An Iranian group 'Handala' hacked into the public address (PA) system of Israeli kindergartens on Sunday, blaring rocket sirens and Arabic songs supporting terrorism, according to reports.
Handala, taking advantage of the vulnerabilities in the system run by electronics firm Maagar-Tec also sent intimidating text messages to tens of thousands of people, according to The Times of Israel.
Handala is an Iranian cyber group linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). However, it is unclear if Handala is linked to the Iranian leadership, though the Islamic Republic’s state-owned outlet PressTV covered the group's activities.
Though the hacker group also claimed to have broken into the National Security Ministry’s command and control system, the claim was proven to be wrong. Handala said it stole the ministry’s internal communications, video recordings, confidential documents and personal records of all police officers and firefighters. They also posted pictures showing 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 it had found nothing unusual on the ministry’s servers, the report added.
This comes after Handala created a designated Telegram channel on December 7 a "countdown" to the alleged breach. On Friday and Saturday, the group posted threatening messages aimed at the National Security Ministry, the report added.
Kan, Israel's public broadcaster, reported that the affected systems have now been disconnected from the wider network. Israel's National Cyber Directorate confirmed the breach and is working with the affected company and the Ministry of Education to address the situation. "Citizens who received these messages are advised to block the sender and disregard the message, as it poses no harm to mobile devices," the directorate said.
This isn't the first incident involving Handala. Last April, a day after Iran's first-ever direct military strike against Israel, it claimed to have breached Israel's radar system and sent hundreds of thousands of threatening text messages to Israeli citizens.
In September, the group successfully breached the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, alleging the theft of 197 gigabytes of data and went on to publish photos allegedly taken inside the centre.
