Recent reports reveal how the Iranian regime has been using malicious apps to spy on users’ smartphones. The report was issued in one of the most recent publications of the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), widely held as the most influential Iranian opposition party.
In the report, NCRI exposes the attempts of government-backed hackers to develop apps designed to feed information on users’ devices back to central servers. This practice on the part of the regime was originally identified by researchers of the US branch of NCRI. The evidence was compiled into a paper titled “Iran Cyber Repression: How the IRGC Uses Cyberwarfare to Preserve the Theocracy” and was released in February. As a result, Google was able to identify at least one application on Google Play engineered by Iranian programmers. That app, called “Telegram Black,” has been removed from Google Play and the developer banned from offering additional apps on the site. Unfortunately, this incident is really just the tip of the iceberg.
