Beware of ‘Give_From’ Hacking Method on Telegram

While technology has been growing really quickly across the globe, it’s unfortunate that it’s not only being used for good. Many a times, advanced technology is being used for wrong purposes. Hacking and other forms of cyber crime are being adopted far too often and this is something everyone needs to be increasingly aware of these days.

Hackers are getting increasingly creative with their methods and now, even tech-savvy users are finding it difficult to stay away from the mess. For instance, a new hacking method has been doing the rounds on social messaging application Telegram, and tens of thousands of users from around the world are falling prey to it as well.

Give_from account hacking on Telegram

We know about this because it happened to one of our Read Scoops team members personally as well. It all starts with someone from your contacts book (another hacked account) messaging you and asking you to make a simple search from your Telegram account. This search includes a ‘Give_from‘ keyword in search, and then the hacker will ask you to send a screenshot of the search results.

They will simultaneously send a Telegram login code to your device/number which then is a part of the chat screenshot that you share with the hacker. Once they receive the login code in the screenshot, the so-called favour is over as they can now login to your Telegram account and have access to all of your contacts. Obviously, others from your phonebook are now going to be targetted the same way.

Now what is the end goal of the hacking, we don’t know. Taking over accounts of thousands of people across the world to get their sensitive information and details is what we think the end goal could be. Many people store passwords and other banking details on their Telegram application and these kind of details are what these hackers are after, most likely.

When we logged back in to Telegram again, we weren’t able to terminate the new devices as Telegram has a safety feature wherein you need to wait 24 hours of a new log-in session before deleting other active sessions. Because of that, the hackers with an IP address tracing back to Thailand gained 100% access of the account in question. And there was nothing Telegram support / social media did to help.

Your account almost just tried to get me this way :(. It asks you to screenshot the user account “give_from” and at the same time sends you request for telegram login code which is included in the screenshot and indexes for that search term. Fairly clever
— Bryan Pellegrino (@PrimordialAA) March 21, 2023

Basically, we’re writing just to let you know that while Telegram is among the safest messaging apps in the business right now, there is still plenty of unethical behaviour going around, as you can see in the tweets above as well. Stay safe and keep your eyes open and remember, don’t share any sensitive information or login codes with anyone you don’t know or anyone you suspect is not who they’re pretending to be.

@telegram @smstelegram @StaySafeOnline @MahaCyber1 @Cybercellindia @MumbaiPolice Telegram account has been hacked and the 2FA / recovery details have also been changed on my account.
Please help as the person is sharing similar hacking messages to the rest of my phonebook pic.twitter.com/Zj5284uT6L
— Read Scoops (@ReadScoops) May 7, 2023