The official logo of the Open Hands hacking group.
On March 16, an anonymous Telegram channel released a video containing personal photos and documents belonging to Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea.
The Open Hands channel said that the information shown in the video were obtained during a lengthy intelligence operation that began in 2014. The channel released the video with English, Hebrew and Arabic translations.
The video contained personal photos of Barnea, flight tickets booked under his name, his ID card, tax documents addressed to his wife as well as a clip of him making silly faces during a private video chat. A satellite imagery of what it claimed to be Barnea’s private home in the central Israeli city of Hod Hasharon was also included in the video.
Israeli media reports said that the source of the information was an old phone belonging to Barnea’s wife that was hacked by Open Hands. The reports said there was no sensitive information on the phone that could potentially harm Israel security.
Open Hands responded to these reports on March 19 by leaking “new” information, including Barnea’s wage and tax papers from 2020.
“It seems that the director of the Mossad’s wage bill can be found in his wife’s OLD PHONE! Mr. Barnea, are they sending your NEW documents to your wife’s OLD phone?? Are you sure that the leakage is just from your wife’s ‘OLD PHONE’?” the group said in a post on Telegram.
Israeli media reports alleged that the Open Hands group is affiliated with Iran. Nour News, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, published details of the leak. This seems to be the main evidence behind these Israeli claims.
This was not the first cyberattack to target Israel this year. On March 14, Israeli government websites went downed due to a major cyberattack, which has also been attributed to Iran by media reports.
The hacking of Mossad chief was without a doubt a major blow to the Israeli intelligence establishment. The Israeli intelligence will likely respond in kind, if Iran was indeed responsible for the hack.
