Hamas militants use trojan dating apps to 'honey trap' Israeli soldiers

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has revealed that it thwarted Hamas militants from launching a major cybersecurity attack.

Apparently, Hamas hackers are using catfishing tactics, wherein they create fake social media profiles of young attractive Israeli women on Facebook Telegram, Facebook and WhatsApp, to lure Israel military officials. And, once gaining the trust, they tried to trick them to download trojan-laced Android dating apps such as GrixyApp, ZatuApp, and Catch&See on their mobiles.

The aforementioned apps even had dedicated benign-looking websites (see below) to come off as genuine and hoodwink the victims to download them. The apps reportedly had Mobile Remote Access Trojans (MRAT), that used retrieve phone numbers, location, SMS messages and more and send them to a remote server. Also, the Hamas hackers were also able to take control of the phone's mic and camera to record audios and videos as well.

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"The victims received a link to download the malicious application from a Hamas operator disguising themselves as an attractive woman. Once the application is installed and executed, it shows an error message stating that the device is not supported, and the app will uninstall itself – which actually does not happen, and the app only hides its icon," Checkpoint Research security said citing the official IDF document.

Promotional website of the trojan-laced dating app (Credit: Check Point Research)

But before Hamas could carry out full-fledged espionage on the IDF' officials, the latter's advanced security firewall detected the suspicious behaviour of the apps and even took down the websites.

"Hamas created fake social media profiles, using photos including this one, in an attempt to hack the phones of IDF soldiers. What Hamas didn’t know was that Israeli intelligence caught onto their plot, tracked the malware & downed Hamas’ hacking system. #CatfishCaught," Israel Defense Forces said on Twitter

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This incident is a stark reminder of why the government, particularly military agencies not just Israel, but also globally, should create a robust security system or dedicated application for soldiers' mobiles to monitor suspicious behaviour and nip it in the bud, before its too late.

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