{"id":323,"date":"2017-01-12T16:40:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T16:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/?p=323"},"modified":"2017-01-12T16:40:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T16:40:17","slug":"hamas-honeypot-operation-shows-a-sophisticated-cyber-espionage-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/2017\/01\/12\/hamas-honeypot-operation-shows-a-sophisticated-cyber-espionage-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamas ‘honeypot’ operation shows a sophisticated cyber-espionage unit"},"content":{"rendered":"

The joint counter-espionage IDF Military Intelligence and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation against Hamas that was cleared for publication on Wednesday<\/a> has revealed that the Gazan terror organization is now equipped with a cyber unit, which possesses considerable abilities. This Hamas cyber unit has been aided by foreign experts in the field.<\/p>\n

Hamas’s efforts to gain access to IDF soldiers’ cellphones through seductive come-ons on social media, which went on for many months, bare witness to the great danger to information security and national security\u00a0 posed by the Internet, smart phones, social networks and all forms of digital communication.<\/p>\n

This is not a new phenomenon. However, we are surprised anew each time that we see how exposed we are and how easy it is to gain access to our secrets. Once upon a time the IDF’s Field Security unit launched a campaign entitled, “The enemy is listening,” in order to increase awareness among soldiers not to run their mouths on communications networks, on phones (landlines) or in random street conversations.<\/p>\n

The unit’s name has since been changed to Information Security and the technology has become more advanced: All manner of computers have been added, as well as smart phones, which serve not only as communications devices, but also as cameras, recording devices and more. But the essence has not changed – loose lips can be a life or death matter.<\/p>\n

Hamas’s efforts to penetrate IDF soldiers’ and officers’ phones was initiated in order to obtain information on IDF units, on training exercises, on operational plans and on weaponry. They show how far the world of espionage has come and what changes it has undergone. Espionage requires fewer and fewer agents, who are very difficult to recruit, in order to obtain intelligence. Instead, the intelligence can be produced through Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and more.<\/p>\n

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Hamas intelligence officers have displayed great creativity. They are penetrating social media networks and stealing the identities of users. Mainly, they do so through stolen or invented identities of young women, who have attractive profile pictures. Then, they look for IDF soldiers and officers to victimize. It starts as flirtation with the goal of sparking a conversation in which the victim divulges information about himself, his friends, the unit in which he serves and pictures from his military service. In other cases, Hamas operatives penetrate social media groups already set-up by IDF soldiers at various levels: team, platoon, company or battalion. In some instances, Hamas operatives took over and controlled the smartphones of IDF\u00a0soldiers.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the Information Security Unit and the Shin Bet uncovered the Hamas cyber operations and even succeeded in penetrating its networks in what the intelligence community calls “Doubling.”<\/p>\n

However, we don’t know what we don’t know. It must be taken into account that perhaps the counter-espionage and the cyber defenses of IDF Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet did not succeed in thwarting all of Hamas’s efforts. And we must take into account the worst case scenario – that they succeeded in obtaining important and classified information, and Israel has no idea.<\/p>\n

If Hamas, a relatively small military organization, has managed to run sophisticated cyber operations, one can only imagine what the much bigger Hezbollah and its state patron Iran are capable of achieving in this field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0http:\/\/m.jpost.com\/#article=6017RDQyQjEzM0IzM0I0NzdBNDg3MTM1MUQxRjE2REU5QjM=<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The joint counter-espionage IDF Military Intelligence and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation against Hamas that was cleared for publication on Wednesday has revealed that the Gazan terror organization is now equipped with a cyber unit, which possesses considerable abilities. This Hamas cyber unit has been aided by foreign experts in the field. Hamas’s efforts to gain access to IDF… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}