Hackers with strong ties to Arab parties in Gaza are targeting official Israeli institutions, according to the security vendor Trend Micro.
A highly targeted campaign was found to be hitting military, government, transport and academic groups by sending a porn video to select individuals, infecting the victim’s system with malware.
Operation Arid Viper was unusual in that it had a pornographic component in hopes of taking user focus away from the infection or the fact that something strange is happening," said Trend Micro.
"It targeted professionals who might be receiving very inappropriate content at work and so would hesitate to report the incident. These victims’ failure to act on the threat could have then allowed the main malware to remain undiscovered."
The campaign, which has been linked by the firm back to residents of the Gaza Strip, has also been connected to a much simpler attack affecting Egyptians, leading the firm to question whether there is an overarching organisation behind both campaigns.
"Our working theory (and subject of continuing investigation) is that there may be an overarching organisation or underground community that helps support Arab hackers fight back against perceived enemies of Islam," said Trend Micro.
"We predict that there will be an increase of such "cyber militia activity" in the Arab world, where non-state actors fight against other organizations that would traditionally be considered enemies – similar to what we discussed about the Russian ties in the CyberBerkut attacks on Germany."
