Women of Hamas and Their Social Engineering Skills
Recently the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) sent a warning to all concerned about the efforts of Hamas to identify, contact, engage, socially engineer and then compromise IDF personnel. Surprise of surprises: Hamas had created a half-dozen personas, all of whom were 20-something women—the women of Hamas—to make this goal a reality.
The IDF-described operation reminds us of similar operations Hamas launched in 2017 and again in 2018 against the same target set.
Indeed, the modus operandi (M.O.) of creating false personas within the social media melee is hardly original. The fact we are in the year 2020 and Hamas continues to use this M.O., affectionately called “catfishing,” evidences the vulnerability of the target to their recurring efforts.
Hamas 2017
In 2017, Hamas created a bevy of Facebook personas, all of which were wily females. These women were interested in making friends and enjoying life. The target was engaged on a social network, elicitation begins, photos exchanged and some generic risqué ensues. In the 2017 iteration, the goal was to get the target (the IDF personnel) to engage in a video chat. The target would receive a video chat application from the “female” to download and activate. The chat would never happen and the video app would fail to “load,” but the phone would be compromised and control of the audio/video of the device was no longer exclusively in the hands of the individual holding the device.
Hamas 2018
In 2018, Hamas created the Gold Cup, WinkChat and the Glance Love applications. They used the same M.O. from 2017—Facebook personas and then once contact was made, they would highlight the various applications to the target. The applications allowed Hamas to geolocate the user and provided to Hamas information from the individual’s phone. The 2018 effort, according to the IDF, netted only 100 IDF personnel into Hamas’ lair. In this instance, the applications were fully functional:
- Gold Cup was an app that provided World Cup scores and stats.
- Glance Love was “the best choice for new lovers who care about their privacy and safety.”
- Wink Chat was promoted as an application that “lets you poke everyone at everywhere whom in your friends list and to be at contact with them in a romance feelings.”
Hamas 2020
The 2020 iteration combines a little of both 2017 and 2018 efforts. This time around three new applications were created by Hamas, GirxyApp, ZatuApp and Catch&See. The backstopping of the applications included a website.
According to the IDF, the “women” posed as new immigrants to Israel and operated on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram. According to the IDF, they used the alias personas of “Sarah Orlova, Maria Jacobova, Eden Ben Ezra, Noa Danon, Yael Azoulay and Rebecca Aboxis.” If any of these women are in your friends/followers, you might want to delete them.
As in 2017, the target is eventually lured to load one of the three apps (provided by Hamas) for a more “private conversation.” Once uploaded, the app would “error out” and “uninstall,” very similar to the 2017 sequence of events.
That doesn’t really happen. Instead, the app engages the device and compromises the settings and content, downloading info to a remote server.
The IDF continues to educate its personnel on the vulnerability of engaging with others on social networks. The education points won’t slow down the engagement, though it may serve to entice personnel in the IDF and other targets of interest for Hamas or any other adversary to take steps to verify prior to clicking or accepting digital gifts from an online acquaintance.
Prudent advice. Let’s follow it.
