Researchers at Symantec discovered malicious copies of Telegram

They earn on advertising displays and install virus software on user devices.

One of the applications was available on Google Play under the name Teligram. According to Symantec, his description in the application store completely coincided with the description of Telegram, services differed only one letter in the title and logo.

Teligram earned on advertising displays: users were forced to view ads and full-screen advertising in chat rooms.

As of January 11, 2018, Teligram has been removed from Google Play, but links to the application remain in the Google search. Average rating of the service managed to make 4,5 stars on the basis of more than 2,7 thousand reviews

According to Symantec, another malicious copy of Telegram allowed attackers to gain access to the user's device, for example, to infect it with a virus showing ads.