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Eurasia
May 4, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
cording to technology experts discussing the mat- ter online, the collapse occurred because the app faced a denial of service attack (DDoS), meaning several million online requests were targeted at the app all at once to jam it.
The Rouhani administration, along with senior Islamic Republic officials, earlier in April advised that the app was set to be blocked although the pragmatist, centrist President Hassan Rouha-
ni cautioned that the move, welcomed by hardlin- ers in the Islamic Republic, might cause a “dis- ruption of the public mood”.
Lately the app has faced several connectiv-
ity issues caused by ‘throttling’ as well as the DDoS attack that took the system offline globally. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as other senior officials, shut down their official Telegram channels on April
18 in a bid to lobby people to use local messag- ing app Soroush. Iranian authorities have accused Telegram of allowing its service to be used to spread lies and incite public opinion and spread pornography. They have also claimed that terror- ists put the service to use.
Iranian users of messaging services remain un- convinced by local messaging apps, fearing they are the work of their country’s intelligence organi- sations. Alternative local application Soroush has been ridiculed and slammed by Iranians as inse- cure and liable to hacking by government agen- cies. There have been claims it was developed by Iranian intelligence operatives.
One Iranian hacker accessed details of the Iranian telecoms minister, including his mobile phone number, through his unsecured Soroush account and published them on Twitter back to the minister.
“Remove this useless, garbage, insecure, spy- ware, ugly-looking UI app from play store. Did they give you money, Google? Dear users don't install this app because it's insecure and it has been ap- proved,” the hacker wrote.
The announcement of the blocking of Telegram in Iran coincided with a demonstration involving thousands of Russians in Moscow on April 30. They demanded that the Kremlin remove the ban on the app in their country, which they described as a “national shame”.
Opposition politician Alekei Navalny attended
the protest. RFE/RL reported that police briefly stopped Navalny and instructed him to avoid statements or actions that "do not correspond to the agenda of the gathering," held with the per- mission of the authorities. Navalny reportedly said that police ordered him not to call on the protest- ers to join another rally scheduled by him for May 5. Navalny responded to the request by sarcasti- cally telling demonstators: "Therefore, I call on you all NOT to take part in the rally on May 5."
On April 16, Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor started enforcing a court ban on Telegram over its refusal to hand over its encryption keys to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).