Did Anonymous Hack Israel's Mossad Spy Agency?
The hackivists at Anonymous, along with Turkish and other hackers, are claiming they hacked into Israel‘s Mossad spy agency. More specifically, Turkish group Red Hack claims to have stolen the names, locations, phone numbers and email addresses of 30,000 Mossad agents, while Sector 404 launched a distributed denial of service (DDOS) to paralyze Mossad’s Web site. The leaked documents can be found here.
As of Sunday evening, Mossad’s Web site (or at least the English-language page) appears to be functioning. Naturally, the Israeli government is denying that any vital information was compromised. But one doesn’t have to be a master spy like George Smiley to note a few inconsistencies in the claims of Anonymous.
First, if you look at the list of leaked names (some are translated from Hebrew into English), most have Israeli email addresses and live in Israeli towns. It appears a tad unlikely that a deep-cover Mossad agent in Tehran sends cute Persian cat photos on his Israeli email account. And as an analyst pointed out to the Times of Israel, some of the listings are for Israeli businesses such as auto parts stores or food companies, thus suggesting that at least some of the names are just plain old government contractors.