Waqas writes:
In a strange incident, an Internet bot has been blamed for hacking 20 million MTN Irancell users, one of the most popular and second largest mobile phone operator in Iran.
Fars news agency reported the incident took place on Telegram message app when a @MTNProBot appeared on the service allowing anyone to insert user’s phone number and collect their personal information including first name, last name, address, national code, landline number, postal code and city.
Read more on HackRead. As the Google translation of the Far News Agency report is somewhat headache-inducing, I hope Waqas has provided an accurate summary.
Update: I’ve found other sources on the story:
On July 3rd, Mahmoud Vaezi, Iran’s Minister of Communication attended a session at Iran’s parliament to answer questions from the people’s representatives. During the session Vaezi addressed the recent incident about Irancell’s database leak.
During the parliament session, Iran’s Minister of Communications cited the news about Irancell’s database leak which exposed 20 million of the operator’s user data on the internet. Vaezi stated that this incident happened three years ago by an employee of an organization which Irancell had given the information to. This incident made the news once again when a bot on Telegram distributed the user’s personal data, such as home address and National ID when given the person’s mobile phone number. Later it was announced that the bot was made by a 19 year old teenager.
Read more on TechRasa.