Pro-Palestinian hackers in Malaysia have stolen the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Israeli students and begun leaking them online.
The data include names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and home addresses, which were first leaked to Telegram. The hackers, who call themselves DragonForce Malaysia, announced the cyberattack on its website on June 20, calling on others to rally against Israel.
“If you are a Hacker, Activist, a Human Right Organisation then hack Israel websites and expose to the world their crimes, show to the world how much blood is in their hands, blood of innocent children and women,” it wrote online. The group also repeatedly referred to the country as “Israhell.”
The attack appeared to have been made in response to the most recent violence between Israel and Gaza. The hackers had apparently scooped information from AcadeMe, a major student and job seekers online network in Israel, which ties up with leading higher education institutes such as Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Tel Aviv University, the Open University, Bar-Ilan University, the Technion, the University of Haifa and many colleges.
Cybersecurity expert May Brooks-Kempler, who administers the Think Cyber Safe group on Facebook, is investigating the extent of the hack. Details of some 280,000 students from 2014 to the present were leaked along with some 100,000 email addresses, Brooks-Kempler found.
Last month, DragonForce Malaysia reportedly hacked into various Israeli CCTV networks belonging to residences and government agencies.
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