Make a weapon and give up: how hackers from the Russian Federation attacked the largest Telegram channels of Ukraine

According to the media consultant Igor Palchikovsky, the administrators of well-known Telegram channels often use Russian bots to draw attention to advertising. Hackers see this vulnerability, so it is necessary to remove the bots urgently to save readers from the propaganda of the Russian Federation. On July 21, Russian hackers broke a series of Ukrainian news Telegram channels, publishing in them calls for the surrender and accusations of President Vladimir Zelensky in solving war.

The focus has collected everything that is known about this episode. The notes contained narratives of Russian propagandists. In addition to the accusation of the Head of State, the authors mentioned a fake about his wife Elena Zelensk, who allegedly purchased a luxury car Bugatti Tourbillon for 4. 5 million euros. In addition, the gunmen noted that "the current authorities have led to the suffering of the population and numerous deaths.

" The Russian Media Astra states that the message has been placed at least 1599 times 754 Telegram channels. The call to the surrender also got into pro -Russian channels, for example, in the publication of "CP Sevastopol". Currently, most channels have deleted hacker messages. Among the largest channels that managed to break were "real Kiev" (more than 1. 2 million subscribers), "all -seeing eye" (more than 1.

12 million subscribers), as well as the regional channel of Kharkiv Live (177 thousand subscribers). The authors of Ukrainian publications have recognized the attack absolutely meaningless. "Whoever did not understand, his mother's hackers through the posts of postings made the most naked attack on the channels and there were such," - said the channel Perepichka News. The attack was due to the hacking of the Fleepbot Auto Posting Service developed in Russia.

After breaking, experts began to take posts in the channels on behalf of their owners, told in the State Secretariat. To eliminate the problem, you need to remove the Fleepbot bot from the channel administrators. You should also carefully check the origin of the software before using it. One of the options for resolving the issue may be to appeal to the government response team Cert-UA. Fleepbot said his team is working on solving the problem.

In the future, the company's management will contact the relevant bodies for hackers to be held accountable. The Times of Ukraine Telegram channel with 1. 5 million subscribers was the largest cyberattack purpose. At 3:30 at night, publications with the text "X *** n *** races" and smileys with swastika were published, noted in communication with the "public" media consultant, founder of several Kharkiv Telegram channels Igor Palchikovsky. "Apparently playing or tested.

Later in other channels it was already conscious text. At such an hour, the calculation was that the administrations were sleeping and you can publish any thrash, so that somewhere in 8:00 am it hung in the tape,"-- The expert tells. The vast majority of Telegram channels use bots to create publications. Telegram standard functionality is not enough to create a "button" in advertising posts. It is a picture, the text below is a button with the text "Subscribe", "I am 18 years old" or other text.

It is the Telegram Bott that allows you to create such a button, the expert explains. For this reason, Telegram-channel owners are added to the Bot's channel administration to post publications. Due to such a bot, advertising is posed in 99% of cases, and the Russian behind him can put anything in the channel at any moment, because the bot has the rights of the canal administration. The advertiser is physically unable to influence content.

"There are many such Telegrams for posting, 95% are Russian services. I do not know any Ukrainian service. Everyone who was broken was connected, the same Fleepbot service was connected," Palchikovsky reports. The advertiser cannot physically influence this. With probability 99. 9% it is either owners of Fleepbot, or someone broke them, he summarizes. Recall that three hackers from Russia have recently been detained in Spain.