By Michael Zeff/TPS

Herzliya (TPS) – An emerging Israeli startup firm in the cyber-security sector managed to infiltrate an encrypted Islamic State group and to retrieve the terror organization’s latest list of international attack targets.

IntSights is a cyber-intelligence startup company, founded by three Israeli entrepreneurs in their 20s. The founders are veterans of top IDF intelligence and cyber-warfare units, and already according to the founders, their clients include large international establishments such as banks, industry giants and telecommunications companies.

“IntSights is a small company which provides intelligence and incident mitigation in real time by gathering and analyzing data from the darknet, an encrypted and secretive section of the Internet often used by criminal elements,” Alon Arvatz, VP Intelligence and Co-Founder, told Tazpit Press Service (TPS) in an interview. “Using the technology we developed, we intercepted the most recent target-list sent by the Islamic State to its operatives around the world.”

IntSights analysts used their expertise to infiltrate a Telegram Messenger chat used by the Islamic State terror group to communicate internationally. The Telegram application has been used by the top 500 Islamic State operatives to share plans and locations for potential terrorist attacks mandated by the IS leadership.

“The Telegram app is completely encrypted, which means no fear of someone monitoring your correspondence and understanding what it means,” Arvatz explained. “That’s why IS moved from traditional social media to Telegram over the last year.”

According to IntSights, the application is used by Islamic State cyber-warfare arm, the United Cyber Caliphate, to publish targets in the form of a call to action with the knowledge that someone around the world would answer the call and carry out an attack.

“The church in France that was recently the location of a deadly attack appeared on a target list published several months ago and someone recently decided to answer the call and attacked that very church,” said Arvatz. “This proves beyond doubt that there is a direct link between cyber activity and actual terror attacks.”

The newest target list was published on the Telegram group on Monday and was intercepted by IntSights.

“The long list includes exact coordinates for each and every target, all of which are airports and air bases that are used or could be used by the United States Air Force all over the world,” Arvatz told TPS.

The list was followed by a file with a world map on which all the airports and bases were marked with pinpoint precision, as well as aerial footage of the higher priority targets. Entries in the list that were marked as “preferred targets,” include the Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and two Bahraini airports. The full list includes targets in Latin America, Europe and even Israel.

Jason Rezaian, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmat and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, four dual US-Iranian citizens were released from an Iranian jail on Saturday by Iran in an apparent prisoner exchange with the United States.

Jason Rezaian is an Iranian-American journalist who served as Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post. He was convicted of espionage in a closed-door trial in Iran in 2015.

The four were transported to Switzerland, and will then continue on to to a US base in Germany.

A fifth American citizen, Matthew Trevithick, was released in a separate deal.

Former FBI agent Robert “Bob” Levinson was not released.

In exchange, the US will offer clemency to 7 Iranian prisoners, 6 of them who hold dual US-Iranian citizenship: Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afqahi, Arash Ghahreman, Touraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Sabounchi.

The Obama administration also delayed a  series of sanctions that were supposed to be imposed on Iran, after Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the sanctions would derail the prisoner exchange, according to an Haaretz report.

FARS reports that part of the deal includes US dropping its charges against 14 Iranians for trying to transfer arms to Iran:  Saeed Jamili, Jalal Salami, Matin Sadeqi, Alireza Moazzemi Goudarzi, Mohammad Abbas Mohammadi, Kourosh Taherkhani, Sajjad Farhadi, Seyed Ahmad Abtahi, Gholamreza Mahmoudi, Hamid Arabnejad, Ali Moattar, Mohammad Ali She’rbaf, Amin Ravan and Behrouz Dolatzadeh.

Dropping the charges, will apparently allow them to travel freely outside of Iran without fear of arrest via Interpol or setting off warning flags, according to a Politico report.

FARS originally also reported that the US will also demand Interpol end its investigations of Iranian involvement in the bombing of the Jewish Center in Argentina, but that has subsequently been removed from their website.

Robert Levinson, still missing in Iran

Related story: As Its $100 Billion Are Released Iran Buying 114 Airbus Planes

A Lebanese judge has issued an indictment against an employee of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on a charge of “collaborating with Israel.”

Lebanese Military Investigative Judge Riad Abou Ghida issued the order of indictment on Tuesday against UNIFIL employee Hani Matar. The judge also issued a similar indictment against Syrian national Ramez al-Sayyed and his wife, according to LBCEurope.

UNIFIL announced last month that one of its Lebanese employees had been transferred to Lebanese authorities after being accused of spying for Israel.

Although the charges were brought in Lebanon’s military court, Lt. Colonel Lila K. Chhetri, listed on the UNIFIL website as the agency’s senior military public information officer, declined to comment on the issue. JewishPress.com was unable to reach UNIFIL Public Information spokesperson Andrea Tenenti.

UNIFIL was created by the United Nations Security Council in March 1978 to “confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, restore international peace and security and assist the Lebanese government in restoring its effective authority in the area.”

