Hackers Breached Telegram, Email Accounts of 20 Israeli Crypto Execs

Hackers targeted approximately 20 Israeli cryptocurrency executives in early September, demanding payments of digital currency after hacking into their phones and stealing their identities. Israeli news source Haaretz reported that the cyberattack, which ultimately did not result in any lost funds, may have been carried out by a state-sponsored team.

According to Haaretz, the failed attack also involved a major telecom company, a cybersecurity firm called Pandora, and “perhaps even the Israeli Shin Bet”, the Israeli internal security service that is known as the Israel Security Agency, Mossad and Israel’s National Cyber Security Authority were additionally involved in the investigation.

The story began on September 7th, when Tzahi Ganot, co-founder of Pandora Security, a cyber consulting company specializing in protection for executives in sensitive positions, said that his company was approached by “a new client.”

The man was “a deputy chief financial officer of a company who said his mobile phone had been hacked during the night, and that his Telegram account and perhaps other accounts had been breached,” Ganot told Haaretz.

By that point, “the hackers [had] sent messages to this man’s contacts from his Telegram account in his name and asked them to send cryptocurrency,” Ganot explained. At that point, “we sent the executive a price offer and I tried to figure out with my partner how his phone had been hacked – whether it was by duplication of his SIM card or by installing a malware application onto his phone.”

While cryptocurrency-related hacks are a somewhat common occurrence, Ganot said that the fact that the hacker was able to breach the man’s Telegram accounts was somewhat unusual, not a simple task for a hacker.

That same day, Ganot said that his firm “sent a report of the case to our clients and to a few digital currency groups we are members of.”

However, by the next morning, “I was flooded with messages from people I know and from some I don’t, all with similar complaints of being hacked.”

Ganot explained that the hacker had managed to compromise the phones of approximately 20 executives of Israeli companies, all of them either CEOs or vice-CEOs who run digital currency firms. Additionally, “all of the victims were clients of [Israeli telecommunications giant] Partner,” Ganot said.