‘To hell with Trump and Netanyahu’: Hamas messages play from Israeli bus stops in cyberattack

Digital signage at several bus stops in Israel was hacked on Wednesday to play messages including remixed audio from slain Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida and criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, the signage company confirmed to Hebrew media.

The incident was first reported by pro-Netanyahu outlet Channel 14, which shared footage recorded by a passenger in Modi’in on Wednesday night. In the minute-long video, a voice said in English, “To hell with Trump and Netanyahu.”

The voice appeared to emanate from an LED screen in the station that shows bus arrival times and enables passengers to recharge their Rav Kav public transit cards.

The English-language message was then followed by brief recordings of Abu Obeida, beginning with the Quranic invocation “In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful,” enhanced by various sound effects and accompanied by shrill siren-like sounds and the occasional thump.

A crescendo led to an emphatic call to arms for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing: “Al-Qassam — to Allah, the one, the almighty… to beloved Jerusalem.” The recordings then continued over a soundtrack of Arabic music.

“Iranian hackers may have taken over the station screen. I’m speechless,” the passenger, Tamar Boaron, told Channel 14, which said the National Cyber Directorate was updated about the incident.

Abu Obeida, the nom de guerre of Hudayfa Samir Abdallah al-Kahlout, was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza City in August, nearly two years after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking the war in Gaza. The perpetually masked, longtime al-Qassam spokesman was widely known and often celebrated in the Arab world.

Further footage published by Channel 12 on Thursday, from near the Ayalon mall in Ramat Gan, played similar audio to the recording heard in the Channel 14 video.

A passenger identified by the name Hila, who reported the incident to the local municipality, said she and her three friends were terrified.

“We were very scared and in shock. It took us time to realize these were Arabic songs and shouts against the government and Netanyahu,” she said. “When we realized that, we understood immediately that it needed to be reported. There was no one else at the station, and when people passed by, nobody responded.”

Israel has seen an uptick in cyberattacks amid the war in Gaza, and ranked the second-most targeted country in the world for the attacks, after Ukraine, according to the National Security Directorate.

CEO Oren Naveh of IM Segev, the company that owns bus stop signage operator Urban Digital, confirmed to Channel 12 that a handful of screens “in various cities, including Ashkelon and Modi’in,” were affected by a hacking attack from 8:30 p.m. to 9:40 p.m., when Urban Digital shut down the signs’ servers.

“I brought in cyber experts to take care of it. A hundred people were up all night to take care of it. The incident is still under investigation, but our assessment is that we’re talking about a group of hackers from a hostile country who’ve already hacked into several Israeli organizations in the past,” Naveh told the network.

Due to the server shutdown, Urban Digital’s website was offline as of press time. Naveh said the server would go back up after a technical team made sure “there are no traces of a hostile country left.”

The National Public Transport Authority told Channel 12 that, “following a cyberattack on an electronic billboard supplier,” the Ministry of Transportation has ordered that all digital signage in bus stations be shut off “until the supplier’s information security array is reinforced and the threat is removed.”