(JTA) — An Israeli cyberintelligence company claims it has hacked Islamic State communications and learned about the group’s plans to attack U.S. air bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Intsights, which is run by former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officers and based in Herzliya, said Wednesday it had hacked the forum on which ISIS operatives publish terror attack plans, the Times of Israel reported citing Channel 10.
According to Intsights, Islamic State uploads potential targets to the forum, hosted through the Telegram encrypted messaging app. Some targets listed there, such as the church in Normandy, France where a priest was murdered on July 26, have been attacked after appearing on the site.
“Telegram is completely encrypted and there’s no fear that someone will intercept the messages and understand what you wrote,” Intsight co-founder Alon Arvatz told Channel 10.
The Intsight team did not say how it managed to hack into the group.
Arvatz said that a map uploaded to the Islamic State’s Telegram forum identifies air force bases in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other Western European countries, as well as Israeli air force bases.
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