Cyberattacks and Internet Disruptions Reported in Iran During U.S. Airstrikes

Early Saturday, multiple cities across Iran, including the capital Tehran, were shaken by a wave of U.S.- and Israel-led airstrikes that killed the country's supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, along with other senior leaders. Reports indicate that the military offensive unfolded alongside cyberattacks targeting Iran, including one incident in which a widely used phone app was flooded with notifications. At the same time, the country continued to experience a broader internet outage.

The strikes followed several days of unsuccessful negotiations between Tehran and Washington. Those talks had taken place after weeks of mass demonstrations in which thousands of people were killed, during a period that also included the longest internet shutdown in the country's history.

As missiles hit cities across Iran, people on the ground said their phones were suddenly inundated with unsolicited notifications not from the struggling government, but seemingly from an outside actor.

Users of the BadeSaba prayer app received a series of messages on their devices urging a "eckoning" and promising amnesty to anyone who rises against government forces, according to Wired.

One of the alerts stated that the Iranian regime would "payfor their cruel and merciless actions against the innocent people of Iran," suggesting that the app had been compromised to display anti-government messages.

It remains unclear who was responsible for the aapp'sbreach, which has been downloaded more than 5 million times.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday that cyberattacks were deployed as part of the U.S. and Israeli offensive in an apparent attempt to limit Iran's ability to respond. Both the U.S. and Israel have long been suspected of carrying out cyber operations against Iranian banks and cryptocurrency exchanges as a way of increasing pressure on the country's leadership, which has remained in power since the 1989 revolution.

The disruption has not been confined to Iran alone. The conflict now risks spreading more broadly across the Middle East, as Iran retaliates by launching missiles of its own.

Amazon said it was experiencing an outage at its Middle East data centre in the United Arab Emirates shortly after Iranian missiles struck the coastal nation. According to Amazon, the outage was caused by "objects that struck the data centre, creating sparks and fire."

The fighting is also expected to disrupt crucial air and shipping routes for e-commerce, as vessels carrying goods through the Strait of Hormuz near Iran begin to halt.

Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, said in a post on Bluesky that internet connectivity in Iran dropped to nearly zero soon after the airstrikes hit the country on Saturday morning. Cloudflare also confirmed on Saturday that Iran's internet connectivity had effectively collapsed.