Der Spiegel: IDF soldiers fell to a Facebook spy scam

Der Spiegel reports that a number of IDF soldiers befriended a beautiful woman on Facebook - who might have really been a Hezbollah operative.

The article quotes an Israeli news site as reporting that a Facebook profile belonging to "Reut Zuckerman" was used to lure IDF soldiers to reveal sensitive information over the course of the past year. "Zuckerman," whose photograph showed an attractive woman lounging on a sofa, pretended to be in the IDF herself.

The soldiers allegedly started giving out details of their friends' names, military jargon, secret codes and detailed descriptions of their bases.

In January, some became suspicious and reported the page to their superiors, who investigated it and quickly managed to get Facebook to remove the page. The Israeli site speculated that Hezbollah might have been behind it, although it is unclear what evidence they have of that charge.

The IDF now routinely monitors the Facebook activities of its soldiers.

Social media is now the preferred method of what are known as "social engineering" attacks, and all users of Twitter, Facebook, blogs and web forums can be susceptible to such attempts to gather information.