Attackers found an old message in a public group and edited it to insert illegal content. At the same time, regular members of the group could not actually see the content.
The attackers then reported the content to Apple themselves, hoping the company would take action against Telegram. As a result, the messenger was temporarily removed from the App Store.
But the most interesting part is that this scheme could be used not only against Telegram itself. The same tactic could potentially be used to target individual communities within the messenger: hide illegal content in an old message, wait for the platform to react, and cause problems for the group’s owners.
According to Pavel Durov, schemes like this are increasingly becoming a new tool used by extortionists.
