File links on Discord will expire after a day to tackle malware

New Delhi: Popular chat platform Discord has announced that it will switch to temporary file links for all users by the end of the year to fight malware.

Links to those files will begin to refresh every 24 hours by the end of this year to block malware delivery.

The company told Bleeping Computer that it is evolving its approach to “attachment content delivery network (CDN) URLs in order to create a safer and more secure experience for users”.

“In particular, this will help our safety team restrict access to flagged content, and generally reduce the amount of malware distributed using our CDN," the company said.

There will be no impact for Discord users that share content within the Discord client.

“Any links within the client will be auto refreshed. If users are using Discord to host files, we'd recommend they find a more suitable service,” said Discord.

The company said that it will share more “in coming weeks” with developers, who “may see minimal impact.”

CDN URLs will come with three new parameters that will add expiration timestamps and unique signatures that will remain valid until the links expire, according to the report.

Discord's permanent file hosting capabilities have been misused in the past to distribute malware and exfiltrate data.

Cybersecurity company Trellix recently reported it had “found around 10,000” malware samples distributed online that were stored on Discord’s content delivery network (CDN).