back to article Mossad hacked Syrian laptop to steal nuke plant secrets

Mossad reportedly used a Trojan to hack into a Syrian official's laptop while he stayed in a London hotel. The information extracted was used to plan a bombing raid at a suspected nuclear reactor facility in Syria, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports. The air raid on the partly-constructed Syrian nuclear facility in September …

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  1. Ben Tasker
    Stop

    Trojan Horse????

    Are you sure it was a trojan? Generally a Trojan horse pretends to be one thing but unleashes something unexpected (hence the name). Doesn't sound like they duped the user into downloading FREE.PORN.gif.exe but infact broke into his room and installed the software themselves.

    Sounds like Spyware to me, definitely not a worm but not a trojan by definition either.

  2. Ian Ferguson
    Grenade

    And this from

    a country that still denies that it has nuclear capability, when it blatantly does.

  3. Arnold Lieberman
    Black Helicopters

    Shock! Horror! Spy Steals Secrets!

    It's like Spooks, but in real life.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds unlikely...

    Not wanting to sound paranoid, but: Possibly this is what Mossad wants everyone else to think, rather than what actually happened. Why would you need to put a trojan onto a laptop when you have access to its hard drive already? Why not just image the disk? Also, it's pretty unlikely that a diplomatic laptop was unencrypted, so how did they gain access to the disk?

    I am reminded of the enigma encoded message that was sent to the Mexicans offering them arms to fight against the US, this was decoded in the UK, but they staged a break in at the German embasy to make it look like it had been stolen. Knowledge that enigma had been cracked would have been very bad for the war effort.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Silly Mossad nonsense

    So a Syrian who had no reason to have nuclear plans, brought them to London, where Mossad blah blah blah... rubbish. And this on the tail of a recent interception of an 'Iran arms ship'.

    Let me suggest a far simpler reason for these stories:

    Israel has been ordered by the UN to investigate it's war crimes in it's attacks against Gaza and Lebanon, and doesn't want to, because it knows that many of it's leaders are nothing but war criminals.

    http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-11-06-voa21.cfm

    So we have a string of stories suggesting that everyone around Israel is a major threat to world peace.

    But they dropped white phosphorous on unarmed civilians and no amount of this spy story bullshit can expunge the pictures of burned children.

    The fix for them is to find a scapegoat general and prosecute him for warcrimes and apologise, like it was all his fault, put that Olmert stupidity behind them, or perhaps even throw Olmert to the UN war crimes tribunal.

  6. Trevor 7

    Mossad failure?

    If this is story is true, then Mossad failed big time. Now that it is in the press, most of their targets will no longer leave any laptops unattended and scrub data before trips.

  7. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    No doubt the Syrians will be smarter next time...

    ... and leave details and GPS co-ordinates for the Chinese Embassy ...

  8. Gannon (J.) Dick
    Black Helicopters

    Evil Maids

    Anybody remember cold boot? Maids with liquid nitrogen in their lunch box thermos, those are the ones you really have to watch out for ...

  9. EvilJason
    Black Helicopters

    You know

    Governments need to be weary of doing stuff like this because it can set a president for other countries to do it to them.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    too much to hope....

    ... that our "lords and masters" - who are pretty much all members of the "Friends of Israel" group - will recognise that this is a breach of UK law?

    Thought so.

    One rule for them, another for us.

    Scum.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Mossad, eh ?

    Any credible and verifiable evidence that this isn't just propaganda, attempted justification for Israel's attack upon Syria, and conveniently tying Syria to North Korea ?

    I'm surprised they didn't find emails from Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadinejad, OBL, Al-Qaida and the Taleban detailing and documenting their complicity in Axis of Evil-doing. Perhaps that would be stretching things too far.

    Look, up there; it's a helic

  12. adnim

    Isn't this kind of thing illegal?

    I am sure I would be busted if if I did such a thing.

    Yes I know some are above the law.

  13. Tony Paulazzo
    Troll

    Ah

    this is why governments do nothing about all the malware running rife thru the internet, most of it probably leads back to various government databases.

    Anyway, I thought the Mossad were America's friend - when not being sneaky shits and assassinating their enemies... course, all that information is gleaned from NCIS, couldn't be bothered looking at Wikiwrong.

    Should really be anon, but really can't be bothered, they know who I am and where I'm at.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OK..

    ..before others get into the more basic laptop security issues, I want to know one thing. Who the hell travels the world with happy snaps of their top secret nuclear facility?

    Are they planning some sort of family slide show?

    Are they hoping to 'shop together some nice mashups for the office end of year party? "Look! there's Omar and Chad installing the fissionable material containment module into Kathy Ireland's cleavage! Way to adjust those solenoids, Chad!"

