How Israel turned Iran’s most popular prayer app into a weapon of psychological war

New Delhi: On Saturday morning, following the coordinated Israel-US strike, millions of Iranians looked at their phones and received a message — “Help has arrived” — on the Bade Saba app, a platform traditionally used for prayer updates.

OSINT team of India Today analysed Bade Saba Calendar, a religious app used by millions of Iranians, and found why it may have become the perfect vehicle for a sophisticated cyber-psychological operation.

Israel appears to have launched a coordinated cyberattack on Iran, timed alongside the US-Israeli airstrikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Following the strike, users across Iran received the unexpected notification on Bade Saba — an app normally used for prayer reminders.

The notification did not come from a mosque, the government, or a news channel. It came from Bade Saba Calendar, Iran’s most widely used Islamic prayer app, now apparently weaponised in a cyber-psychological operation attributed to Israel.

What is Bade Saba?

Bade Saba is a religious utility app that displays the Islamic (Hijri) calendar and sends reminders for the five daily prayers — Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha. It also pushes the Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) as a sound alert directly to users’ lock screens and flags important Islamic occasions, including birthdays of prophets, martyrdom anniversaries and religious holidays.

The app commands significant trust among users, who check it multiple times a day. Google Play lists over 5 million downloads, and it is also available on third-party platforms including Cafe Bazaar, Softonic and APKPure.

What did the hackers say?

According to analysis, the Persian-language push notifications sent to millions of phones carried pointed political messaging.

Disguised in the app’s familiar format, one notification 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.”

At 10:14 am, a follow-up message urged users to “lay down your weapons or join the forces of liberation” in support of Iranian freedom, as reported by WIRED Middle East. No party has officially claimed responsibility for the hack.

The messages appeared formatted like routine prayer reminders but directly appealed to Iran’s armed forces to turn against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regime.

The timing coincided with US-Israeli missile strikes. Analysts suggest the app’s domestic status allowed it to operate inside Iran’s heavily filtered internet environment, potentially bypassing firewalls that might block foreign platforms.

Internet monitor NetBlocks reported a 36-hour internet disruption across Iran following the strikes, limiting connectivity to around one percent of ordinary levels and restricting access to information.

In that blackout, a push notification from a trusted local app was among the few digital messages that could reach users.

Simultaneously, several major Iranian media organisations — including IRNA, ISNA, Tabnak and Asr-e Iran — were also reportedly hit, indicating what observers describe as a coordinated operation targeting Iran’s information ecosystem. (via. IT)