ISRAEL AT WAR
Hacktivist groups have started attacking Israeli press
News sites have been victims of attacks that attempt to undermine Israel’s credibility or halt reporting of Hamas’ crimes entirely.
Several ‘hacktivist’ groups are claiming responsibility for a number of cyberattacks directed at Israeli news publications as they report on the ongoing attacks on Israeli citizens committed by Hamas, the terrorist organization out of Gaza.
News sites like Israel’s Jerusalem Post were disrupted and defaced, and a group of Hamas-supporting hackers known as AnonGhost have suggested that they have disrupted an Israeli emergency alert application.
Since the start of the war, more than 100 websites across Israel have been affected by some level of cyber attack or interference, whether through defacement or temporary disruption by simple distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). These operate by flooding sites with a heavy flow of inauthentic traffic which affects the sites' performance. So far, these attacks have not knowingly affected CTech and its affiliate sites.
"The attackers have managed to knock us offline for extended periods over the past few days," said Jerusalem Post Editor-in-chief Avi Mayer in an email to Reuters. "This is a blatant assault on freedom of the press."
There are other claims from a group called AnonymousSudan which has claimed to target Israel’s critical infrastructure, although it did not provide evidence of such behavior when it made the claims via Telegram.
The ongoing war has attracted worldwide interest from the media, onlookers, and critics of the State of Israel. General conflicts often attract the attention of politically minded hackers who seek to exploit moments of weakness in a country during flare-ups by sowing discourse, confusing messaging, or compromising a country’s ability to adequately report on crimes.
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Last week, a Microsoft report highlighted how a Gaza-based hacker group known as Storm-1133 had earlier this year increased its cyber spying efforts on Israeli companies relating to telecommunications, defense, and energy. "We assess this group works to further the interests of Hamas," the report said.
In 2020, it was revealed that Israel is the number one country on hackers’ target lists, according to research conducted by U.S data protection company F5 Labs. Across 2023, Israel has suffered a slew of cyberattacks on its infrastructure including Israel Post and irrigation systems, as well as certain Israeli government websites.
Israel's Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
