Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Mobile & Wireless

Telegram Failed to Delete Removed Images From Local Storage

The Telegram secure messaging application was found to breach users’ privacy by failing to properly remove images from a device’s local storage when the sender selects to delete them for all recipients.

The Telegram secure messaging application was found to breach users’ privacy by failing to properly remove images from a device’s local storage when the sender selects to delete them for all recipients.

The option was meant to provide users with the possibility to delete messages that were sent by mistake or genuinely to any recipient. By deleting erroneously sent messages, the app helped preserve users’ privacy, though it appears that the feature didn’t always work as intended.

What a security researcher with InputZero discovered was that Telegram would save received images to the internal storage of the recipient’s device, at the ‘/Telegram/Telegram Images/’ path.

Images stored there would not be removed from the folder when the user selected the option to remove the image from the conversation for all participants, which resulted in unintentional recipients still being able to access the images by navigating to /Telegram/Telegram Images/.

What’s more, the vulnerability would also manifest for the Telegram “supergroups.” Thus, media shared to those groups would remain on the devices of all recipients.

Telegram, however, requests and takes ‘read/write/modify’ permissions for the USB storage, meaning that it should be able to remove confidential photos from local storage when the sender triggers the process.

The security researcher, who published a video proof-of-concept, says the issue was found in version 5.10.0 (1684) of Telegram for Android. The iOS and Windows versions of the application were not tested, but could be vulnerable.

The researcher reported the vulnerability to Telegram, which was quick to issue a patch. The company also awarded the researcher a €2,500 ($2,760) bounty for the finding.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Related: Hackers Can Manipulate Media Files Transferred via WhatsApp, Telegram

Related: Telegram Hit by Cyber-attack, CEO Points to HK Protests, China

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Vulnerabilities

The latest Chrome update brings patches for eight vulnerabilities, including seven reported by external researchers.