Israeli military intelligence on Tuesday accused Hamas hackers of creating a World Cup app and two online dating sites to tempt soldiers into downloading spyware onto their phones. Briefing journalists at national defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, army intelligence officers said the scam by members of the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip failed to damage military security.
"No damage was done, as we stopped it in time," one of the officers said, with the military's response codenamed "Operation Broken Heart". But he said the attempt showed the Islamist militants had adopted new tactics since a similar attempt was revealed in January 2017. The emphasis then was solely on the dating game, with the hackers posing online as attractive young women seeking to lure men in uniform into long chats.
This time the traps were aimed at both sexes and there was the additional bait of World Cup action with an app offering "HD live streaming of games, summaries and live updates". Attackers used stolen identities to create more convincing fake Facebook profiles of young Israelis, written in fluent Hebrew studded with current slang.
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