

In a DDos attack, hackers overwhelm servers with a target of unwanted queries.

That happened when protesters in Hong Kong used Telegram to coordinate the protests on a plane allowing extradition to China.

In an article on Twitter, Telegram said the disruption was affecting users in the Americas and "other countries".

Mr. Durov then tweeted that the IP addresses involved in the attack came mainly from China.

The Chinese cyberspace administration, which oversees the country's cybernetic policy, has not yet commented.

Telegram allows people to send free messages, documents, videos and encrypted pictures.

Users can create groups that can accommodate up to 200,000 people, or channels for streaming to an unlimited audience.

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Its popularity has increased because of its emphasis on encryption, which thwarts many widely used methods of reading confidential communications.

Mr Durov's comments have been reported as information that a man identified as a director of the Telegram group has reportedly been arrested in Hong Kong for conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.

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Police and protesters launched battles Wednesday in the city to prevent the suspects from being extradited to mainland China.

Seventy-two people were injured, including two men in critical condition.

Hong Kong is part of China under the principle of "one country, two systems" guaranteeing the maintenance of its judicial independence, its parliament and its economic system.

People are worried that if the extradition bill were passed it would put Hong Kong more decisively under China's control.