Report: General Security Source Says Hack Claims Part of Political Campaign

A report tying Lebanon's main intelligence agency to alleged hacking operations is part of a “political campaign” targeting the General Directorate of General Security and its role in protecting the country from Israeli incursions, al-Akhbar daily quoted a senior source in the Directorate on Friday.

“The Directorate has spying capabilities similar to the capabilities of any other agency in the world. But we wish we had a small part of the abilities that the report attributes to us,” the source told the daily.

He said the accusations are “only part of a political campaign waged against the General Security because of its role in protecting Lebanon's security from Israeli incursions,” he said on condition of anonymity.

Other security source affirmed that said report can only be interpreted as an onslaught against the General Security because “the latter does not have the superlative capabilities the report alleges.”

On Thursday, Mobile security firm Lookout, Inc. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, alleged in a report the exposing of what it said was a major hacking operation tied to Lebanon's main intelligence agency after careless spies left hundreds of gigabytes of intercepted data exposed to the open internet.

It said the haul, which includes nearly half a million intercepted text messages, had simply been left online by hackers linked to Lebanon's General Directorate of General Security.