The cyber threat the Hamas-Malaysia front poses to Israel - opinion

During the operation in May, the IDF announced that it was their policy to target Hamas activists anywhere, including, specifically, Malaysia. We know that Malaysia has already proven to be a “good friend” to Hamas terrorists, and that as a nation they harbor many deeply antisemitic beliefs. But is the Hamas-Malaysia connection boiling over to social media as well? From May 10 to May 21, anti-Israel trolls from Malaysia launched an organized and coordinated cyber bullying attack in order to threaten, silence, and otherwise disrupt the daily lives of Israelis – both private citizens and public officials. 

Using the hashtag #IsraelKoyak more than half a million times, activists took direction from a number of social media groups and mass spammed Israeli private and public accounts in order to silence pro-Israel voices. Even more alarming, these activists also held coordinated campaigns to hack into social media accounts of major pro-Israel voices (including myself) and lock their accounts. In addition, they used information from data leaks to spam private citizens and public officials on WhatsApp, effectively locking their accounts. This isn’t just “hacktivism” or cyber bullying, it’s war – and it has profound consequences. 

For example, Malaysian trolls were able to obtain the personal phone number of IDF Arabic Spokesman Avichay Adraee, and locked his WhatsApp account during a military operation. In another, they obtained the phone number of a senior government employee from the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, forcing him to change his phone number. In terms of harassing public figures, the Malaysians left thousands of hateful comments on Gal Gadot’s post, ultimately leading her to turn off all comments. In another, they spammed Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz for his pro-Israel statements. The goal of this vile harassment (including death threats) is to attempt to suppress the free speech of anyone who dares to express a pro-Israel sentiment online – and the social media networks are simply allowing it, despite the fact it’s a clear violation of their terms of use.

EVEN MORE shocking, these groups are using social media platforms to maliciously attack users on the platforms. They provide lists of accounts to hack and harass, as well as specific instructions on how often to tweet or comment without getting their own accounts suspended, how to use a VPN and from which countries, how to hide their identities in order to engage in “cyber warfare,” and more. All of this is done on mainstream social media platforms in Facebook groups, Telegram channels, WhatsApp and Twitter. Thus far, the social media platforms have done nothing to shut it down. How can Facebook be allowing their own platforms to host groups of half a million people who use the group for the purpose of silencing another group? How can a campaign of half a million tweets which are all exclusively being used to harass one particular group of people go unnoticed by Twitter? It’s simply unacceptable. 

New research on what happened during the operation indicates an orchestrated and well-planned effort across social media platforms to target Israeli and Jewish users. Using Telegram, activists in Malaysia used channels with thousands of followers such as “Team Suspend Twitter” in which they sent out lists of major pro-Israel accounts, followed by instructions on how to maliciously attack the accounts with fake passwords to trigger account suspension. 

One of the leading groups behind this cyber attack was a Facebook group called the “Malaysian Troll Army” which has over half a million followers. Throughout the operation, this group sent out calls to harass, hack and otherwise silence pro-Israel digital voices. In my case, I received over 100,000 mentions on my Twitter from Malaysia. Another group which works with the Malaysian Troll Army is the Cinta Syria Malaysia (CSM), with 300,000 followers, and its sister organization, Cinta Gaza Malaysia, which is run by a Malaysian in Gaza, Nadir al-Nuri. 

Al-Nuri himself has a Telegram network of over 256,000 followers, which he activated during the operation to carry out the cyber bullying, providing a list of pro-Israel accounts to hack and shut down. While there’s yet to be direct evidence, it’s hard to imagine that a Gaza-based anti-Israel activist with hundreds of thousands of followers isn’t taking any kind of direction from Hamas, especially during wartime. 

Given the documented illegal nature of these cyberattacks, which includes providing leaked private data such as individual phone numbers of Israelis for the purpose of harassment, the social media companies must take action in actively monitoring the targeted harassment from these Malaysian channels and shut them down. Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp must prevent the abuse of their platforms and other users on it. It’s time to shutter the Hamas-Malaysia front.