IDF exposes catfishing network seeking to extract info from troops on Hamas’s behalf

The Israeli military says it has foiled a network of fake social media profiles that attempted to extract information from soldiers on behalf of the Hamas terror group amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the profiles were operated by countries in the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” an informal coalition of anti-Israel and anti-Western nations and terror groups, led by Iran.

The operatives used photos of real women in a practice known as “catfishing,” and “managed a kind of romantic relationship… through correspondence, voice recordings and video calls,” the IDF says, in an attempt to obtain information for Hamas.

The IDF says the faux social media profiles had additional fake profiles posing as their “parents,” “siblings” and “friends,” in order to “strengthen their credibility.”

It says the network consisted of dozens of fake profiles on social networks, mostly on Instagram, and the number of potential victims was between hundreds and thousands of soldiers, including reservists.

According to the IDF, Israeli authorities are working with social media sites to ban the accounts.