by Ilan Gattegno
Hacker group Anonymous claims to have attacked 55 Israeli websites, including Knesset, IDF • Israeli officials reject claim, say Israel is "ready for any kind of attack" • Earlier this week, Anonymous issued warning of large-scale attack, dubbed OpIsrael
The Anonymous hacker group logo
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Photo credit: AFP  |
The computer hacking collective that calls
itself Anonymous claims that it attacked at least 55 Israeli websites on
Thursday, including some belonging to the government, the Knesset and
the Israel Defense Forces. The activists even publicized the addresses
of these websites.
However, Israeli sources said the addresses were fabricated. "We are ready for any kind of attack," an Israeli official said.
Two sites that were attacked were NCP-Israel,
which maintains a link between Israel and the OECD, and news website
Mako, which was brought down several times on Wednesday, just as it was
promoting the finale of the high-rating "Big Brother" reality TV show.
However, both sites resumed routine activity on Thursday.
As it does every year, Anonymous issued
warnings earlier this week threatening to launch a massive cyber attack
on Israeli websites. The group continues to harass Israel's network
security professionals every year, even though to date it has not been
able to launch a truly successful attack.
The annual attack, nicknamed OpIsrael, tries
to target websites, databases, and internal networks belonging to the
government, the IDF, banks, universities, newspapers, large and small
businesses, and individual private users.
In past years, the attacks have been
disorganized and the scope of the damage has been relatively minor.
However, there is no guarantee that every attempt will be unsuccessful,
as the hackers could focus their attacks on specific organizations.
Anonymous' plans for Thursday included a
large-scale assault launched from various locations around the world,
aimed at generating a denial of service for users and overloading
Israel's communications channels, causing them to crash. According to
Eli Cohen, the head of Experis Cyber, the general assessment was that
the assault would fail, but users could experience slower service and
unusually heavy Internet traffic for a few days.
The cyber protection unit of the Israeli company
Radware, which provides security solutions for virtual and cloud data
centers, identified an attack device called Router Hunter 2.0 and
instructional videos that were distributed to hackers prior to the
attack. The device is designed to break into private routers and take
over private Wi-Fi networks.
Ilan Gattegno
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=32933
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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