Hamas Used Fake World Cup, Dating Apps to Get Sensitive Information about the “Israeli” Military

Local Editor

Palestinian Hamas resistance movement managed to hack into the phones of hundreds of “Israeli” occupation soldiers using dating and World Cup apps and managed to gather sensitive information about the military and some of its bases around the besieged Gaza strip.

The apps allowed malicious software controlled by Hamas to be planted into Android smartphones, enabling resistance fighters in the Strip to access pictures, phone numbers and email addresses of soldiers posted close to the occupied border, and even allowed the resistance movement to control the phones' cameras and microphones remotely.

In several cases, Hamas has been able to film what was happening on the Zionist occupation forces’ bases without the soldiers being aware their phones had been hacked.

Beginning in January 2018, the Zionist military's information security department received complaints from soldiers and commanders about attempts by suspicious people on social networks recommending soldiers to download apps from the official Google Play Store.

Soldiers who downloaded the app immediately gave Hamas access to all the information on their phone.

One of the apps used by Hamas was a dating app and the other is called “Golden Cup,” which provides real time information on this year’s World Cup.

The military began examining these apps and swiftly discovered that Hamas was behind them, and that it was operating fake Facebook profiles to build trust with soldiers since 2017 to get the soldiers to download the apps.

The operation by the unit responsible for information security was dubbed "operation broken heart."

Hamas also used a fitness app to identify the phone numbers of soldiers who went jogging near the Gaza border. The minute Hamas had these numbers, it began sending the soldiers, and others, requests to download their "Trojan Horse" apps. 

Even though the damage was discovered relatively quickly, only a few weeks after the militants started to hack into the soldiers' phones, Hamas still succeeded in gathering information on a number of “Israeli” bases and the armored vehicles on those bases.

Source: Haaretz, Edited by website team