Election rigging, propaganda, fake news, character assassination of political opponents – all of these are methods that the Western public has primarily associated with Russia.
An international team of reporters has now revealed that an Israeli cyber company is also using such means – without scruples as far as customers and targets are concerned, and at an apparently unprecedented high technical level.
The group claims to have manipulated 33 elections around the world, 27 of them successfully. The fact that she sabotages democratic processes doesn’t seem to bother her. For democracies, the finds reveal a challenge of a new kind and scope – to which they urgently need to find answers.
According to the reports published on Wednesday, an international team of reporters, including journalists from “ZEIT” and “Spiegel”, “Guardian” and “Le Monde” as well as members of the “Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project” and the organization “Forbidden Stories”.
The founder of the shady company based in the Israeli city of Modi’in is Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old, heavily built man, according to secretly taken photos, who usually introduces himself to his customers as “Jorge”.
“Salt and Pepper” on your cell phone
His organization, active for over ten years, acts as “Team Jorge”. Their offers include the manipulation of elections, the discrediting of political opponents and the targeted dissemination of fake news.
To do this, the Israelis penetrate their victims’ mobile devices, send messages from them, steal sensitive information and publish it – often enriched with fake content that Hanan calls “salt and pepper”.
An army of deceptively real fake profiles then spread the information on social media. In some cases, Hanan’s helpers are said to have offered such material to journalists. The reporting team found out about “Jorge” by having three of his members posing as potential customers.
In his sales pitch, Hanan presented insights into social media profiles of Kenyan officials that he and his team claim were hacked in order to rig Kenya’s 2022 presidential election. It is true that the opponent of their client won. But “Team Jorge” managed to sow doubts about the legality of the result by means of manipulated leaks.
The group appears to be active in a number of other countries, including the US, UK, France, Canada and Spain, where it attempted to rig the referendum on Catalonia’s independence.
Not the first scandal
It is not the first cyber scandal from Israel. In 2021, a team of reporters revealed that the Israeli company NSO sold its Pegasus spyware to repressive regimes. Last year it became known that the Greek secret service was probably illegally using a program from the company Intellexa, which has an Israeli founder.
That so much powerful spyware comes from Israel is no coincidence. Since the country was founded, changing governments have made targeted investments in intelligence capacities. The army’s technical reconnaissance units are now considered world-class; many founders of successful high-tech companies did their military service there.
It’s time to roll up our sleeves and defend democracy, at home and around the world.
Joseph Borrell, EU Foreign and Security Policy Officer
The Pegasus scandal already sparked a debate about the need for regulation in Israel. Finally, in the age of hybrid warfare, the technical means offered by NSO and others can certainly be regarded as a weapon.
In fact, in 2021 Israel’s Defense Ministry tightened guidelines on the sale of cyber products. NSO’s sales are said to have subsequently dropped significantly. To what extent Team Jorge’s offer falls under these guidelines – and whether it violated them – or whether the regulations need to be tightened in the light of the latest revelations, is so far unclear.
In Europe, too, there are massive fake news campaigns online that are intended to influence political discourse.
In October last year, the team at Brussels-based non-profit EU Disinfo Lab reported a web of more than 50 fake news sites spreading Russian narratives. German portals in particular were copied, including “Bild”, “Spiegel”, “Welt”, “T-Online”, “Süddeutsche”, “FAZ”, “Neues Deutschland” and also the Tagesspiegel.
Commenting on the European External Action Service’s (EEAS) first report on the impact of foreign information manipulation, EU foreign and security policy chief Joseph Borrell said last week: “It’s time to roll up our sleeves and defend democracy, at home and around the world “.
The report focuses on Russia and China. The EU lists 100 incidents in the period from October to December 2022 in its report, 82 of the incidents are attributed to Russia, twelve to China and five to joint activities of the countries.
Political disinformation through mass profiles in social networks or through fake news websites have long been identified as the front in the cyber conflict between nations.
The novelty of the revelations about “Team Jorge” is that these campaigns are also offered by a private company – in a quality that is otherwise only available to national secret services.
Known vulnerabilities in the mobile network, which allow telephone numbers to be taken over, are technically exploited to secure social media profiles. The vulnerability is well known, but available on the free market, in conjunction with an army of automatically created profiles, the service from Israel results in an equally highly dangerous and professional mix for automatic disinformation.
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