A file containing 774,871 lines with data from Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian users of the Telegram messenger was found on the network. This was announced by the Telegram channel «Information Leaks».
According to the authors of the channel, these data were obtained by parsing the messenger and they are not included in any known Telegram database.
For what purpose the information was collected is still unknown, but experts do not exclude that attackers can use it to de-anonymize users or obtain a ransom.
The base contains the following information:
- user identifier (Telegram ID);
- phone number;
- nickname;
- name and surname.
Recall that in the summer of 2020, on one of the darknet forums, a database of about 900 MB was found with information about several million Telegram users. It contained phone numbers, nicknames and unique identifiers.
Then the representatives of the messenger acknowledged the existence of the database and reported that such information was collected «through the abuse of the built-in contact import function during user registration.» However, according to them, most of the data at the time of publication is already out of date.
