Israel’s Defence Minister suffered from data leak done by his house cleaner

December 21, 2021
Israel Defence Minister Data Leak House Cleaner Black Shadow Moses Staff Digital Risk Cybercrime

An Israeli man named Omri Goren Gorochovsky, a Defence Minister’s house cleaner, was arrested after victimising his employer with data leak and sold his details and photographs to Iranian threat group Black Shadow. Goren has worked for Defence Minister Benny Gantz since June 2021 as a personal cleaner for his home.

According to reports, Goren saw several articles about the Iranian threat group Black Shadow in Israeli media and the group’s cyberattack activities. For this reason, the house cleaner attempted to earn money by reaching out to the threat group through their Telegram channel from his phone and presented himself to them as someone under the employment of an Israeli Defence Minister anonymously.

 

Authorities added that the house cleaner offered the threat group access to the Defence Minister, including installing malware on his computer through a USB device resulting in a data leak.

 

Black Shadow initially found it difficult to trust Goren’s claims, so he took multiple photos of the Defence Minister’s house to share them with the threat group via Telegram as proof. The investigators said that the photos shot by Goren included the Minister’s framed pictures of him and his family; computers, desktops, tablets, and phones; a box and a case with Israel Defence Forces (IDF) affiliation details, serial numbers, and IP address label stickers; property tax payment documents; a safe and a grinding machine; and military souvenirs from the Minister’s previous chief of staff job.

After the house cleaner sent the photos and files to the threat group, he deleted them along with the Telegram conversation to hide his malicious intentions. A few days after the incident, the Defence Minister’s leaked photos and data were posted on a website being operated by a different threat group called Moses Staff.

Authorities from Israel’s internal security service have tracked down the case and arrested Goren after the leaked photos and data have reached the headlines all over Israel, which prompted the investigation.

Goren was also discovered to have worked as a house cleaner for many years before the data leak incident against the Defence Minister happened. Moreover, he also had a criminal history of being convicted to other five grave cases, in which he was imprisoned for four of them, involving bank robbery and theft.

About the author

Leave a Reply