The Israeli military claims to have foiled a Hamas “honeytrap” in which soldiers’ phones were compromised by militants posing as young women.
Soldiers were targeted with messages in the hope that they would download malware that allowed their phones to be hacked. Dozens were said to have done so. Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said it had been the most sophisticated attempt of several by Hamas to entrap soldiers by using fake accounts on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, among others.
Militants tried to strike up friendships, sending pictures, texts and voice messages and using Hebrew slang. The soldiers would then be “seduced” into downloading an app, said to be like the popular Snapchat platform, that would allow them to exchange pictures with the women.
In reality, the links were to three malware programs — Catch&See, ZatuApp and GrixyApp — that allowed Hamas to gain access to the phones. The scam was detected by the army and Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, and Colonel Conricus denied that there had been a “significant breach of information”.
The plot was revealed after the Israel Defence Forces released a picture of a dark-haired young woman taking a selfie on its official Twitter account on Sunday morning.
Read the article by David Rose in The Australian.