February 20, 2016

Last summer, Telegram introduced the Bot API to create bot accounts which can interact with external services and respond to users’ commands. Doctor Web presents a research project based on this API—the world’s first anti-virus bot.

With this bot, users can check links and files, and get warnings when they contain threats. For instance, when a user receives a suspicious file, they can forward it to the bot and find out it was a dangerous Trojan capable to steal their login credentials for online banking services or lock the device demanding a ransom to unlock it. Please note that this bot is not a replacement for a fully-featured anti-virus, because it cannot scan a mobile device or a computer, prevent downloading of malware or cure an infected device. If you want to protect your device entirely, we recommend installing Dr.Web Anti-virus for your operating system or mobile platform.

To start testing the bot, simply find the @DrWebBot account in Telegram (or follow this link: telegram.me/drwebbot) and send an object to scan. The bot will check it on the fly through the Dr.Web virus databases and provide you with the results. Thus, you can use our bot on any device where Telegram runs: from mobile to desktop, even via the web version. The bot responds directly in the messenger and does not affect the system performance.

Objects can be checked either in a private chat (by sending some dubious content or forwarding incoming messages directly to the bot) or in a group chat—if you add the bot as a chat member, it will check all files and links in this chat.

To learn about all features of the bot, users can type the /help command. Dr.Web Bot is able to operate in standard and “quiet” modes. By default, it uses standard mode: after checking every object, it sends a message indicating whether it is safe. Yet, if the bot operates this way in a group chat, it may be irritating for chat members to read all the bot’s notifications. That’s why it also has the “quiet” mode, which means that the bot sends notifications only if an object is dangerous. The /mode command enables you to switch between modes. Our bot can speak English, German, and Russian. The language can be selected by typing /lang.

Dr.Web Bot for Telegram is mainly a research project that will help us to test a new paradigm of interaction with users, to receive a feedback and to evaluate required performance. And, of course, to warn more users about threats.