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Israeli Assassins Used Trojan Horse to Track Hamas Leader

by Amar Toor on January 7, 2011 at 10:56 AM

mossad sealBack in January, an Israeli hit squad assassinated Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh at a hotel in Dubai. Presumably operating under Mossad, the 11 assassins disguised themselves as tennis players in order to gain access to the hotel and do the deed, but, according to a new investigative report from GQ, they used a decidedly 21st-century technique to track their target.

According to investigative reporter Ronen Bergman, the assassins were able to conduct surveillance on Al-Mabhouh, thanks to a Trojan horse they had planted on his computer. The spyware allowed them to read their target's e-mails, access his hard drive, and determine his location. The Trojan horse tactic, as Sophos points out, is not new to Mossad agents. In 2006, a Syrian official reportedly left his laptop unattended in his hotel room, where Israeli operatives planted malware on it. The data gathered from the computer is believed to have led to a subsequent air raid on a Syrian nuclear facility.

Check out the full story at GQ.

Tags: assassination, dubai, Hamas, israel, malware, MiddleEast, mossad, politics, security, spyware, syria, top, TrojanHorse

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