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Turkish hackers have gained control of theatre screens in Tel Aviv to display threat messages alongside footage of the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel that sparked the war between the two.
The hack occurred on 23 January, with a message poorly written in Hebrew being displayed on the theatre screens.
“Stupid Jews, you are all terrorist killers,” said the message.
“You are cowards. You will take responsibility for the hundreds of innocent children who died in Gaza. We will not give you peace, even in your movie theaters, until your massacres are over.
“We will destroy you all. We will limit your access to the internet and banking services. God is with us.”
The attack is now under investigation by police, and the messages have been taken down.
The Turkish hackers behind the attack are believed to be part of the MeshSec threat group. According to reports, the hackers broke into a third-party system that controlled pre-screening clips such as advertisements and trailers and injected its own clip containing the message and the 7 October footage.
Turkish hackers hacked all the billboards of a movie theater company in Israel.
— Laura Allam (@Laurraallam) January 23, 2024
A note was left on the screens:
"We will not give you peace even in theaters until the massacres end." pic.twitter.com/OJ1VSU25jQ
In addition to its actions towards the theatre, the threat actors also threatened to launch attacks that would limit banking services and internet access, not unlike attacks between Ukraine and Russia of late.
The attack is not the first by pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas hackers on Israel, or vice versa.
Late last year, hackers from the Malek Team claimed an attack on the Israeli Ziv Medical Centre, resulting in the theft of 500 gigabytes of medical data, including 100,000 records belonging to or relating to members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).