The Lebanese Al-Jadeed TV channel hosted hackers who tried to infiltrate Israeli websites live on air with partial success. Information security expert Mustafa Dabbous demonstrated how he hacked a site that he said belonged to the Israel Ministry of Economics and planted the Lebanese flag and anthem on its homepage. The hackers admitted that their efforts to hack the website of Avichay Adraee, head of the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesman Unit, were less successful. The show aired on October 22, 2018.
Following are excerpts:
Host: What exactly are you doing right now? You are trying to hack Israeli websites. You started a little bit earlier. What type of sites are you trying to hack?
Moustafa Dabbous: One of the websites belongs to [Israel's] Ministry of Economy, and one is a control panel that hosts Israeli sites.
[…]
Host: What are you doing? Are you trying to disrupt it, or are you embedding your own content?
Moustafa Dabbous: I am embedding content and disrupting it… [I have] full access.
Host: Is it ready? Can we see?
Moustafa Dabbous: Of course.
Host: What are you accessing now?
Moustafa Dabbous: I am accessing a website that I want to show you. It is in Hebrew. I am going to refresh it and embed a Lebanese flag. I am refreshing it, and now…
Host: What happened now? A Lebanese flag on an Israeli website?
Second Hacker: On the home page, along with the Lebanese anthem.
Host: What website is this?
Moustafa Dabbous: It belongs to the Ministry of Economy.
Host: I see. It belongs to the ministry, but it isn't the ministry's site.
Moustafa Dabbous: But in the control panel…
Host: When we spoke in the afternoon, I asked you to hack into the website of Avichay Adraee [the IDF's Arabic-language spokesman]. Adraee is very… We see him…
Second Hacker: He is familiar with [information security]. His job is to recruit. His job is to bring the world closer to Israel. He's skilled in this. We tried [to hack his site], and maybe it's possible, [but we couldn't]…