Lebanese government institutions and departments are scrambling to face piracy threats. Several government websites have been breached and their databases stolen, exposing these institutions to the risk of having their confidential information sold to third parties or used in extortion.
The judiciary, with the help of the security services, has managed to uncover such attempts and to prosecute the perpetrators for the crimes that harm the confidentiality of government work.
Almost every week, a hacking operation is announced, the latest of which is the piracy of the official website of Rafik Hariri International Airport and the manipulation of its data, before the website could be restored.
This coincided with a decision issued by Beirut’s Investigative Judge Ghassan Oweidat, who accused three people of hacking sites belonging to Ogero for fixed telephone lines, as well as other websites belonging to companies and institutions in the private sector. The hackers could obtain a map of Ogero’s Internet distribution network, which can enable them to eavesdrop on telephone communications.
In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Communications Expert Brigadier Nizar Khalil said the spread of piracy was due to the fact that “electronic devices used in Lebanese sites were mostly old and did not conform to modern protection techniques.”
Elie Ghabash, who was arrested for committing hacking of accounts of a large number of ministries, banks, and companies, said during his interrogation before the military court that the systems of websites in Lebanon were weak and fragile and could be easily pirated.
He admitted that he “managed to breach the sites of 12 ministries and official administrations in one day,” revealing that he was “working with a number of security agencies to track the accounts of persons suspected of either contact with the Mossad or other terrorist organizations, before being arrested for committing illegal operations.”
