Hong Kong Protesters Disrupted By Cyber Attacks
Telegram, the secure cloud-based instant messaging and voice over IP service, announced on Wednesday 12th June that it was suffering a “powerful” Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack in Hong Kong which began the day before.
The company’s founder Pavel Durov said the massive cyber-attack on their messaging service originated in China, which suggests that Beijing tried to disrupt a protest involving hundreds of thousands that erupted on the streets of Hong Kong.
This attack involved hackers overwhelming a target’s servers by making a massive number of junk requests and Telegram warned users that in many regions may face connection issues.
Many of Hong Kong’s protesters use the encrypted messaging service Telegram to evade electronic surveillance and coordinate their demonstrations against a Beijing-backed plan that allows extraditions from Hong Kong to the mainland.
Demonstrations descended into violence Wednesday as police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters who tried to storm the city’s parliament, the worst political crisis Hong Kong has seen since its 1997 handover from Britain to China.
Telegram allows users to exchange encrypted text messages, photos and videos, and also create “channels” for as many as 200,000 people. It also supports encrypted voice calls. It announced last year that it had crossed 200 million monthly active users.
The encrypted messaging app said it experienced a powerful distributed denial of service attack after “garbage requests” flooded its servers and disrupted legitimate communications. Most of those queries came from Chinese Internet protocol addresses, founder Pavel Durov said in a subsequent Twitter post. “This case was not an exception,” he tweeted without elaborating.
Hong Kong’s Political Turbulence and Unrest
Hong Kong is in the throes of political unrest as the Beijing-backed government attempts to force through controversial legislation that would for the first time allow extraditions to China, which protesters fear could be used to squelch government opposition.
That proposal has ignited a widespread outcry, sending hundreds of thousands of protesters into the city’s streets and triggering violent clashes when demonstrators stormed the legislative chamber Wednesday.
Hong Kong protesters have grown increasingly concerned about legal repercussions as Beijing tightens its influence over the former British colony and the local government prosecutes demonstrators.
Many protesters masked their faces to avoid facial recognition and avoided using public transit cards that can be voluntarily linked to their identities. An administrator of a large local Telegram group was arrested Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to commit a public nuisance, the South China Morning Post reported.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council suspended a review of the bill amid the continued threat of protests. The city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, is seeking to pass the legislation by the end of the current legislative session in July.
Telegram was created by Durov, a Russian entrepreneur known for his advocacy of internet freedoms. In 2017, he said the service would be registered with Russia’s communications watchdog after it was threatened by a domestic ban.
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