Telegram messaging app cops 200Gbps DDoS

Popular messaging platform Telegram has been hit with a 200Gbps distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The Tsunami TCP SYN flood kicked off on Friday and hurt users in Asia, Australia, and Oceania, knocking out the service for some five percent of the company's 60 million active users it has gained in 18 months.

It is a new form of DDoS attack discovered October by Radware security folk who say it is different from regular SYN floods in that it transmits large 100 byte packet sizes about double the regular 40 to 60 byte size.

That Radware says defeats many defense algorithms and quickly consumes bandwidth making even a modest attack clock some four to five gigabits per second.

Alright, somebody seems really pissed — the DDoS is now global, affecting Telegram users worldwide.

— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) July 10, 2015

"The garbage traffic came from about a hundred thousand infected servers, most noticeably, in LeaseWeb B.V., Hetzner Online AG, PlusServer AG, NFOrce Entertainment BV, Amazon and Comcast networks," Telegram says.

"That said, the attack was distributed evenly across thousands of hosts and none contributed more than five percent of the total volume … by now we know that the attack is being coordinated from East Asia.

"Attacks on the scale of the one we‘re facing today have become possible only recently and it’s the first time we‘ve met anything like this."

Third day of the DDoS on our Asia Pacific cluster. Now on the epic scale of 200Gbps. (~ the equivalent of 3 Malaysian groups on a holiday)

— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) July 12, 2015

The company says it did not want to discuss its mitigation measures in the event that it could give pointers to attackers unknown.

"Our sysadmin cyborgs are working on this 24 hours a day."

The attack follows a bizarre smaller DDoS that followed a move by the company to introduce free custom stickers over the service. ®