David Barnea’s Israeli ID card, flight tickets leaked by Iranian hackers on anonymous messaging platform via Telegram.
By World Israel News Staff
Personal documents belonging to Mossad chief David Barnea, including his Israeli identification card, flight tickets, and tax documents, along with purported satellite images of his home and a clip of him making silly faces during a personal video chat, were leaked to the Telegram messaging platform on Wednesday.
The group, dubbed Open Hands, is widely believed to be linked to Iran. Along with the pictures, video, and documents posted on the channel, it included a message reading, “We’ve got a small gift for the Mossad; ‘With LOVE for David’. Happy Purim.”
The Jewish holiday of Purim began on Wednesday evening.
In an explanatory video, Open Hands claimed that it obtained Barnea’s personal information after hacking into the database of his local library in Hod HaSharon, central Israel, and that they had been surveilling him since 2014.
Members of the group spoke in English, Arabic and Farsi, which is the language spoken in Iran.
They said they found evidence of financial wrongdoing on the part of Barnea, and that he was “corrupted.”
Notably, the tax document included in the leak was addressed to Barnea’s wife, indicating that she owed a five-figure sum to the Israeli tax authorities.
Among the personal photos leaked were pictures of Barnea vacationing in Copenhagen with his family.
The hackers said that Barnea’s choice to fly to Scandinavia during the 2014 Gaza war was indicative of cowardice and “fear engraved in the hearts of Zionists.”
In 2021, Iranian-backed hackers Black Shadow stole the phone numbers and email addresses of Israeli users of the gay dating app Atraf and published them.
In a laconic statement, the Prime Minister’s Office downplayed the leak, saying that the materials were “old” and that Barnea’s cell phone had not been hacked.