Palestinian Busted For Hacking High-Tech Israeli Military Drones

Israel drone Image by Getty

By Reuters March 23, 2016

JERUSALEM – Israel has charged a Palestinian computer hacker from the Gaza Strip with breaking into Israeli military drone camera systems for Islamic militants and gleaning details of civilian aircraft movements.

Beersheba District Court said on Wednesday it had charged Majd Oweida, 22, with designing several computer programs to help the Islamic Jihad group – for which he had been working since 2011 – to access Israeli networks.

The court in southern Israel did not reveal details of how and where Oweida was taken into Israeli custody. Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip declined to comment on the arrest.

According to the court statement, the charges against Oweida include helping Islamic Jihad hack into and monitor broadcasts from Israeli drones flying above Gaza.

It said he also hacked signals from Israeli police street cameras and collected flight information from the country’s main Ben Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv. (Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

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