Authorities Say Israel Likely behind Hack of Phone Grid during Nasrallah Speech
Investigations have determined that Israel was likely behind the hijacking of Hizbullah media department's phone lines during Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's speech on Thursday, Lebanese authorities said on Friday.
Thousands of Lebanese citizens had received Thursday voice and text messages accusing Nasrallah of ordering the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Mustafa Badreddine in Syria last year. The party says Badreddine was killed by “artillery bombardment carried out by takfiri groups” near Damascus airport.
A joint statement issued by the Telecom Ministry and the OGERO telecom commission said around 10,000 people in Lebanon received "suspicious phone calls" on Thursday and that "advanced technology was used to penetrate the telephone grid from outside Lebanon."
"Following technical assessment, it turned out that these calls came from France, Italy, Syria, Iraq and other countries and that the real phone numbers were not shown" on the phones of the receivers, the statement said.
"The numbers were manipulated to give the impression that the source is the landline grid," the statement added.
"Accordingly, we believe that the Israeli enemy was behind these suspicious calls, which had also taken place during the 2006 Israeli aggression," the ministry and OGERO said.
They added that an investigation is still underway to "unveil all the circumstances of this piracy that the Israeli enemy did and to take the necessary technical steps and measures to prevent its recurrence."
The ministry and OGERO also promised that "the Lebanese government and public opinion will be briefed on all the developments and conclusions."
An official statement issued by Hizbullah's media department said that during Nasrallah's speech commemorating Badreddine on Thursday, “a manipulation of an unknown source affected the landlines of Hizbullah's Media Relations Department.”
“Several citizens received voice and text messages that appeared to be coming from these numbers,” the department said, noting that the messages “carried insults to the resistance and its leader.”
“Hizbullah's Media Relations Department is following up on the issue with the relevant officials in the Lebanese telecom ministry and the OGERO authority in order to unveil the manipulators and the methods that they used to achieve this penetration,” the dept. added.
Al-Akhbar newspaper said “tens of thousands” of Lebanese citizens received phone calls and text messages part of which appeared to be coming from Hizbullah's landlines.
U.S., Canadian, Sri Lankan and Thai numbers were also used in the operation, al-Akhbar added, noting that these numbers sent a “unified voice message” in addition to video messages via WhatsApp and Viber.
The newspaper also reminded that Israel had waged a similar campaign during the 2006 war with Hizbullah and that it has launched several similar campaigns in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In March, Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot had openly declared that Badreddine “was killed by his own officers."
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