telegram-rss-bot
Telegram bot that monitors cybersecurity RSS feeds and delivers real-time alerts. Articles are classified by severity and quality before delivery.
Project Structure
rss_telegram_bot/
├── threat_intel_bot.py # Main bot — commands, subscriptions, alert dispatch
├── rss_manager.py # Feed fetching, dedup, message formatting
├── content_classifier.py # Severity/quality scoring, CVE/actor/malware extraction
├── check_feeds.py # CLI utility to check feed health
├── feeds/
│ ├── news_feeds.json
│ ├── malware_feeds.json
│ ├── threat_intel_feeds.json
│ ├── osint_feeds.json
│ └── research_feeds.json
├── .env # Not committed — BOT_TOKEN + optional filters
├── subscribers.json # Auto-managed — chat/topic subscriptions
└── seen_articles.db # SQLite — tracks sent articles (7-day retention)
Setup
pip install python-telegram-bot feedparser aiohttp beautifulsoup4
Create .env:
BOT_TOKEN=your_token_here
MIN_QUALITY_SCORE=0
ALLOWED_SEVERITIES=critical,high,medium,low
Run:
python3 threat_intel_bot.py
Bot Commands
| Command | Action |
|---|---|
/on_<category> |
Subscribe this chat/topic to a category |
/off_<category> |
Unsubscribe |
/stats |
Check feed health and subscriber count |
/help |
Show commands |
Categories: news, malware, threat_intel, osint, research
Telegram Topics: Run /on_<category> inside each topic to route categories to separate threads.
Feed Management
Each feeds/*.json file follows this structure:
{
"category_name": {
"Feed Display Name": "https://example.com/rss.xml"
}
}
Add or remove feeds by editing the JSON, then restart the bot. Run python3 check_feeds.py to verify feed health before deploying.
Message Format
Each alert follows this structure:
{emoji} Title
Description
📡 Source · Published (UTC)
🆔 CVE-2024-1234, CVE-2024-5678 (only if CVEs detected)
👤 APT28, Fancy Bear (only if threat actors detected)
🦠 LockBit, Cobalt Strike (only if malware families detected)
🔗 Read Full Article
The enrichment lines (CVEs, actors, malware) only appear when the classifier finds something — clean articles stay minimal.
Classification
content_classifier.py extracts the following from article title + description:
CVEs — standard CVE-YYYY-NNNNN pattern matching.
Threat actors — APT groups and named adversaries: APT28/29/40/41, Lazarus, Sandworm, Volt Typhoon, Scattered Spider, FIN7, and others defined in THREAT_ACTORS.
Malware families — ransomware, C2 frameworks, loaders, stealers, and APT tooling: LockBit, Cobalt Strike, Emotet, QakBot, Sliver, PlugX, and others defined in MALWARE_FAMILIES. To add a family, append its display name to the set — matching is case-insensitive.
Severity is keyword-based:
critical— zero-days, active exploitation, RCE, ransomwarehigh— privesc, auth bypass, code execution, kernel exploitsmedium— XSS, CSRF, DoS, memory corruptionlow— everything else
Quality score (0–100) factors in: source reputation, content length, CVE presence, PoC indicators, threat actor mentions.
Filter via env vars:
MIN_QUALITY_SCORE=50
ALLOWED_SEVERITIES=critical,high
Systemd Service (VPS)
/etc/systemd/system/rss-bot.service:
[Unit]
Description=Threat Intel RSS Telegram Bot
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=your_user
WorkingDirectory=/home/your_user/rss_telegram_bot
EnvironmentFile=/home/your_user/rss_telegram_bot/.env
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 threat_intel_bot.py
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now rss-bot
sudo journalctl -u rss-bot -f
Notes
- First run marks all current articles as seen — no flood on startup
- Polling interval: 5 minutes (
asyncio.sleep(300)inthreat_intel_bot.py) - Only today's UTC articles are processed (strict date gate in
rss_manager.py) seen_articles.dbauto-purges entries older than 7 days