Puncturing the bubble of Israel’s cyber prowess, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas again came dangerously close to hacking the smartphones of the Israeli military personnel, including senior officers, through fake social media accounts.
Faraan: In a statement published on its website on Monday, the Israeli military said the Gaza-based group made efforts to find ways to gather information on its forces, and the efforts included attempts to install spyware on their cellular phones and to initiate chats with regime troops on various subjects, using fake profiles.
The statement added that the hackers — provided the contact was established — would attempt to convince the soldiers to download a virus to their devices, disguised as an application featuring puzzles, in order to control their phones. “These profiles got in touch with service personnel in order to create connections that would allow them to take the next step and lure them into downloading the game application, which turned out to be a malicious attack tool,” an unnamed officer in the intelligence unit of the Israeli military was quoted as saying.
Israel has recorded a sharp increase in suicide cases among military forces, raising serious concerns among the regime’s officials. The Israeli military statement said that joint operations by several Israeli units had foiled the attempted hacking, claiming that no sensitive security information had been transmitted.
While the regime was lucky this time, it has yet again punctured the bubble of its claimed superiority in cyber technology and cyber warfare. Back in February, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported that Hamas had hacked smartphones of hundreds of Israeli military forces over several months.
