A Fake Telegram Installer Is Distributing Harmful Purple Fox Malware On Computers

A new way to hack computer systems has been found. According to a report published by an anti-malware platform called Minerva Labs, fake Telegram messenger applications are being circulated on the internet to distribute the Purple Fox malware. When downloaded, the malware escapes the anti-virus system installed on a computer and can execute a transfer of information without the consent or knowledge of the user.

As mentioned in the report by Minerva Labs "We have often observed threat actors using legitimate software for dropping malicious files. This time however is different. This threat actor was able to leave most parts of the attack under the radar by separating the attack into several small files, most of which had very low detection rates by AV engines, with the final stage leading to Purple Fox rootkit infection." The malicious Telegram installer is a compiled AutoIt script and is floating on the internet with the name "Telegram Desktop.exe" and hence, users are advised to beware.

Sponsored Posts in Third Party Clients

On the official website of the messenger an announcement has appeared regarding the display of sponsored messages in third-party Telegram applications.

Developers using the Telegram API must maintain and start displaying official sponsored posts correctly in their apps by January 1, 2022.

Using the Telegram API will continue to be free for all developers. The rules regarding monetization in third-party applications remain the same: developers are allowed to monetize their efforts through their own advertising or other legal means, provided that all monetization methods used in their applications are clearly mentioned in their app store descriptions.

If the rules are ignored, Telegram will disable applications that violate them.

Sponsored messages in third-party apps

Telegram continues to grow worldwide, in part thanks to third-party apps using the Telegram API. To cover the increasing costs that come with this growth, Telegram added sponsored messages – a paid privacy-friendly way to promote bots and channels.

Third-party developers using the Telegam API are required to support and properly display official sponsored messages in their apps by January 1, 2022. Unfortunately, Telegram cannot financially sustain third-party apps that do not display sponsored messages and they will have to be disconnected.

Telegram's API usage will continue to be free of charge for all developers. The rules regarding monetization in third-party apps remain the same: developers are allowed to monetize their coding efforts through advertising of their own or other legitimate means, provided that all the methods of monetization used in their apps are prominently mentioned in their app store descriptions.

Credit: @tginfo 

Telegram advertising platform will exclude state channels

Pavel Durov stated that the messenger will not place advertisements on the channels of officials and government organizations. "We are now excluding the channels of state officials and governmental organizations from the ad platform."

It was temporary, we are now excluding the channels of state officials and governmental organizations from the ad platform. - Durov

Telegram is launching Sponsored Messages

Telegram is launching Sponsored Messages – a tool that allows anyone to promote their channels and bots. Here is what you should know:

1. There will be no ads in chats on Telegram. If you use Telegram as the messenger that we launched in 2013 – you will never see a sponsored message. Sponsored messages can't appear in your chat list, private chats or groups.

2. User data will not be used to target ads. As with everything we do, our main priority is protecting the private data of our users. That's why unlike other apps we will not use your private data to display ads.

Sponsored messages on Telegram are shown only in large public one-to-many channels with 1000+ members – and are based solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown. This means that no user data is mined or analyzed to display them.

3. Sponsored messages will be unobtrusive. Official sponsored messages are limited to 160 characters of text – without media or external links. You may see a maximum of one sponsored message per channel – and only after you’ve finished reading any new posts.

4. We are fixing ads that are already here. Some admins of one-to-many channels on Telegram already post ads in the form of regular messages. We hope that Sponsored Messages will offer a more user-friendly and less chaotic way for people to promote their channels and bots.

Sponsored messages are currently in test mode and are not available to everyone. Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs (such as equipment and data centers that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users), we plan to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of the channels where Sponsored Messages are displayed – because it is fair.

5. With Telegram you're more ad-free than with WhatsApp. WhatsApp already shares user data with advertisers [1 ] [2 ] – even though they don’t show ads themselves. On Telegram, however, advertisers will never get your private data. Besides, if you use Telegram the way you use WhatsApp, you will never see a single ad. Sponsored messages can only appear in channels, which are a unique social networking feature Telegram added several years after launch. If WhatsApp introduces a similar feature, they are likely to also display ads there, like their parent company already does on Instagram and Facebook.

Online ads should no longer be synonymous with the abuse of user privacy. We'd like to redefine how a tech company should operate by setting an example of a self-sustainable platform that respects its users and content creators.

Russian court fines Google, Telegram

A Moscow court on Monday ordered fresh fines for US tech giant Google and Russian-founded encrypted messaging service Telegram, accusing the companies of not removing illegal content. Telegram was fined four million rubles (49,440 euros) and Google two million rubles, the court's press service said on its Telegram channel. It did not disclose the exact nature of their offences.

Russia has piled fines on the world's biggest tech companies in recent months, with authorities accusing them of not moderating their content properly and interfering in the country's affairs. Facebook, Twitter, Google and other foreign tech giants have received fines of up to tens of millions of rubles in recent years. Telegram, was founded by Russian brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who are based outside the country.

