Israeli cyber group claims it has hacked into an ISIS chat containing a list of future terror targets

The Islamic State plans to target American air bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, an Israeli cyber-intelligence company that claimed to have hacked the jihadist organization’s Telegram communication group said on Wednesday.

Intsights, a Herzliya-based intelligence company, hacked into what it said was an Islamic State Telegram group in which the organization’s operatives publish terror attack plans, according to a report on Channel 10.

The company, which is run by former IDF intelligence officers, told the TV station the Islamic State uploads potential targets to the group, and in recent months some of the targets have been hit by individuals claiming allegiance to the terror organization. One such target presaged in the Telegram group was the church in Normandy, France, where local priest Father Jacques Hamel, 85, was murdered by jihadists on July 26.

The team managed to infiltrate the covert group, whose 500 members pinpoint targets in the expectation that a jihadist will carry out an attack there.

“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 group it hacked is accessed by members introducing fellow Islamic State members, he said. “I need to know someone who can vouch for me that I’m cleared for the group and only then can I join.”

The Intsight team did not detail how it managed to hack into the group, but if it breached the much-vaunted encryption of Telegram’s communication channels, it would be the second known hack of its kind in a week.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a group believed to be backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corpshacked into Telegram accounts in Iran.

Arvatz said that earlier this week a member of the group uploaded a list of American air bases in the Persian Gulf and around the globe that could be potential targets. A map uploaded to the Telegram group pinpoints air force bases in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other countries of Western Europe, as well as Israeli air force bases.

Among the high priority targets were air bases in Bahrain and Kuwait being used by the American-led coalition to strike Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq.

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