Middle East Monitor / July 23, 2024
The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has created a detailed dossier of the names and profiles of over 2000 Israeli soldiers, in what appears to be a list of potential targets in “revenge” for killing the “children of Gaza”, Haaretz has reported. The IDs, phone numbers, bank details, vehicle licence plates and, in some cases, even passwords are included in the detailed reports. This presents what the Israeli newspaper has described as a “cyber nightmare” for the apartheid state.
The dossiers, which range from a few pages to over 200 pages long, were compiled after 7 October using information from various sources, including leaked data from previous hacks, social media scraping and public databases. The purpose of the reports appears clearly on the cover page: “revenge [against] the killers of [the] children of Gaza.”
More than 14,000 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army since 7 October, surpassing the number of children killed in four years of all global conflicts combined. According to the British medical journal, The Lancet, the true death toll of Palestinians could be over 186,000.
reports were created using an automatic profiling tool that collates intelligence from open sources (OSINT), demonstrating the sophisticated methods employed by Hamas to gather and organize sensitive information.
Iran is believed to have played a significant role in the hacking operations that led to the data breaches. “Holistically, looking at this operation, all signs would point to Iran,” said Ari Ben Am, co-founder of Telemetry Data Labs. “Iran has a rich history of carrying out hack-and-leaks with a high operational tempo and amplifying them via hacktivist front groups.”
The existence of these reports was discovered when they were leaked online and shared with a group of international investigative reporters. An Israeli security source confirmed to Haaretz that the reports were indeed created by Hamas but claimed that they were “problematic and [can] cause discomfort, but [are] not dangerous” for either soldiers or Israel. This assessment, however, has been met with skepticism from other experts in the field.
Colonel Dr Gabi Siboni, an expert in cyber warfare, disagreed with the security source’s assessment. “Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah want to obtain as much information as possible,” he explained. “The public in Israel is constantly exposed to influence operations, and if specific people can be targeted, it is even more dangerous.”
Some Israeli soldiers have already been warned about the existence of the reports, indicating that the Israeli authorities are taking the threat seriously. The Israeli military has acknowledged that it has been aware of the data for several months.
“The IDF is operating against the Hamas terrorist [sic] organization on all fronts and arenas,” said the Israel Defence Forces. “In recent years, several attempts by Hamas to collect information on the IDF and its soldiers have been thwarted.” Only Israel and its closest allies have listed Hamas as a terrorist group.
The dark web is also said to have played a crucial role in the dissemination of this sensitive information, with the reports being available on hacker platforms since at least December last year.
The compilation of these dossiers appears to have relied heavily on previous data breaches and hacks. For instance, some of the information is believed to have come from a hack on Atid College in May, which was attributed to Iranians. Other data may have originated from the 2020 hack of Shirbit insurance company, also linked to Iran.
Ben Am commented further on the nature of this operation, describing it as a case of “perception hacking.” He explained that this involves “amplifying a small-scale hack and leak or other operation to make it appear more impactful than it is to instill fear in the target population.” This tactic serves to create a psychological impact beyond the actual data breach, potentially affecting morale and trust within the Israeli military and broader society.
In a related issue, the International Court of Justice ruled last week that Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal. Under international law, Palestinians have the right to resist military occupation by all available means, “including armed struggle”.
