A flaw in Telegram Desktop’s single-instance IPC allows a clicked tg:// link to turn into multiple commands because the client serializes instructions as text using an unescaped semicolon separator. A second running instance deserializes bytes by splitting on semicolons, so a semicolon inside a URL becomes an injected command. That injected command can reach an internal interpret: URI handler that reads a plaintext “instruction” file from disk and sends the named file to a chat without any authorization or user confirmation. Because Telegram Desktop auto-downloads group attachments (up to 8 MiB) into a predictable directory (e.g., Downloads\Telegram Desktop) and interpret: accepts relative paths, an attacker can deliver an instruction.txt via chat and then trigger OPEN:interpret:path via a crafted tg:// link (for example using ../../../Downloads/Telegram%20Desktop/instructions.txt) to exfiltrate files.
By stacking multiple OPEN:interpret commands in one injected line an attacker can retrieve arbitrary local files - including tdata/key_datas and authorization/session files - and send them to an attacker-controlled channel. Telegram’s local storage uses DEK/KEK wrapping; with the default configuration (no local passcode) the KEK is derived from an empty password, so reading key_datas plus the session file yields full account credentials and enables takeover. The issue affected Telegram Desktop through 7.2.8 (confirmed on Windows), is CVE-2026-107181, scored 8.1, and was fixed in 7.2.9 (commit db3405699f).
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