Data breach shows Iranians use chat apps to spy, researchers say

After a ban on Telegram, some Iranians circumvented it by using software such as VPNs, which allowed them to bypass the country’s block on the Telegram website, according to Rashidi. Others began downloading unofficial versions of Telegram, called Hotgram and Telegram Gold, which rely on the same underlying code as the official app but aren’t operated by Telegram. Security experts suspected that the unofficial apps may have been developed by the Iranian government as a means to monitor the country’s citizens. — TNS

Bob Diachenko, a security researcher in Ukraine, spends part of his days searching the Internet for troves of data that aren’t secured properly, in order to patch them up so they aren’t exploited by hackers.

Last month, he came across an unsecured server storing information on 42 million messaging accounts, nearly all from Iran and tied to the chat app Telegram.