Calcalist investigation: The cyber division of the police employs paid external hackers for intelligence gathering. These are citizens without a security classification who were not trained as police officers, and they are exposed to personal and confidential information: they hacked into WiFi networks, private cameras and phones that the police had a hard time hacking into. They obtained photographs from a business, and incriminated a senior public figure. These actions were also carried out without a court order
Security cameras in a business in the central area recorded a serious criminal offense by a senior public figure. Police investigators managed to get their hands on the allegedly incriminating footage.
An indictment has been filed. So far it looks like a routine and successful police investigation. Except for the fact that it was not carried out by the police. The one who remotely took control of the security cameras was an Israeli hacker, his name is Elishi Tobol. Tobol is an ordinary citizen, not a police officer, and has no training in the field. That didn't stop the police from asking him to break into those cameras, and not just them.
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| At least 3 external hackers were hired by the police. Illustration (photo: shutterstock) Minister Bar-Lev on the surveillance through NSO: "I don't like it" |
This is not an isolated case, and Tubol is not the only hacker. A Calcalist investigation reveals that the police's Sigint Cyber Division, the technological intelligence collection arm of the Investigations and Intelligence Division, hired over the past few years at least three external hackers, who worked as its paid subcontractors, to help gather intelligence and crack criminal cases (Signit is also the one that operated the Pegasus spy software of NSO to hack into citizens' phones, as Calcalist revealed yesterday ).
These are citizens who were exposed to top secret information without a security classification, without signing a SHOS (confidential partner) commitment, and without periodic polygraph tests in order to prevent misuse of the information they were exposed to. To be honest, it is not at all clear how the Sigint division could verify that those hackers are not Trade or pass on the secret information and personal details of citizens that they themselves have obtained for the police, or are not used as "double agents".
The work of some hackers, Calcalist learned, was often done in illegal ways. For example, by hacking into closed WiFi networks, downloading videos from closed-circuit cameras of private companies, hacking and reviewing insurance files, also hacking into phones that the police were unable to plant NSO's Pegasus software in, and more.
As mentioned, the operations were carried out without judicial supervision, and their products were disguised under confidentiality certificates, often as "from a one-time source". The hackers were paid in exchange for invoices for "consulting".
The computer genius who got involved in a lawsuit against Sony
The hacker Tobul, for example, is a 31-year-old young man today who immigrated from France and served in the IDF as a lone soldier. Tobul, a computer genius, was recruited as an external contractor for the police at the age of 24, about a year after his release.
At the time, he lived in Israel alone, without an apartment or property, and lived in rent In a settlement stuck in the Yehuda Mountains.
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| Periodic polygraph tests were also not done for the external hackers, who obtained personal and confidential information from them (Illustration: Shutterstock) |
The police tracked down Tobul, who was in financial distress, and made him their subcontractor ever since.
She did this even though at the time he started working for her Tovol was in the midst of a legal entanglement related to the alleged illegal use of his knowledge in the digital world. In 2015, the Japanese company Sony filed a NIS 100,000 lawsuit against Tobol to the Jerusalem District Court.
According to the indictment, Tobol established a website called PS3PRIZE ("hacking" for PS3 - short for Sony's PlayStation 3), and on the website he offered to sell a way to hack the PlayStation's coding software: "hacking for all types of Sony" for a price of NIS 70, which would allow downloading from the network Free Internet Playstation or other console games.
As a package deal, the lawsuit claims, the site also offered a package of "hacking + a gift game" for NIS 150. Private investigators on behalf of Sony tracked down Tobul and gathered evidence about his actions.
"Since I didn't have money to live on while I was in the army," Tobol admitted in a deposition to the court, "I had to look for sources of income that would allow me to live, and so I started hacking at people's request for Sony PlayStation devices so that they could copy Internet software to it."
Tobol attached a letter from a Jerusalem city officer, who testified that during his military service he was defined as a lone soldier. A bank account printout that he added showed that his current account balance at the time was only thousands of shekels.
Judge Yigal Marzel decided to oblige Tobul to pay compensation of 15 thousand shekels to Sony and her lawyers.
NIS 50,000 per month and access to Sigint offices
The person who recruited Tobul to help the police for a fee was the former head of the technologies department at the Cyber Signet division, deputy superintendent Yosef Kahlon. And the police put a lot of work on him. In certain months, Calcalist learned, the monthly payment to Tobol, according to working hours, also reached about NIS 50,000 a month.
However, the police made no effort to check how Tobul obtained the sensitive intelligence information. Tobol even gained access to the offices of the Sigint division in Jerusalem and was exposed to top secret information, even though he was, as mentioned, a civilian who had not been trained as a police officer.
Those who were exposed to the hacker's work noted that Tobol brought great achievements in terms of intelligence to the police and helped crack complicated cases.
Among other things, he followed elements of criminal organizations to catch them "red handed" when committing crimes, and followed state witnesses. Another case he managed to crack was the detection of a man who opened fake profiles on social networks and convinced young women to send him nude videos. All these actions were done with the knowledge of the police.
The Israel Police responded: "The claims made in your application are untrue. The Israel Police operates in accordance with the powers granted to it by law and as required by court orders, within the framework of procedures and rules established by the competent authorities.
"Police activity in this area is continuously monitored and controlled by the Attorney General and other non-organizational legal entities.
"Naturally, the police do not intend to refer to the tools they use. However, we will continue to act resolutely with all the means at our disposal, in the physical and online space, with the aim of fighting crime in general and organized crime in particular in order to protect the safety and property of the public."
Source : website
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