Telegram X Android updated to stable version

Telegram X Android updated to stable version 0.24.2.1471

What's new:
- Multi-pins in chats.
- Invite links 2.0.
- Improved Instant View.
- New notification settings.
- Album support for audio and files.
- Compressor for sending video.
- Slow mode and auto delete in chats.
- Transfer of owner's rights by channel, chat, bot.
- Support for background links t.me/bg/...
- Improved active sessions and QR code logins.
- Built-in player for more sites.
- Many other things not mentioned in the list.

Fixed:
- Lack of archive in the filter list.
- Fixes for the chat list.
- Request to work with geolocation on Android 11+.
- Crashes while listening to .flac.
- Duplication in the list of group administrators.
- Lack of upload date for some photos.
- Some media could be duplicated in albums.
- The "Begin" button might not work in some cases when searching for messages by date.
- Lots of other fixes not mentioned in this list

Since you've read the entire change log up to this point, I may assume you might want to know a little bit more, or get a hint of what to expect next, like you do so from post-credit scenes in popular movies.

Bringing this update, including writing this change log and making the demos, required me to battle with a deep burnout and going through countless sleepless nights over again. This is the main reason why beta version has received over a hundred of updates, but it's been a long while since the stable one got one.

This year I've been coming up and experimenting with different ideas that might allow the app to survive even after I'm gone. Even though without burnout it would be much easier and faster, several required steps are finished and are mentioned in this change log. I hope you will be able to see them all before I really do so.

There's no big team behind creation of Telegram X. There is a wizard working on TDLib and many brave ones doing magic with Telegram servers on which it relies. But behind the app itself, since more than 6 years of its creation in April 2015, even though millions of people have used the app, more than 325,000 people subscribed to beta, and entire community with over 4,000 volunteer testers has grown around it, on another end there's always been just a couple chat admins who helped sorting out feedback and bug reports, and just one person resolving all of them, trying at the same time to bring joy through little details and animations to a few people who might notice them.

In spring 2020, when exactly 5 years have passed since the first development crunch that created the first version of the app, things stopped working the same way they used to. I didn't quit, and never stopped working. Moreover, whenever I tried to have a break or some rest, I couldn't relax at all, so I had to yet give up on this idea.

Even though I haven't recovered, in the end I've managed to create several things that allow improving the development process and ended up publishing this yet another stable release, including writing this change log.

Meanwhile, a couple months ago new young developer has joined this one-person team, and some of the features in this update are based on his pull requests. I hope one day this development process will become as public as possible, and it will bring everyone an opportunity to hop in and hop out of it anytime, without sacrificing healthy life and interrupting the process of creating new updates.

But it should be clear it's not an easy task to achieve in an instant: few things still have to be done before that, and properly building the team and managing such community isn't compatible with bringing new features, investigating and fixing issues, and writing the change logs by the same person at the same time (especially when it's the one out of life energy).

There's a big story behind each of the updates, and I apologise that this one took so long. While you may, as always, want to see more features, I hope you will find something new to enjoy in this update.

Read more about this update in the article: telegra.ph/Telegram-X-11-08

Telegram November 2021 Android Contest

Prize fund: $50,000

Deadline: 23:59 on November, 15 (Dubai Time)
Results: November, 18

Task: Implement new features in Telegram for Android based on the mockups provided.

Conditions:
• This contest in only open for Russian-speaking developers. Nationality is not important, but you must be fluent in Russian to participate.
• Everyone is welcome to participate, even if they didn't take part in our previous contests.
• Authors of the best submissions may get a chance to join the Telegram team.
• There is the possibility of a second round open to the winners of this round.

Details: https://t.me/contest_ru/7

Telegram Reached 1 Billion Downloads

Wire is a cloud-based instant messaging and broadcasting service provided by the not-for-profit company Telegram LLC, a limited liability company based in Dubai, founded by a Russian entrepreneur. Pavel Durov Back in 2013, when its first version was released on the eve of 15 August of the same year.

Under Zuckerberg, What particularly affected WhatsApp, the most used instant messaging system in the world to date, was a real panacea for Durov, who took advantage of Palo Alto’s troubled times to grab new users. When WhatsApp stopped working for 6 very long hours in early October, in fact, almost the whole world started communicating via Telegram, this time (except for traditional SMS) able to connect with friends The only way to be (even if, a phone call would have been useful to everyone…)

And of course Durov and his ads quickly took advantage of the situation, saying, among other things, that Telegram is the safest messaging app to take refuge in when things aren’t going well elsewhere. Whether this is the case or not, the result has been what Telegram and its team of developers have always dreamed of: reaching one billion downloads and surpassing it! And so it was. At least with respect to the Android version, which according to the data released by Google Play Store, has entered the club of Big Downloaders.

Certainly nothing to do with the results achieved by Facebook and WhatsApp over the years, but certainly the Zuckerberg-owned social media giants benefited greatly from most of their years of experience and above all given the fact That they were born a few years ago. But Telegram deserves this success and continues to be: its journey over the years has been marred by continuous improvements and updates, which have made it one of the most popular applications especially by users, who use it extensively for work purposes. Very happy with the work of Telegram developer team.