Hackers and internet outages hit Iran amid US airstrikes

Early Saturday, a series of airstrikes led by the United States and Israel rocked cities across Iran, including the capital, Tehran, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, and the top leadership. According to reports, the military campaign coincided with cyberattacks targeting the country, one of which flooded a popular phone application with notifications, amid ongoing outages across the Iranian Internet.

The strikes came after several days of failed negotiations between Tehran and Washington. The negotiations took place after weeks of mass protests that saw thousands of people killed and the longest protests the country has ever seen Shut down the internet yet.

As missiles hit Iranian cities, people on the ground reported receiving a deluge of unwanted app notifications — not from the ailing government, but from an obvious outsider.

BadeSaba prayer application users Received several notifications on their phones, demanding “reckoning” and promising to pardon anyone who rises up against government forces. For every wire.

One notification said that the Iranian regime “will pay the price for its cruel and brutal actions against the innocent Iranian people,” implying that the app had been hacked to display anti-government messages.

It is not clear who is behind the hack of the app, which has more than 5 million downloads.

Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday Cyberattacks were used as part of US and Israeli attacks in an attempt to limit Iranian response. Both the United States and Israel are suspected of launching cyberattacks On banks and Crypto exchanges To put pressure on the Iranian leadership, which has ruled since taking power in the 1989 revolution.

The ongoing turmoil is not limited to Iran. The conflict threatens to spill over into the wider Middle East, where Iran retaliates with missiles of its own.

Amazon said it was experiencing an outage at its Middle East data center in the United Arab Emirates, shortly after Iranian missiles hit the coastal nation. Amazon He said it stopped It was caused by “objects that collided with the data center and caused sparks and fire.”

Conflict is also likely to occur Disruption of important air and sea routes for e-commerceAs ships carrying goods through the Strait of Hormuz stop near Iran.

said Doug Madori, Director of Internet Analytics at Kentik Share on Bluesky Internet connectivity dropped to near-zero levels shortly after airstrikes hit the country on Saturday morning. Networking giant Cloudflare Also confirmed Internet collapse in Iran on Saturday.