The hacking group "Hanithala," linked to Iran, claims to have seized over 740 gigabytes of important and sensitive data from "Viber" through a ransomware attack on the "Viber Messenger" app. The group, which identifies itself as anti-Israel and pro-Hamas, offered the alleged information for sale on its Telegram channel for eight Bitcoin, equivalent to $540,000. Members of this group also claimed to have accessed the source code of the application by posting images of the app's management page.
It is worth noting that the "Viber Messenger" app was founded in 2010 by two Israeli entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv and was purchased by the Japanese technology company "Rakuten" in 2014 for $900 million. Published statistics indicate that "Viber" had approximately 1.17 billion registered users by the end of March 2020.
In response to the reported breach, the app's managers announced the initiation of an investigation to verify the potential security breach in their technical infrastructure, although they denied any claims of a breach of their systems. Cybersecurity experts emphasized that if the hacking group's claims are proven true, the privacy of "Viber" users would face serious risks. The "Hanithala" hacking group is among dozens of hacker groups that began their cyber activities following the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel and has claimed responsibility for attacking various Israeli organizations in recent months.
