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

In the dead of night, the skies over Tehran erupted in a terrifying symphony of explosions, jolting millions from their sleep. What began as a military operation between Israel and the United States quickly spiraled into a full-blown digital and kinetic assault on Iran, marking a new era of hybrid warfare where bombs and bytes collide. As the first shockwaves rattled windows across the capital, a far more insidious attack was already underway—one that didn’t involve missiles or drones, but smartphones.

Within minutes of the initial strikes, millions of Iranians received a series of chilling push notifications on their phones. The messages, sent through a seemingly innocuous prayer-timing app called BadeSaba Calendar—which boasts over 5 million downloads on the Google Play Store—urged Iranian military personnel to lay down their arms and join the “forces of liberation.” The notifications, all titled “Help is on the way,” carried a tone of both urgency and promise: surrender your weapons, and you’ll be granted amnesty. The messages were relentless, arriving in quick succession over a 30-minute window, starting at 9:52 a.m. Tehran time.

One message, sent at 10:02 a.m., read: “The time for revenge has come. The regime’s repressive forces will pay for their cruel and merciless actions against the innocent people of Iran. Anyone who joins in defending and protecting the Iranian nation will be granted amnesty and forgiveness.” Another, sent at 10:14 a.m., declared: “For the freedom of our Iranian brothers and sisters, this is a call to all oppressive forces—lay down your weapons or join the forces of liberation. Only in this way can you save your lives. For a free Iran.”

The hack, which has yet to be claimed by any party, represents a bold new frontier in cyber warfare. Cybersecurity experts are still piecing together the puzzle, but one thing is clear: this was no amateur operation. “At this point, we genuinely do not know who is behind them, whether it was Israel or other anti-government Iranian groups,” says Narges Keshavarznia, a digital rights researcher at the Miaan Group. “Attribution in cases like this is always complex, and it’s still too early to draw conclusions.”

However, Morey Haber, chief security advisor at BeyondTrust, believes the operation was meticulously planned. “The compromise of assets [likely] happened some time ago, and these messages of ‘help’ were timed strategically,” he explains. “This is not a smash-and-grab style of attack. It is nation-state versus nation-state and is being executed with intent and precision.”

As the digital assault unfolded, Iran retaliated with kinetic strikes of its own, targeting key military bases across the Middle East. Explosions were reported in Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar, with multiple missiles intercepted by advanced defense systems. The conflict, which began as a preemptive strike by Israel and the US, has now escalated into a full-scale war with global implications.

But the battle isn’t just being fought in the skies and on the ground—it’s also being waged in the digital realm. As the war unfolds, the Iranian public has already faced severe internet blackouts and weeks of reduced connectivity. “The country has been experiencing a widespread internet disruption, and access to the internet has significantly decreased in several parts of the country, including Tehran,” Keshavarznia says. According to internet monitoring tool NetBlocks, overall network traffic has dropped to just 4 percent, with many of the country’s main data centers and domestic PoP sites either losing connectivity to the international internet or experiencing severe disruption.

Communication networks are also down, with outages in phone lines and SMS services, and severe degradation of both mobile data and fixed broadband connections. “Incoming international calls to Iran are also reportedly affected. Even using VPNs has become extremely difficult,” Keshavarznia adds.

This digital blackout is a stark reminder of the power of cyber warfare in modern conflicts. As the lines between physical and digital battles blur, the world is witnessing a new kind of warfare—one where the battlefield is as much in the airwaves as it is in the ether.

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