ISRAEL has accused Iran and Hezbollah of a twisted cyber attack where phones across the country were flooded with sick messages.
One of the texts read “Say goodbye to your loved ones”, while another said “Don’t worry, you will hug them in hell”.
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The cyber attack was aimed at an unnamed mobile service provider, Israel’s National Cyber Directorate confirmed.
Some five million messages were sent to Israelis in Hebrew on Wednesday night, purporting to be from the Home Front Command.
The government dubbed it an “unsophisticated attempt to incite public panic”.
It was not clear whether customer data was also compromised.
The Cyber Directorate said Israelis were sent three versions of the messages, all containing harmful links to unknown websites.
The links were made inactive within a short period of time, the Directorate said.
There was no immediate response to the Israeli allegations from Hezbollah or Iran.
It comes as tensions across the border between Lebanon and Israel are at an all-time high.
Israel launched a double-pronged hack attack at Hezbollah this week – remotely detonating a series of hand-held devices across southern Lebanon.
At least 37 people were killed and over 3,000 injured in the pager and walkie-talkie blasts – as Mossad spies seek to take down the Iran-backed terror group.
Hezbollah and Iran vowed to seek revenge with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps promising “a crushing response from the axis of resistance”.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched airstrikes above southern Lebanon on Wednesday night.
Their air barrage continued into Thursday and this evening dozens of strikes were carried out in a “major intensification of bombing”.
Three Lebanese security sources told Reuters it was the most intense bombing since October last year when war exploded between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
The IDF said their attacks are intended to “degrade Hezbollah’s terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”.
They claim to have struck some 100 Hezbollah launchers and “terrorist infrastructure sites”.
A statement from the army read: “Over the last two hours, directed by IDF intelligence, the IAF [Israeli Air Force] struck hundreds of rocket launcher barrels that were ready to be used immediately to fire toward Israeli territory.
“Since this afternoon, the IAF has struck approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites, consisting of approximately 1,000 barrels that were ready to be used in the immediate future to fire toward Israeli territory.
“The IDF will continue to operate to degrade the Hezbollah terrorist organisation’s infrastructure and capabilities in order to defend the state of Israel.”
At least 70,000 Israelis have been evacuated from northern Israel amid almost-daily attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon over the border.
Israel vowed to return them to their homes as it marked a “new phase of war” and shifted hordes of troops north on Wednesday.
Lebanese security forces claim Israeli spooks planted explosives inside thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah, months before the blitz.
Top brass inside the militant group had ordered its fighters to swap phones for pagers in a failed move to keep Israel from tracking them.
Mossad reportedly intercepted the devices on the supply route and packed them with the explosive PETN.
After the initial wave of pager blasts on Tuesday, other devices including walkie-talkies, fingerprint scanners, home solar systems and radios also exploded in Lebanon on Wednesday.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hit out against Israel in a speech, saying the “enemy” had crossed “all limits, rules and red lines” in a “massacre”.
He dubbed it a “declaration of war”.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has warned the situation in the Middle East could “deteriorate rapidly” and urged Brits to leave while they still can.
He tweeted: “My message to British nationals in Lebanon is leave while commercial options remain.
“Tensions are high and the situation could deteriorate rapidly.”
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