The organization is also required to “accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon and extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons.”

In addition to that mandate, the Council tasked the Force with monitoring the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah terrorists following the 2006 Second Lebanon War — a task that was to include preventing the terrorist group from rearming itself — at which it has failed spectacularly. Hezbollah has not only rearmed to levels nearly double those at which it began prior to the 2006 Second Lebanon War; the terrorist group has also integrated into the social fabric of its host country to the point that it has now become the second largest governing entity and military organization in Lebanon.

Israeli Bedouin Ouda Tarabin has been freed from an Egyptian prison after 15 years’ incarceration on suspicion of spying for the Jewish State.

He returned to Israel early Thursday morning, just as two Egyptian prisoners completed their prison terms in Israel and were released to return to Egypt.

Tarabin was arrested by Egyptian authorities while crossing the border to visit his family in the Sinai Peninsula. He was tried and sentenced in absentia in 2000 on charges of aiding others in gathering intelligence.

A powerful Iranian government-backed hacker group, “Rocket Kitten,” has been de-clawed in a special operation carried out by police in Europe.

Sources from the Check Point Sofware company, a U.S.-Israeli security firm, were quoted by Reuters as saying they identified the threat presented by the hacker group linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, as far back as early 2014.

“Rocket Kitten” had mounted some 1,600 attacks on powerful defense and political global leaders in the United States, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, among other targets, according to the report.

Researchers at Check Point had located the computers used to launch the attacks. National computer security response teams were informed in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, the company said. The response teams in turn informed local police about the locations of the attacking “command and control” servers, controlled from Iran.

Among the high-profile personalities targeted by the Iranian hacker group were Israeli nuclear scientists, NATO officials, members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, wives of generals from unidentified nations and Iranian dissidents.

An advance copy of a report on the operation to be released Monday by Check Point explains how the security response teams were able to enter the hacker group’s database and remote-controlled computers to plant a malicious set of software tools.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), Europol and FBI have all declined comment on the report.

Three people arrested in Lebanon on Sunday have been accused of spying for Israel.

A Syrian national, his Lebanese wife and a second man, also a Lebanese citizen, allegedly confessed to recording “sensitive” locations in southern Lebanon and sending the footage to their “employers to be used in later attacks,” according to the charges. They also allegedly admitted to gathering information on military and government targets for Israeli intelligence, AFP reported.

“In the framework of pursuing operations to combat terrorism and espionage… the directorate of General Security arrested a spy network working for the Israeli enemy in the south [of Lebanon],” said the Lebanese security service in a statement released to media on Sunday.

It is not clear exactly where the alleged “spies” were arrested or what their ethnic and/or religious affiliations are.

There is a massive internecine conflict taking place in Lebanon — and elsewhere in the Middle East — centered largely but not entirely on the civil war that is raging in Syria. It involves the deep rift between the Sunni and Shi’ite streams of Islam as well as the political divide that has been created by the horrific human rights abuses originally carried out by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Those in the Syrian opposition forces have also become equally abusive in their battle to overcome their enemies; and the opposition itself has since divided many times over, fragmenting into radical Islamist forces and those which are less extremist but which are still perfectly willing to exert unbelievable cruelty in order to win their greater battle.

In Lebanon itself, there is also a separate battle taking place between those who are for and against the Syrian regime, and those who support and oppose Da’esh (ISIS), which also has begun to encroach upon what until now has been primarily territory ruled by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization.

Among those fighting for the Syrian regime are fighters from Russia and Iran, as well as the Hezbollah guerrilla forces which today also comprise a large part of Lebanon’s military strength. Lebanon and Syria never made peace with Israel, and Hezbollah has broken its own “ceasefire” agreement with the Israeli armed forces countless times since the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Over the past six years, more than 100 people have been accused of spying for the Jewish State in Lebanon. There has been no response from the Israeli government, which does not comment on such matters.

Jonathan Pollard will be a free man in November, but not totally free.

His supporters were happy to hear this week that parole will be granted in November, but hopes that he would move to Israel were squelched by the Obama administration.

The White House said that Pollard had committed “very serious crimes” and Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council added:

The president has no intention of altering the terms of Mr. Pollard’s parole.

Parolees are not allowed to leave the United States for five years without permission

Pollard was convicted for providing Israel with sensitive classified information. but spy charges were dropped. Nevertheless, prosecutors equated his crime with those of some of America’s most notorious spies.

Obama administration officials deny that Pollard’s pending release is tied to the nuclear deal with Iran, which Israel vociferously tried to prevent. The American government previously has tried to use Pollard as a wild card to tempt Israel into serious concessions to the Palestinian Authority.

In November, Pollard will have served 30 years in jail, making him automatically eligible for parole and switching the burden of proof from those appealing for an early release to prosecutors to provide evidence why he should not be freed.