The analyst called the owners of Telegram channels a priority target for scammers

The owners of popular Russian-language Telegram channels are one of the priority targets for malicious attacks, Evgeny Egorov, a leading analyst at the Digital Risk Protection department at F6, told Izvestia on April 14.

"Intercepting access to channel management allows cybercriminals to implement various scenarios of illegal actions: from extortion for regaining control of the channel to spreading fake messages and disinformation, audio and video clips, requests for financial assistance, links to phishing and fraudulent pages," he said.

According to him, to hijack the accounts of owners and administrators of Telegram channels, attackers adjust their schemes to current news events. Launching a bot to mark channels whose owners have been registered with Roskomnadzor may be just such an occasion. So, experts found two bots in the messenger, whose accounts are visually similar to the Trustchannelbot account: they differ in one or two characters.

"Moreover, one of these fake bots uses the same avatar as the official bot. A third-party user could not use these fake bots at the time of verification.: they were inactive, and it was not possible to find out what they were intended for," said Egorov.

The analyst suggested that these bots were created for phishing, accounts were reserved for them, but they had not yet managed to fill the bot with content and launch it. The second version is that these bots are designed for targeted attacks. Such bots may not respond if the user's ID is not on the whitelists or he does not log in via an invitation link. Cybercriminals can send such invitation links to specific users targeted by the attack. Such mailings may contain a link to a bot with an invitation code.

"And the third version is that bots with similar accounts could have been created by various researchers, Telegram users who are not planning any illegal actions, but are exploring in practice the possibilities of creating fake accounts," the expert added.

Egorov recommended that the organizers of Telegram channels, if they plan to use the Trustchannelbot bot to mark channels whose owners have been registered with Roskomnadzor, carefully check the name of the bot before using it.

"Any differences in the symbols used in the account, their number will indicate that the bot is not real," he stressed.

Roskomnadzor told Izvestia that the authenticity of the bot, which can be used to register with the service, has been verified by Telegram.

"The bot offers the opportunity to confirm ownership of the channel and receive an A⁺ mark. This bot does not belong to Roskomnadzor. The rules for providing information about a personal page with an audience of more than 10 thousand subscribers, approved by Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated December 28, 2024 No. 1963, set out the identification procedure using "a program for electronic computers used by the owner of a social network and designed to simplify and optimize interaction between the owner of the social network and Roskomnadzor," they explained..

It is necessary to transfer information to this program, including the application number and phone number, in order to verify the owner of the personal page. Based on the data received, the service compares the information provided in the application and the information about the personal page received from the bot. The information is processed on the basis of the user agreement and policy, which complies with the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of personal data.

Earlier, on March 7, it was reported that among the Russians surveyed, 11% of respondents faced fraud related to fake invitations to house chats via QR codes. This is one of the deception methods that allows you to steal the victim's personal data, including hacking her Telegram account.