How Turkish intelligence rescued Palestinian hacker who disabled Iron Dome

Türkiye's National Intelligence Organisation (MİT) has foiled an operation by Israel's Mossad intelligence service to kidnap a Palestinian hacker who had managed to hack into and paralyse the notorious Iron Dome.

According to the Sabah newspaper, the man in question is Palestinian engineer Omar A., whom the newspaper claims Mossad tried to kidnap in 2022. Omar studied programming at the Islamic University and worked for Hamas' interior ministry. He was involved in hacking Android phones.

In 2015-2016, Sabah writes, the operation of Israel's Iron Dome air defence system suffered a malfunction, and this was exploited by Hamas's militant unit, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, with the help of Omar A., who was 24 at the time.

In 2019, he received a job offer from a software company in Norway, but Omar, suspicious of Israel’s involvement, rejected the offer. On March 3, 2020, he travelled to Istanbul via Cairo, and there, Mossad agents began following him.

In April 2021, an agent named Raed Ghazal contacted Omar A. via WhatsApp messenger, identifying himself as a representative of the French company Think Hire. He invited Omar A. to a face-to-face meeting in June and August 2021. The job of recruiting Omar A. was then assigned to another agent named Omar Shaalbi. The newspaper claims that the above-mentioned people aimed to take the Palestinian hacker to Israel.

During the recruitment process, Shaalbi offered Omar A. $10,000 for coding software, and the French company transferred the money for the programme. However, Sabah writes, the money was actually transferred by another Mossad agent codenamed "John Foster."

In June 2022, the operation was handed over to a Mossad agent named Nicola Radonij, who stayed at a hotel in Istanbul and met Omar A. there, offering the latter $5,200 if he would work from Türkiye and $20,000 if he agreed to relocate to Brazil. He told the Palestinian programmer that he had contacts at the Istanbul immigration office and asked him to send his passport and address to prepare for his relocation from Türkiye. Omar was about to accept the offer but MIT contacted him and warned him against the scheme.

However, the story did not end there. Last September, Omar A. went on a two-week trip to Malaysia. Before leaving, he was briefed by Turkish intelligence and was required to install tracking software on his phone that allowed MİT officers to know his whereabouts. The Sabah claims that Omar A. was abducted in Kuala Lumpur on September 28, 2022, and interrogated inside Malaysia for approximately 36 hours. The interrogation was accompanied by video calls from Tel Aviv. Among other things, he was questioned on the methods he employed to infiltrate Iron Dome and the Android-based hacking software he developed.

One and a half days after the kidnapping, Turkish intelligence, in cooperation with their counterparts in Malaysia, located the kidnapped Omar A. and rescued him. Eleven people were arrested in Malaysia in the case and Omar A. was returned to Istanbul, where he is under the protection of Turkish security services.