Iranian hackers have been able to breach the emails of multiple high-profile Israelis, with the aim of luring them out of the country, cybersecurity giant Check Point Software Technologies reported on Tuesday.
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The hack was a prolonged one, with Check Point ascertaining fake email threads going back to December 2021. Some emails included attachments with information forms, an invitation to a conference abroad, and a paper focused on the Iranian nuclear program, Israeli media reported.
According to the reports, the phishing attempts targeted envoys, politicians, defense officials, academics, and businesspeople.
Check Point said it was alerted to a potential hack by one of the victims – former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. She had received several emails allegedly sent by former Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin, requesting that she look over a document he sent her, and noting she would need to use her email password to access it.
Having had dealings with Yadlin in the past, the unusual request, reportedly also poorly phrased in Hebrew, made Livni – herself a former Mossad intelligence officer – suspicious. She contacted Yadlin and they approached Check Point, whose review uncovered the hack.
Yadlin served as the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University from 2011 to 2021, and then became a senior fellow at Harvard University's Middle East Initiative project. The former MI chief is among the top Israeli officials to craft Israel's strategy on Iran, and throughout his decades-long career, he has been the target of numerous threats and cyberattacks by the Iranian regime.
Check Point said the hackers sought to get their targets to open the documents in the fake emails to trick them into using a password recovery request. This, in turn, would allow the hackers to use the authentication code to gain access to their emails – and any other information available on devices on which those emails were installed.
The cybersecurity firm also discovered that the hackers invited at least one of their targets to a "Skier's Roundtable" event in Utah, in a clear attempt to lure the official abroad.
The report comes amid growing threats by Iran to exact revenge on Israel over a series of mysterious mishaps in various facilities on its soil and the assassination of IRGC officials.
In May, the Israel Security Agency revealed that Iranian intelligence operatives were attempting to lure Israeli businesspeople and academics overseas to abduct them. This week, the National Security Council has warned Israelis against traveling to Turkey, citing an imminent threat by Iranian agents in Istanbul.
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