Sharing Hacked Private Messages Carries Jail Risk, Israeli Lawyers Warn

Two weeks after it was revealed that Yonatan Urich, an advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, connected his WhatsApp account to a management service in the United Arab Emirates, a website claiming to display correspondence from his account has appeared online. Urich's lawyers, Amit Haddad and Noa Milstein, issued a statement via his X account stating that "whoever hacked Yonatan Urich's WhatsApp and published personal correspondence, while adding and altering conversations, will pay the full price. The same will happen to anyone who publishes, distributes, or shares messages. Doing so constitutes a criminal offense and a personal lawsuit will be filed against them."

The incident raises legal, ethical, and technological questions surrounding the dissemination of personal information obtained without the owner's knowledge. "Calcalist" consulted with legal experts on the matter. It was previously reported that Urich connected his WhatsApp to an Emirati service, granting it full, unencrypted access to all his communications and media. This access could have been available to UAE authorities without a court order due to local laws.

Separately, "Haaretz" recently exposed a media monitoring tool Urich built for the Prime Minister and his wife, which used Anthropic's AI model Claude. Urich had posted the tool's code on GitHub, inadvertently revealing sensitive information, technical details, unique identifiers, and login tokens for WhatsApp groups. This exposure could have compromised group members and allowed for content theft and message sending. Access to Urich's GitHub was restricted after "Haaretz" contacted him, but the code had already been distributed.

Lawyers emphasize that distributing private information obtained illegally is prohibited. "The fact that Urich apparently erred in securing his databases does not whitewash the actions of the public who collectively distribute and share, harming the victim of a security incident," stated one expert. "Just as we are not allowed to trade in stolen goods from a house whose owner left a side door open, it is forbidden to distribute and publish private information obtained through a breach. Those who distribute risk a criminal offense with a potential five-year prison sentence and civil penalties of compensation without proof of damage, up to the legal ceiling."

Sharing, transferring, or publishing private WhatsApp messages obtained through a device breach or unauthorized copying can lead to civil lawsuits and criminal charges, with a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. While reading such messages is not illegal, further distribution, copying, or publishing is. Third parties who communicated with Urich may also have grounds for a lawsuit against those who publish their conversations. WhatsApp group administrators or social media platforms could be held liable if they fail to remove infringing content promptly after being notified, or if they deliberately ignore clear violations occurring on their platforms.