Anti-Israel hackers have published extensive amounts of classified data as Israel continues its struggle to contain leaks, Turkey-based Anadolu Agency reported, citing the Israeli daily Haaretz.
The leaks involve tens of thousands of sensitive documents and emails stolen from Israeli institutions, including the Justice Ministry, it reported.
The cyber attacks, that started on October 7, 2023, have targeted several entities, including military and defence contractors, hospitals and government ministries. Israel’s cybersecurity infrastructure has been overwhelmed by the scale of the breach.
A source close to the investigation said, “The true extent of the damage to Israel’s security and economy caused by these leaks is not yet fully known,” the Turkey-based Anadolu Agency reported.
The source added, “Despite massive investment in defensive cybersecurity measures, the scale of the leaks is likely the most severe in Israel’s history — an unprecedented looting of gigabytes upon gigabytes of information of all sorts,” the report said.
The leaked data has appeared on platforms like Telegram, resulting in several takedown attempts by Israeli authorities. However, Telegram’s limited moderation policies have complicated these efforts.
“Telegram emerged at the start of the war as a key platform utilized by Hamas’ information warfare against Israel, one Israel was unable to properly address, lacking both monitoring capabilities and an understanding of the platform,” Anadolu Agency reported quoting Haaretz report.
American commentator Jackson Hinkle also mentioned that anti-Israel hackers have published the information on Telegram and the founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, who had “refused Israel’s request to censor them,” was detained by the French authorities.
In a post on X, Hinkle stated, “Anti-Israel hackers who stole gigabytes of sensitive Israeli data have been publishing the classified information on TELEGRAM. Telegram refused Israel’s request to censor them.
Today, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France and now faces 20 years in prison.”
Israel has tried to mitigate the damage through legal steps and direct talks with tech giants like Google, Amazon and Meta.
However, the hackers have been using decentralized hosting services and “onion domains” which obscure the source of the data and obstruct takedown efforts. The war in Gaza started after the Hamas rebels infiltrated Israel on October 7.
CNN also reported that the founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, who had an arrest warrant issued against him, was detained by the French authorities at an airport outside Paris.
Officers from France’s anti-fraud office, attached to French customs, took the French-Russian billionaire into custody on Saturday evening after he arrived at Bourget Airport on a flight from Azerbaijan, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.
Durov, 39, was wanted under a French arrest warrant due to the lack of moderation on Telegram, which allegedly led to the platform being used for money laundering, drug trafficking and sharing pedophilic content.
According to BFMTV, the Telegram founder had not regularly travelled to France and Europe since the arrest warrant was issued.
Notably, France issued an arrest warrant for Durov on charges of complicity in drug trafficking, crimes against children and fraud due to the lack of moderation on Telegram and his failure to cooperate with law enforcement, the Moscow Times reported, citing French local media.
The Russian-born founder of Telegram, which he says boasts over 900 million users, is currently based in Dubai. He became a naturalised French citizen in August 2021.
Durov, who is also the founder of the VKontakte social network, left Russia in 2014 after he refused to share VKontakte users’ data with Russian security services. Later, Russia unsuccessfully attempted to block Telegram over its refusal to provide users’ online communications to security services.
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