IDF says Hamas tried to hack soldiers by pretending to be pretty girls

The Israel Defense Forces has uncovered a plot in which Hamas members pretended to be “attractive women” and army veterans in order to trick soldiers into revealing sensitive military information, a senior intelligence official says.

The Military Intelligence officer would not reveal the exact number of soldiers that were affected by these attacks, but says it was “many dozens.”

“There is, of course, a potential of serious harm to national security, but the damage that was actually done was minor,” the official says.

At this point, the official says, the plot is considered foiled, and there is no threat of additional soldiers being hacked.

“Anyone who was infected, is not infected anymore. If it comes up again, we’ll cut the grass again,” he says.

However, the officer notes, “We don’t know everything.”

The highest ranking person affected was a major, while most were lower level conscripts.

The Hamas hackers set up fake profiles on social media, mostly on Facebook, using stolen photos of young, attractive girls from Israel and Europe or of IDF soldiers.

With these profiles, the hackers contacted IDF soldiers and started chatting with them. They would send photos, some of them risque, the officers says.

At a certain point they would ask the soldier to download a piece of software to continue chatting, telling them they couldn’t download WhatsApp or other popular communication apps.

The applications, which had names like YeeCall Pro or Wowo messenger, were in fact “Trojan horse” software that gave the Hamas hackers control over the soldiers’ cellphones, allowing them to download contacts and files, GPS data, take photographs, collect text messages and install additional applications on the device.

— Judah Ari Gross