"The data samples which we were able to study clearly show that the data was collected using third-party apps that stole data from their users," said Markus Ra, a Telegram spokesman. Telegram said in an email statement that it believes the data originated from unofficial versions of its app that are used in Iran, which it said could have covertly harvested information about Telegram users from people's phones. "This is the first time that I have seen evidence that they are trying to analyze the data on a massive scale," Rashidi said. But the Hunting System indicates Iranian authorities are using new and more aggressive techniques to collect and analyze huge troves of information about their citizens, he said. Rashidi said Iran was previously known to selectively target and hack particular people's accounts. Some of the unofficial apps, which use the same source code as Telegram, have been previously linked to Iran's government.Įither way, the data could be used to clone people's accounts and spy on private communications, identify people who are using Telegram anonymously, or send out propaganda or disinformation aimed at specific groups, Diachenko said. It's not clear if the data was mostly from Telegram users or from users of unofficial versions of the app that became popular after Telegram was banned in Iran in 2018. The trove of data, portions of which were reviewed by Bloomberg News, contained usernames, phone numbers, user biographies, and unique codes - or "hashes" - associated with the accounts stored on the server. "They could use this to go after my relatives, my friends, my family." "For more than 10 years, I have been monitoring Iranian cyber-attacks and surveillance, and I have never seen anything like this," said Amir Rashidi, an Iranian internet security and digital rights researcher, who is based in New York.
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