By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

An Israeli military report revealed that the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas conducted a cyber attack on Israeli soldiers over two years before the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, 2023.

According to Israel’s Channel 12, the Israeli army confirmed that Hamas successfully hacked soldiers’ phones and gathered sensitive information, which reportedly supported the planning of the October 7 operation.

The investigation suggests that Hamas may have breached surveillance cameras within Israeli military camps, while also noting that soldiers had posted images from inside these camps. 

The New York Times also reported that video footage from cameras mounted on Hamas members who were killed on October 7 indicated a detailed knowledge of Israeli military operations and vulnerabilities. 

The fighters reportedly accessed a server room in an Israeli military center, highlighting critical information gaps.

Analysts have pointed out that Hamas has been developing its cyber warfare capabilities for over a decade. 

Cyber nightmare: Hamas has detailed intelligence on thousands of Israeli soldiers and their families, according to a Haaretz report. Here are further details. pic.twitter.com/Aw4jcrJDDP

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 23, 2024

‘Green Hat Hackers’

In an article published in Al-Jazeera last January, Mohamed Youssef wrote a short investigation on Hamas’ ‘Green Hat Hackers’, the cyber force of the Palestinian Resistance movement, which, at times, has managed to play a major role in disabling or controlling Israel’s technological communication networks using the simplest of means.

Youssef gave the example of the ‘Golden Cup’ app, a freely downloaded app from the Google store, designed for Android phones. 

This simple app was introduced to the market in the summer of 2018, promising to be the fastest source of match dates, goals, and stats related to each World Cup game. 

The app was quickly downloaded by many people around the world. It was also downloaded by the Green Hat Hackers of Hamas. 

“In the case of this app, the malware is deliberately installed after downloading the app from the Google Store with the aim of bypassing the security screening process imposed by Google,” Youssef wrote, adding: 

“This gave the group of hackers the opportunity to remotely execute code on the smartphone so that they could take full control of it, and with it they could track location, access the camera and microphone, upload photos, eavesdrop on calls, and extract files from the phone”.

Through that simple trick, Hamas’ military wing managed to harvest a huge amount of data from cell phones belonging to possibly thousands of Israeli soldiers. 

Hebrew Channel 12, from a report by the IOF:

– Hamas targeted Israeli soldiers with a cyber attack for 2 years before #October7, 2023. 🪂

– Hamas hacked soldiers' cell phones and collected sensitive information, which it used to carry out the #AlAqsaFlood attack. 🪂 pic.twitter.com/tD3GTBM8Py

— 🔻 mari 🔻 (@mariresisting) November 4, 2024

According to Youssef, Hamas’ cyber unit is not world-famous, nor is it affiliated with a government, which is often the case. Instead, it is talent-oriented, relying mostly on human intelligence as opposed to technological infrastructure. 

According to Youssef, the first major cyber attack was carried out in 2012. However, Hamas did not announce that such a unit existed until October 2022. 

This might be related to the fact that there was no longer a need to keep the identity of Juma al-Tahla, the founder of the unit, secret. 

Al-Tahla was assassinated by Israel in the war of May 2021, known to Palestinians as the ‘Battle of the Sword of Jerusalem’. 

Al-Aqsa Flood

The New York Times was one of many newspapers that reported on the impact of Hamas’ cyber units in collecting accurate information about the Israeli army and intelligence before the October 7 operation. 

Indeed, while Israel attempts to paint the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ as a random attack aimed at killing as many Israelis as possible, the opposite is true. 

Al-Qassam Brigades fighters seemed to know exactly where they were headed and the precise locations of their military targets. They even anticipated the response of the Israeli army and managed to cut off much of its communications before and during the operation itself.

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It would not be an exaggeration to argue that the October 7 attack would not have been possible without Al-Qassam’s cyber units and the months, if not years, of planning and information gathering. 

It is also important to note that Al-Qassam fighters were asked to haul computers and other communication devices from military bases, belonging to the Israeli ‘Gaza Division’ after successfully storming them, with a large degree of ease. 

Many claims have been made in media and social media regarding the use of the information gleaned from these devices, although concrete information on this issue remains sparse and unverified.

(PC, AJA)