An anonymous Twitter user claims to have used a Telegram security exploit to secretly data-mine the private chat groups of crypto influencers.
The user, who goes by the handle of ‘adyingnobody,’ (ADN) says they have sourced 137.21 GB of data including discussions pertaining to scams, financial fraud, racism, homophobia, and crimes of a sexual nature.
In a matter of hours, the Twitter thread recorded 7,500 retweets, and the account has gained over 18.5K followers, but there are legitimate questions about the user’s story and the credibility of their claims.
Exposing crypto influencers
On Tuesday, May 7, a Twitter user threatened to expose the many crimes of crypto influencers with data recovered via a Telegram security exploit. According to ADN, the data was acquired by means of a weakness in Telegram’s security, which they first identified in 2019. They say the flaw “allowed one to access the group page with recent messages if proper permissions were not set up.”
The mysterious figure claims to have then spent considerable time and effort accumulating messages and data.
“Three years ago, a vulnerability on Telegram was discovered by a colleague of mine,” said ADN. “He did not take it to its final outcome. By exploiting this, one could recreate an invite to view the overview page and recent messages of any Telegram group of an individual user without actually joining said group.”
Between October 2019 to May 2022, the user continued to collect and “horde” the data, with the use of a script they had written to automate the task. The laundry list of crimes this data exposes is said to be considerable.
“Artists pretending to be developers, developers pretending to be artists. Those pretending to be rich, those pretending to be poor, pretending to be someone you’re not. All of that was exposed to me,” said ADN.
“Many of the individuals or projects I name will not survive this, either due to public backlash, financial fraud, or other obscure reasons such as embarrassment.”
Some skepticism exists
While ADN has cooked up a flavorful tale that has quickly captured the imagination of Crypto Twitter, some of its more spicy ingredients have also inspired a fair degree of skepticism. A poll by fellow crypto Twitter user @inversebrah asked whether crypto Twitter believed the story.
At the time of press, that opinion is almost evenly split, with no or “not real” edging the 3,600 strong votes at 51%.
Part of the reason for the skepticism may be because ADN claims to not only have learned about scams, frauds, and other financial crimes from his spying activities but of other more sinister activities as well. The deplorable list of crimes ADN relates to, includes assassinations, and sex crimes involving both adults and minors.
While none of this is impossible, those story elements when connected to a longstanding but unknown Telegram security loophole, exposed by a dying champion of truth with nothing left to lose, do have a somewhat fantastical ring to them.
For now, the messages have not been made available to the public, but ADN has invited journalists to reach out and acquire the full chat histories for themselves.
“Due to the overwhelming amount of messages, I formally invite reputable press within the community to reach out in order to obtain sample archives from groups I’ve already curated,” says ADN.
Unfortunately, ADN forgot to leave their Twitter DMs open.
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