Israeli Military Networks Penetrated by Hackers

Hackers managed to breach the computer networks of the Israeli military in an espionage operation.

The infiltration was most likely done by Arab-speaking programmers. Waylon Grange, a researcher with security firm Blue Coat Systems Inc who discovered the spy operation, said the vast majority of the software was put together from widely available tools, such as the remote-access Trojan called Poison Ivy.

The hackers sent emails to numerous military addresses that claimed to show breaking military news, or, in some cases, an excerpt featuring "Girls of the Israel Defense Forces."

Some of the emails included attachments that established "back doors" for later access by the hackers and modules that could download and run additional programs, according to Blue Coat.

Grange said he did not know if any vital data had been stolen. Blue Coat deduced that the attackers spoke Arabic because some of the data recovered in the investigation showed that was the default language setting in one of the programing tools.

In February, Kaspersky Lab researchers said they found what they considered the first "advanced" Arabic-speaking hacking group, which they labeled Desert Falcons.

Kaspersky said the group operated from Palestine, Egypt and Turkey and claimed about 3,000 victims in 50 countries, targeting military, government, media, and activist computers.