Iranian hacker group Handala infiltrated panic buttons in some 20 kindergartens Sunday morning, using the systems’ loudspeakers to broadcast rocket sirens and Arabic songs supportive of terrorism, Hebrew media reported.
The systems, run by electronics firm Maagar-Tec, were disconnected, and the company said it was looking into the incident referred to the National Cyber Directorate, the Kan public broadcaster reported.
Using another of the same company’s systems, Handala also sent intimidating text messages to tens of thousands of people, the Directorate said, adding that the sender should be blocked and that the messages posed no danger to recipients’ phones.
Handala also claimed it have broken into the National Security Ministry’s command and control system, and stolen from the ministry’s servers four terabytes of internal communications, video recordings, confidential documents and personal records of all police officers and firefighters.
The hacker group posted pictures that appeared to show a control panel for bomb shelters in central Israel, registrars of local police forces’ vehicles, police officers with their weapons, and civilians’ private gun licenses.
However, the Cyber Directorate and National Security Ministry said they had found nothing unusual on the ministry’s servers, Kan reported.
Last week, on a designated Telegram channel created on December 7, Handala had begun what it called a “countdown” to the alleged breach. On Thursday, the group posted an Arabic Quranic verse in which the Prophet Muhammad pledges to wipe out peoples, including Jews, who don’t accept Islam; and on Friday and Saturday, the group posted threatening messages aimed at the National Security Ministry,
Iranian-backed hacker groups, some of which are thought to have ties to the government in Tehran, have repeatedly targeted Israeli infrastructure, companies and individuals in recent years, with a marked uptick since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. Israeli-linked groups have also claimed attacks on Iranian servers.
Iran’s leaders, who are sworn to destroy Israel, operate an “Axis of Resistance” network of regional proxies to further that aim, including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.
It’s unclear if Handala is linked to the Iranian leadership, though the Islamic Republic’s state-owned outlet PressTV has positively covered the “hacktivist” group.
Handala, whose name and logo derive from a Palestinian cartoon character, has announced several attacks on Israeli security forces during the Gaza War.
It has posted what it said was personal data of former defense minister Benny Gantz, former foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi and former prime minister Ehud Barak, though the pictures Handala posted had already been published.
The group also said it had stolen troves of data from the Soreq nuclear research center in September, and from the Shin Bet internal security agency in October. Neither alleged infiltration could be confirmed.