BICOM

Israeli intelligence have foiled a major Hamas operation to hack into Israeli soldiers smartphones.

Hamas created a number of specially designed downloadable apps, including dating apps and live World Cup apps, which contained spyware. A senior IDF intelligence officer said that no damage to security was caused thanks to the alertness of the soldiers targeted. He also said Hamas had not succeeded in finding any classified material.

At least 100 soldiers, including those close to the Gaza border, downloaded the apps that enabled the Hamas to collect information. The information gathered by the apps included pictures, phone numbers and email addresses and also allowed Hamas to remotely control the phones’ cameras and microphones. The apps were made available on Google’s app store using fake social media profiles.

Hamas also used a fitness app to discover the phone numbers of soldiers who went running near the Gaza border. When Hamas had these numbers it began sending the soldiers requests to download their “Trojan Horse” app that would activate spyware to gather more information.

The Hamas plot was discovered a few weeks after Hamas started to hack into the soldiers’ phones, but Hamas appears to have been able to gather information on a number of Israeli bases and the armoured vehicles on those bases. They also succeeded in corresponding directly on WhatsApp with male and female soldiers. The correspondence raised immediate suspicion and a number of female soldiers reported suspicious attempts to contact them.

In response, the IDF has launched an extensive awareness and prevention campaign called Operation Broken Heart to highlight attempts to target soldiers on social media.