The Keeper published an extensive eight-month investigation last year of a team of Israelis, led by Tal Hanan, who it said secretly influenced more than 30 elections around the world through hacking, sabotage and Automatic disinfection of social media.
Tal Hanan’s name was submitted by the USR’s candidate in the presidential elections, Elena Lasconi, who claiming that his independent rival, Mircea Geoană, he recently met the leader behind the hacking team. The former PSD leader said that he does not know Hanan and that Lasconi suffers from alcohol.
Who is Tal Hanan
In 2023, the “Disinfo black ops” project, carried out in partnership with journalists from 30 publications, including Haaretz, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, revealed the operation of “Team Jorge” (Team Jorge, or ) and, partly through undercover reports, identified the former Israeli special forces agent who runs it, Tal Hanan. He has denied any wrongdoing.
He worked in the private sector under the pseudonym “Jorge”. The investigations of the journalists showed that he worked secretly for more than two decades and that he was involved in the elections of different countries.
Hanan and his unit, which used the code name “Team Jorge”, were exposed through covert operations and documents released to an international consortium of more than 100 journalists.
The project, which was part of a larger investigation into the disinformation industry, was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French non-profit organization that focuses on the work of journalists who have been murdered, threatened or sent to prison to find.
What Tal Hanan told undercover reporters
The investigation revealed that the Israeli disinformation agency sells its services around the world. Investigative journalists managed to meet the manager of this Israeli company. He told them that he can automatically create fake online accounts, automatically generate content on social networks or hack emails or Telegram accounts to influence election campaigns.
Hanan told undercover reporters that his services, which some describe as “undercover jobs,” are available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that want to covertly manipulate public opinion. He revealed to journalists that he had contracts in Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.
One of Jorge’s main services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls thousands of fake profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube.
Tal Hanan, secretly recorded
Three reporters, from Radio France, Haaretz and TheMarker, posing as potential clients were filmed with a hidden camera when they approached “Team Jorge”. The secret film meetings took place between July and December 2022.
They said they were consultants working on behalf of a politically unstable African country that wanted help to delay elections.
The meeting was held in an office where “Team Jorge” worked, in an industrial park in Modin, 32 km from Tel Aviv.
In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team discussed how they could gather information about competitors, including using techniques hack to access Gmail and Telegram accounts.
The Israelis have boasted about putting material in legitimate news sources, which are then amplified by Ams bot management software.
Much of their strategy seems to revolve around disrupting or destroying competing businesses: the team even claimed to have a sex toy delivered via Amazon to someone’s home -politics to give his wife the false impression that he was having an affair.
Relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defense
According to the investigation, Hanan did at least part of his disarmament work through an Israeli company, Demoman International, which is listed on a website run by Israel’s Ministry of Defense to promote defense exports.
Hanan described his team as “graduates of government agencies” with expertise in finance, social media and campaigns, as well as “psychological warfare”, working out of six offices around the world. Four of Hanan’s colleagues attended the meetings, including his brother Zohar Hanan, who was brought in as the group’s chief executive.
In his first presentation to potential clients, Hanan said: “We are now involved in a selection in Africa… We have a team in Greece and a team in the (Emirates)… ( We have completed) 33 presidential campaigns, 27 of which were successful”. He later said he was involved in two “major projects” in the US, but said he was not the directly involved in US politics.
Not all claims made by “Team Jorge” at the secret meetings could be verified, and Hanan may have been exaggerating to secure a lucrative deal with potential clients. there, the Guardian noted.
How much money did “Team Jorge” want
Hanan said that he has a target of between 6 and 15 million euros for the intervention of the elections.
However, emails provided to the Guardian show that Hanan had lower fees. One suggested that he asked for $160,000 in 2015 from the British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which was no longer on the market at the time the study was published, to engage in an eight-week campaign in the American country. Latin.
In 2017, Hanan again offered to work for Cambridge Analytica, this time in Kenya, but was turned down by the consulting firm, which said it was “$400,000-$600,000 a month, and much more for emergency response” more than his customers would pay.
There is no evidence that any of these initiatives went ahead. However, other leaked documents show that when Jorge’s Team secretly worked on the 2015 Nigerian presidential race, it did so together with Cambridge Analytica, The Guardian reported.
In addition to Goals, Hanan told reporters about his “blogger machine” – an automated system for creating websites that could use social media profiles controlled by Goals to spread fake news on the Internet -web.
Illegal access
Less frightening was Hanan demonstrating his team’s hacking abilities, showing reporters how they could break into Telegram and Gmail accounts. In one instance, he took up the gmail account of a man described as “an assistant to an important guy” in Kenya’s general election, which was held in a few days.
He then showed how to access accounts on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app. One of the Telegram accounts he claimed to have been hacked belonged to a person in Indonesia, while two others appeared to be owned by Kenyans involved in the general election at the time and close to the candidate at the time William Ruto, who won the presidency.
Hanan then showed how access to Telegram can be manipulated to spread malicious information. Writing the words “hello, how are you dear?”, Hanan seemed to send a message from the Kenyan strategist’s account to one of his contacts. “I’m not just looking,” Hanan said, before explaining how manipulation of the messaging app could be used to send messages to damage a rival election campaign.
Hanan then demonstrated how – after the message was read – he could “delete” it to cover his tracks. But when Hanan did this trick again, logging into the Telegram account of Ruto’s second aide, he made a mistake. After sending an innocent Telegram message containing only the number “11” to one of the hacked victim’s contacts, it failed to delete properly.
A reporter from the international coalition was able to track down the recipient of that message and was allowed to look at the person’s phone. The message “11” was still visible on that person’s Telegram account, providing proof that Team Jorge’s infiltration of that account was real.
2024-10-30 04:21:00
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