How flirting on Skype resulted in the theft of important military data

It’s certainly not unheard of for a man to be tricked into thinking he’s chatting with a flirtatious woman online when in reality its another man posing as a woman. This kind of thing never really results in anything more than wounded pride and embarrassment, unless you live in Syria. In Syria, apparently, this kind of thing can result in gigabytes of data regarding essential military plans being stolen.

Syrian opposition leaders lost gigabytes of secret communications and battlefield plans to hackers who baited them into downloading malware during flirtatious Skype chats, according to a report released Sunday. Last fall, FireEye stumbled across a server containing the documents and files while researching PDF-based malware, said Laura Galante, manager of threat intelligence at the computer security firm. The cache of documents included annotated satellite images, weapons records, Skype chats and personal information on those who have sought to topple President Bashar al-Assad in the four-year civil war. It was unclear if Assad’s regime was behind the campaign.