Hamas tried to hack Israeli soldiers' phones by luring them with fake profiles of Israeli women, the Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday.
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Israeli authorities said Hamas operatives pretended to be women who were interested in Israeli soldiers and initiated conversations with them. At one point, the operatives would ask the IDF soldiers to install an app that would severely compromise their mobile devices.
The operatives used fake names and images to create the impression that they were, in fact, women who were genuinely interested in having a romantic relationship with them. They also used well-known hashtags and Israeli slang to compensate for the insufficient command in Hebrew.
To reduce the likelihood that the soldiers would suspect something was off, they refused to have real conversations, citing a fake hearing impairment. They would also use recordings of real women.
IDF officials said that the app that was sent to the soldiers for installation can be of great use to Hamas, by allowing it to take files and control the devices' cameras remotely and discern location of the device.
According to the IDF, several hundred soldiers installed the app but the hacking was prevented due to swift action by information security officers.
