The popular messaging app, Telegram, is being hit by a powerful distributed denial
of service (DDoS) attack due to which it was down for users all around the
world. The services were terminated for about an hour and during this period,
the encrypted messaging service, 'Telegram' commented on the working of a DDoS
attack.
“We’re
currently experiencing a powerful DDoS attack, Telegram users in the Americas
and some users from other countries may experience connection issues.” Telegram
tweeted.
The company explained a DDoS attack as when “your servers get GADZILLIONS
of garbage requests which stop them from processing legitimate requests.
Imagine that an army of lemmings just jumped the queue at McDonald’s in front
of you – and each is ordering a whopper,”
“The server is busy telling the whopper lemmings
they came to the wrong place – but there are so many of them that the server
can’t even see you to try and take your order.”
The attack was not the first of its kind; the company’s
services were disrupted by a similar attack four years ago as well. During that
incident, the company’s chief executive, Parel Durov and other officials denied
commenting on who was responsible for the DDoS attacks.
In one of its tweets, the company talks about a bright
side of these DDoS attacks and says, "There's a bright side: All of these lemmings are
there just to overload the servers with extra work – they can't take away your
Big Mac and Coke,"
"To generate these garbage requests, bad guys use
'botnets' made up of computers of unsuspecting users who were infected with
malware at some point in the past. This makes a DDoS similar to the zombie
apocalypse: one of the whopper lemmings just might be your grandpa," Telegram
further tweeted to elaborate on how hackers carry out a DDoS attack successfully.
