Photo: archive, BGNES
A group of Israeli hackers called “Team Jorge” has revealed in an undercover video that it has manipulated more than 30 election campaigns around the world over two decades through hacking attacks, sabotage and targeted disinformation on social media, and that it has a team and in Greece, the Guardian reported.
The team is led by Tal Hanan alias Jorge, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces agent. According to him, the team offered its services for covert manipulation of public opinion in Africa, South and Central America, the United States and Europe. The organization has six offices around the world, with teams in Greece and the United Arab Emirates, and has run 33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful, Hannan said. He also adds that they were involved in two “major projects” in the US.
His words were recorded in footage lasting over 6 hours, filmed between July and December 2022 by three undercover reporters from Radio France, Haaretz and TheMarker about 30 km from Tel Aviv. Israel. The reporters posed as consultants working on behalf of a politically unstable African country in need of postponing elections. In the video, Hanan informs that he will take between 6 and 15 million euros for interfering in the elections.
The group’s head described his team members as “graduates of government agencies” with experience in finance, social media and campaigning, as well as “psychological warfare”. Among the key services offered by “Team Jorge” is a sophisticated software package (Advanced Impact Media Solutions / Aims) that controls an “army” of thousands of fake profiles on the social networks Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. with some of these fake profiles also having Amazon accounts with credit cards, Bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.
Michalis Kritaridis, spokesman for the Greek party MeRA25, raised the issue of the existence of such a group in Greece in a public statement, calling on the Greek government to immediately give concrete answers to the question of whether such activities are taking place in the country and on whose behalf, ANA-MPA reported.
So far, there is no evidence that the campaigns mentioned by Hannan were carried out, but according to leaked documents, “Team Jorge” secretly worked on the 2015 Nigerian presidential race with Cambridge Analytica.
Team Jorge was exposed by investigative journalists from 30 media outlets, including Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. The investigation is part of the Forbidden Stories project, run by a French non-profit organization.
The revelations about “Team Jorge” could have a negative impact on Israel, which has been under increasing diplomatic pressure in recent years for exporting cyber weapons, an act that undermines democracy and human rights, the Guardian commented. In addition, Tel Hanan conducted at least some of its disinformation operations through an Israeli company (Demoman International) registered on a website operated by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to promote the export of defense products. The Israeli ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
(BTA, Melina Hristova)
