Hamas cyber unit runs spyware ops on Israeli soldiers

Atlantic Council report details how Hamas built espionage-focused cyber capabilities, including fake apps used to spy on Israeli soldiers via smartphones.

This Atlantic Council report examines Hamas's evolution as a non-state cyber actor, arguing the group has steadily developed offensive cyber and information capabilities that primarily serve espionage and influence operations rather than destructive attacks. The report frames Hamas as a 'green hat' actor—relatively unsophisticated but persistent and improving—whose cyber activity reinforces its broader strategy of resisting Israel and building political legitimacy among Palestinians.

The centerpiece case study details a 2018 campaign in which Hamas-linked operators distributed trojanized Android apps, including a fake World Cup live-scores app ('Golden Cup'), a fitness/running tracker, and dating apps ('Wink Chat', 'Glance Love') via the Google Play store. These apps deployed spyware capable of location tracking, camera/microphone access, image exfiltration, and call monitoring, targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians to collect intelligence on IDF bases and military hardware. The IDF responded with 'Operation Broken Heart' to counter the dating-app vector.

The report situates this activity within Hamas's broader strategic use of terrorism and information operations, drawing parallels to Russian 'information confrontation' doctrine, and calls for policymakers to reconsider counterterrorism frameworks that currently focus on nation-state cyber threats and critical-infrastructure defense, largely overlooking militant/terrorist groups building offensive cyber capacity.

Source reporting: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/the-cyber-strategy-and-operations-of-hamas-green-flags-and-green-hats