Hacked Prayer App Sends ‘Surrender’ Messages to Iranians Amid Israeli Strikes

As Israeli airstrikes hit Tehran this morning, Iranians received mysterious push notifications saying that “help is on the way,” promising amnesty if they surrender.

Residents across Tehran and other Iranian cities were jolted awake by sounds of loud explosions in the early hours of Saturday morning, as Israel and the US launched joint attacks on Iran.

The attacks, which the US and Israel are calling “preemptive strikes,” come after a period of failed negotiations between the countries, and on the heels of mass protests in Iran earlier this year that saw the death of at least 3,117 civilians, according to government statistics.

Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones. They came not from the government advising caution, but from an apparently hacked prayer-timing app called ‘BadeSaba Calendar’ that has been downloaded more than 5 million times from the Google Play Store ...