  15. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    Syrian infosec fail!

    Why do these guys think they can build nuclear reactor if they leave laptops lying around? Apart from that, Bushco/AIPAC & Israel together are dumb as a sack of beans; they should just have told the IAEA to go take a look-see, but that that wouldn't have been manly and Tom-Clancy-like enough, now would it? Can't have THAT.

    Ceterum censeo to AC:

    "I am reminded of the enigma encoded message that was sent to the Mexicans offering them arms to fight against the US, this was decoded in the UK, but they staged a break in at the German embasy to make it look like it had been stolen. Knowledge that enigma had been cracked would have been very bad for the war effort."

    You are mixing up the history of WWII (Enigma) and WWI (the Rest). Don't forget that the telegram was a godsend for Wilson so he could stick his fat interventionist finger into the Euro-Mess, leading to century of total catastrophe. Nice doing.

  16. Gannon (J.) Dick
    Thumb Up

    @Destroy All Monsters

    Thanks D.A.M. It was WWI. I kept trying to conjure up Mata Hari and kept getting Julia Child, I figured it was because I was hungry.

  17. Andus McCoatover
    Black Helicopters

    One of the photos showed an Asian in blue tracksuit trousers, standing next to an Arab

    TWAT!!

    Asian should've listened to David Icke, and worn a turquoise tracksuit. He'd have been immune, being descended from the Lizard Race, written a book, and made a bomb! (oops...)

    BH icon, natch. God, I'm so happy no-one knows Andus McCoatover's really Andy Crofts, Merikoskenkatu 6 a 11, Oulu, Finland. Shit, done it again.

    Me and my...Sod it, why are all these choppers are around at the mome....................

  18. This post has been deleted by its author

  19. Charles Smith
    Alert

    A word of it I do not believe

    Misinformation is just one of the tools of espionage.

  20. Muhammad Imran
    Thumb Down

    TEMPEST

    http://www.surasoft.com/articles/tempest.php

    comments by mi1400

    http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1560637/mossad-trojan-horse-syrian-bombing

  21. John Deeb
    Alien

    not the average trojan

    Any advanced spy agency wouldn't install a clumsy software trojan or spyware. Too messy. They install hardware trackers in the casing and remotely siphon the data. Israel has been known to use this stuff since the nineties already, tapping the back then clunky boxes in similar ways, listening in or backdoor screens, keyboards and other I/O. It's fairly standard nowadays. My educated guess would be that they install an internal controller that can even control the whole bus including monitor encryption keys flying by. It's all miniature enough to put in unseen and burn itself to a crisp after usage.

  22. Jolyon Ralph
    Grenade

    Mis-misinformation?

    Maybe they just want you to THINK that it's misinformation?

    Jolyon

  23. Geoff Spick
    Paris Hilton

    Extrapolate this

    and there are probably dozens of enemy (ie American, Israeli and Chinese) agents parked in neat rows outside MI6/GCHQ/Whitehall just following these Oxbridge idiots to the nearest pub waiting to snatch their lappies/blackberries... like shooting ducks in a barrel.

  24. LPF

    lol

    The hatred of soem of the posters here is amazing , awh that nasty evil isreal!!

    Strange thing is, that even though Isreal has nuke s well know, and could have annilated any

    one of their neigbours before now they haven't.

    One wonders if the roles were reversed if the same would have happened ;)

  25. TimNevins

    Remember the motto

    A timely opportunity to remember Mossads official motto

    "By way of Deception thou shalt do war"

    Seems the Americans already know about this:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6462040/US-scientist-faces-death-for-plot-to-spy-for-Israel.html

    http://www.ifamericansknew.com

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Oh yeah...

    So the photos and details weren't provided by a spy on the inside but by some numpty leaving it all on his laptop..... like they will fall for that! Still I see the Syrians are simply building the next reactor in downtown Damascus, not as easy for Israel to take it out without killing thousands of people..... well according to some newspaper anyway.

    Whats the best way out of an economic bust? A war of course.....

  27. TeeCee Gold badge

    Re: too much to hope....

    Of course, none of our spooks have ever done anything remotely underhand or illegal in Israel now, have they?

    There'll be the usual diplomatic protest and that'll be it. The idea is that when the Israelis catch one of our lads with his fingers in the till, he'll be sent home with a few extra bruises, the FO will get a stroppily worded note and that'll be the end of it.

  28. Richard 102

    Recall the old Yes Prime Minister episode

    Someone isn't leaking classified secret information, they're leaking classified secret disinformation.

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