Pro-Assad hackers stole Syrian rebel data using fake female accounts on Skype

PRO-Assad hackers have used “hot girls” to chat up Syrian rebels on Skype and Facebook to steal their battle plans.

Portrait of a relaxed young woman using laptop while lying in bed. Horizontal shot.

IT SEEMS lonely local Romeos aren’t the only ones being scammed by beautiful ‘fake’ women online.

Cyber security company FireEye has revealed that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s military used “attractive women” on Skype to plant malware on Syrian rebel’s devices and steal their crucial military data.

According to the security company, the group used “sympathetic and attractive women” to chat to fighters online. Once the women gained the trust of the rebel fighters, they sent a photo of themselves with malicious code inside to steal data from both the target’s phone and computer.

The hackers created fake profiles specifically to target certain people. Everything from the name to the pictures were chosen for each individual target.

Who the Syrian fighters probably thought they were talking to.

“In the course of our threat research, we found the activity focused on the Syrian opposition that shows another innovative way threat groups have found to gain the advantage they seek,” said Nart Villeneuve, senior threat intelligence researcher at FireEye.

“While we cannot positively identify who is behind these attacks, we know that they used social media to infiltrate victims’ machines and steal military information that would provide an advantage to President Assad’s forces on the battlefield.”

In total, 7.7GB of data was stolen, including 240,000 messages, 31,000 conversations and 64 Skype account databases.

The attacks took place between November 2013 and January 2014, with the group stealing everything from battle plans, weaponry lists and maps to personal information of men fighting against Assad’s forces.