[ISN] Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer Before Bombing Mysterious Facility

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/mossad-hack

By Kim Zetter
Threat Level
Wired.com
November 3, 2009

Agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service hacked into the computer 
of a senior Syrian government official a year before Israel bombed a 
facility in Syria in 2007, according to Der Spiegel.

The intelligence agents planted a Trojan horse on the official's 
computer in late 2006 while he was staying at a hotel in the Kensington 
district of London, the German newspaper reported Monday in an extensive 
account of the bombing attack.

The official reportedly left his computer in his hotel room when he went 
out, making it easy for agents to install the malware that siphoned 
files from the laptop. The files contained construction plans for the Al 
Kabir complex in eastern Syria - said to be an illicit nuclear facility - 
as well as letters and hundreds of detailed photos showing the complex 
at various stages of construction.

     At the beginning - probably in 2002, although the material was 
     undated - the construction site looked like a treehouse on stilts, 
     complete with suspicious-looking pipes leading to a pumping station 
     at the Euphrates. Later photos show concrete piers and roofs, which 
     apparently had only one function: to modify the building so that it 
     would look unsuspicious from above. In the end, the whole thing 
     looked as if a shoebox had been placed over something in an attempt 
     to conceal it. But photos from the interior revealed that what was 
     going on at the site was in fact probably work on fissile material.

Early in the morning of September 6, 2007, Israeli fighter jets bombed 
the complex, located in the desert near the Euphrates river about 80 
miles from the Iraq border. The attack, dubbed "Operation Orchard," 
seemed to come out of nowhere and was marked by a resounding silence 
from both Israel and the United States afterward.

[...]


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