Pro-Palestinian hackers claim they hacked famous Israeli politicians, share personal photos, emails

Handala Hack, a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group, leaked 60,000 thousand ‘secret emails’ allegedly belonging to Gabriel "Gabi" Ashkenazi, an Israeli politician who previously served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. They also exposed Benny Gantz, former defense minister and retired army general.

On September 26th, Handala Hack exposed two password-protected archives, which allegedly included 60,000 secret emails belonging to Gabriel Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi had previously served as the chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

“This data is only a small part of our data lake about Gabi Ashkenazi,” hackers posted on their victim website on the dark web.

To support its claims, Handala included several private photos of Ashkenazi that appear to be authentic.

“Are the current officials and ministries of the fake Zionist regime safe? Never!!! Be afraid of your shadow!” the message reads.

This is the second post in three days exposing former Israeli officials.

On September 23rd, Handala also released 35,000 confidential emails allegedly belonging to Benny Gantz. The next day, they also leaked an archive that allegedly contained 2,000 photos of Gantz. The hackers claimed that they “found out that Benny Gantz has made many confidential and destructive meetings at his office!” and have released “only a small part of the data” they have about him.

Cybernews did not try to access any of the leaked data files and cannot confirm the claims. We have reached out to Israel's Ministry of Defense and will update the story with their response.

Former Israeli war cabinet minister Gantz quit the emergency government in June in a sign of deepening divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's post-conflict plans for Gaza, as reported by the BBC.

The Handala Hack previously breached Viber, a popular instant messaging service, and claimed to have stolen over 740GB of data from the company's servers.