REUTERS-Using photos of
young women and Hebrew slang, the Palestinian militant group Hamas chatted up
dozens of Israeli soldiers online, gaining control of their phone
cameras and
microphones, the military said on Wednesday.
An officer, who
briefed reporters on the alleged scam, said the Islamist group that runs the
Gaza Strip uncovered no major military secrets in the intelligence-gathering
operation.
Hamas spokesmen did
not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment.
Mainly using
Facebook, Hamas used fake online identities and photos of young women,
apparently found on the Internet, to lure soldiers in, the officer said.
"Just a second,
I'll send you a photo, my dear," one "woman" wrote.
"OK.
Ha-ha," the soldier replied, before a photo of a blonde woman in a
swimsuit popped up.
The
"woman" then suggested they both download "a simple app that
lets us have a video chat", according to an example of an exchange
provided by the officer.
The officer said
most of the soldiers were low-ranking and that Hamas was mostly interested in
gathering information about Israeli army maneuvers, forces and weaponry in the
Gaza area.
The military
discovered the hacking when soldiers began reporting other suspicious online
activity on social networks and uncovered dozens of fake identities used by the
group to target the soldiers, the officer said.
In 2001, a
16-year-old Israeli was lured to the occupied West Bank, where he was shot dead
by Palestinian gunmen, after entering into an online relationship with a
Palestinian woman who posed as an American tourist.
REUTERS
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