Cleared: Hamas cyberattack thwarted

The security system thwarted a number of Hamas servers over the weekend trying to infect cellular devices of those serving in the IDF, it was cleared for publication Sunday morning

“The purpose of the thwarting,” says the IDF spokesman, “was to thwart a set of Hamas technological measures to infect those in the service of the IDF with malware distributed through social networks. The innovation this time also includes the use of the Telegram messaging network and the impersonation of deaf and dumb people,” thereby providing an excuse to avoid voice and video conversations.

The Hamas operations also included the impersonation of female new immigrants to Israel – providing an excuse for little knowledge of the Hebrew language – as well as short generic voice messages in a female voice to increase credibility.

In recent months, the Intelligence Department in the Intelligence Division and the Shin Bet have identified repeated attempts by the Hamas terrorist organization to infect IDF cellular mobile devices by abusing social networks and soliciting downloads of malicious applications.

In recent days, the IDF has collaborated with the Shin Bet on successful technological counterterrorism of Hamas terrorist server infrastructure, which has been used by the organization to contact and gather information from those in the IDF. This is the first time technological counterterrorism has been carried out against such Hamas infrastructures.

The IDF states that as part of the technological counterterrorism, hundreds of soldiers who are likely to have been hit with the malicious applications will be summoned for questioning and removal of the malicious material from their devices.

“As far as we recognize now, no security damage has been done. In cases where we have identified that such damage may have occurred, we acted immediately. We have also identified that Hamas has expanded its websites and appealed to additional populations, unlike previous incidents in which they focused on fighters,” the IDF noted this morning.

The IDF also noted that “the identification was made possible, among other things, by tracking one of the figures identified in previous events and which we did not reveal at the time with a view to monitoring the terrorist organization’s technological infrastructure and identifying a return to activity against our servants.”