Telegram fork leaks data of 42 million users

guest · Mar 31, 2020

Telegram fork leaks data of 42 million users
Telegram points the finger at third-party versions of its client, which were scraped by an Iranian hacker group
March 31, 2020
https://decrypt.co/24034/telegram-fork-leaks-data-of-42-million-users

The records of 42 million users from a third-party version of the popular Telegram messaging app have just been leaked.

According to a recent report on the situation by Comparitech, the data was initially leaked by an Iranian hacking group, known as 'Hunting system,' on an Elasticsearch cluster—a full-text search engine mostly used by enterprise. The data had no authentication or access controls in place, meaning anybody who knew it was there could have easily accessed it.

Telegram states that the information was scraped from two forked versions of its client: HotGram and Talagram, two of the most popular Telegram alternatives in Iran, since the official app is frequently blocked in the country.
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Comparitech: 42 million Iranian “Telegram” user IDs and phone numbers leaked online: report

42 million records from a third-party version of messaging app Telegram used in Iran was exposed on the web without any authentication required to access it. Comparitech worked with security researcher Bob Diachenko to uncover and report the exposure, which included usernames and phone numbers, among other data.
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imdb · Mar 31, 2020

mood said: ↑

...third-party versions of its client, which were scraped by an the Iranian hacker group intelligence agency ...
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guest · Apr 6, 2020

Iran’s ban on Telegram that was intended to facilitate domestic spying backfired
April 5, 2020
https://www.databreaches.net/irans-...nded-to-facilitate-domestic-spying-backfired/

A recent report by Comparitech and Bob Diachenko concerning an exposed elasticsearch server with data scraped from a forked Telegram app was one of numerous leak reports during March. The leak had exposed data of more than 42 million Iranians, and by the time Comparitech published their report on it, some of the data had already appeared for sale on a hacking forum.

Another day, another leak, right? We don’t think so. It turns out that this leak has multiple layers to it and serious implications for not just those immediately impacted by the leak, but for human rights in Iran. So let’s take another look at what we do know about this incident.

On March 29, Under The Breach, a data breach monitoring and prevention service tweeted about a listing on a forum offering 40 million Iranians’ telephone data:
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Actor selling information about 40,000,000 million Iranians which appear to originate from @Telegram.
– Data includes names, phone numbers, usernames, photos, last seen.
– I verified the data by importing the phone numbers to Telegram as contacts, usernames match. pic.twitter.com/kSz2Zm2MKE
— Under the Breach (@underthebreach) March 29, 2020
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Later that day, @underthebreach revised his assessment a bit, tweeting:

The names don’t appear to match the data from Telegram, they possibly originate from a different source.
I hope it isn’t espionage by the Iranian government.
— Under the Breach (@underthebreach) March 29, 2020

His concern about possible government spying would later appear to be well-founded.
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