Housekeeper for Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was accused Thursday of spying on behalf of a group of hackers linked to Iran, the number one enemy of the Hebrew state, behind the cyberattacks recent events against Israel. In a brief statement, Shin Beth, Israel's powerful internal intelligence service, said it arrested and interrogated Omri Goren Gorochovsky, 37, the housekeeper of Benny Gantz, former army chief of staff. now at the head of the Ministry of Defense, for having contacted on social networks "
an entity affiliated with Iran
" and having offered his "
help
" given his access to the minister's home.
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According to the indictment filed in the court of Lod, a city in central Israel where Gorochovsky lives, the latter allegedly used a false name and contacted the hackers of the Black Shadow group via Telegram messaging on or around October 31 for their provide information about Benny Gantz's residency.
More precisely, the cleaning man, arrested on November 4, allegedly proposed to introduce a "
computer worm
", via a USB key, into the minister's computer in exchange for "a
sum of money.
», Underlines the indictment.
And to prove his seriousness, Gorochovsky is said to have photographed various items in the minister's house, including family photos, a receipt for payment of his municipal taxes and military memos dating from Benny Gantz's tenure as head of the Israeli army, specifies the judicial record.
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The cleaning man "
threatened the security of the State of Israel
", underlines the indictment, the Shin Beth assuring that in the end he had not had access to "
any secret document
" and therefore that 'no secret information had been passed on to the hackers.
The Black Shadow hacker group hit the headlines between October 31 and November 2 after stealing and then disseminating data from an Israeli LGBTQ dating site in a cyberattack.
And Iran accused the United States and Israel at the end of October of a cyberattack that disrupted its fuel distribution system.