Israeli Media Outlets hacked on the anniversary of Soleimani killing

Threat actors hacked the website of Jerusalem Post and the Twitter account of Maariv outlet on Soleimani killing anniversary.

Threat actors have taken over the website of the English-language Jerusalem Post and the Twitter account of Maariv daily newspaper publishing a picture of a fist firing a shell out of a ring with a red stone on a finger toward an a dome that is exploding. 

“The hacking of the Jerusalem Post website by pro-Iranian hackers was part of an influence operation timed to impact the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna, former IDF cyber chief Brig. Gen. (res.) Yaron Rosen said on Monday.The Jerusalem Post website was hacked at about 2 a.m. Monday morning (Israel time) and the homepage was replaced with a photo of a model Dimona nuclear facility being blown up and the text “We are close to you where you do not think about it” in English and Hebrew.” reads the JP.

“We are close to you where you do not think about it”, read text published on the image.

The hack came during the second anniversary of the killing of the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The general was killed in Baghdad during a strike conducted by a US drone.

Soleimani was an Iranian military officer who served in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). From 1998 until his assassination in 2020, he was the commander of the Quds Force, an IRGC division primarily responsible for extraterritorial and clandestine military operations.

The Iranian official was wearing a ring with a red stone, the same that is visible in the images published by hackers.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the intrusion lasted a few hours. Threat actors also compromised the Maariv’s Twitter account publishing a tweet that was deleted after the media regained control of the account.

At this time it is still unclear who had hacked the Israeli news outlets.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Soleimani)

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