Iran, also known as Persia is said to be spying on millions of populace from UK and US through state-sponsored applications available on Apple and Google app store. The country is said to be indulging in the said activity in order to gather critical info of those belonging or working in political, military and technical fields.
According to a report released from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a political organization that opposes the Iranian regime, Iran’s cyber army- Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is said to created spyware enabled apps for cyber surveillance and repression that are available in disguise in the app stores of Google and Apple Inc. Even some platforms like Github are seen hosting such weaponized apps which work with a motive of monitoring and preventing new political uprisings.
One such weaponized app is Mobogram which works in the lines of Telegram and is available in the Play store for the past 2 months. Moreover, the app is ranked 156th in the charts of Apple Play store in the US for social networking apps.
A majority of Iran smartphone users communicate through Telegram app than Twitter or Facebook, they started to look for alternatives after the usage of the said Russia based app got banned in their country.
Mobogram was brought to availability during this tenure and no sooner did it gather 40 million monthly users.
According to a source from Tehran Times, apps such as Hotgram, Telegram Farsi, Telegram Talayi, Wispi and Telegram Black are all working for Iranian Intelligence and so allow the authorities to spy on those using them.
Earlier, all these apps were also available on café bazaar which is being supervised by IRGC. But now, they are available on Apple and Google Play stores and are being downloaded by those staying in UK and USA.
According to a post of Politico, 38 such spying apps working for Iranian Intelligence are prevailing on Google and Apple store and it said that they have managed to garner 38k active users so far from US and UK.
