According to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, members of the Palestinian paramilitary organization Hamas posed as young girls on social media to mislead Israeli soldiers and get them to install malicious applications on phones .
Some soldiers fell into the trap, but the IDF detected the infections, identified the malware , and destroyed Hamas' hacking infrastructure
According to the IDF, Hamas members created fake accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram, and posing as young women, attempted to approach Israeli soldiers.
Hamas agents presented themselves as immigrants, to justify their limited knowledge of the Hebrew language.
Researchers discovered accounts of six Hamas figures used in the recent social media campaign. The accounts were named Sarah Orlova, Maria Jacobova, Eden Ben Ezra, Noa Danon, Yael Azoulay, and Rebecca Aboxis.
The soldiers who were chatting with the alleged girls agreed to install one of the following three apps : Catch & See, Grixy, and Zatu. The Hamas “girls” promised the soldiers that they would send more photos of themselves through these apps.
The apps initially appeared to fail to run on soldiers' phones , displaying a "crash message." Then, the app icons were deleted from soldiers' smartphones , making the user think the app had uninstalled itself.
However, the app continued to operate “behind the scenes.” The malicious apps could steal photos, SMS messages, contacts, and more. The apps could also install other malware on the device, track the phone’s geographic location , and take screenshots of the screen using the phone’s camera.
A similar attack has happened before
This is the second time Hamas operatives have carried out a similar attack to trick IDF soldiers into installing malware on their devices. The first attack took place in January 2017.
Additionally, in the summer of 2018, they managed to hide malware in Android World Cup apps , which they uploaded to the official Google Play Store.
The tactic of using social media profiles belonging to attractive young women has been used again to trick Western soldiers. Hezbollah (an Islamic political party and military group based in Lebanon) has done the same in the past, tricking victims into installing malware on devices .
Considering these Hamas and Hezbollah attacks and many other potential threats, soldiers should not use personal devices.
