Mideast Cyberwar Continues to Claim More Victims

Hackers continued to hit targets in the Middle East today, with the Web sites for Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and the Israel Festival, as well as two Israeli hospital Web sites, coming under attack.

The hacked website of the Israel Festival (screenshot 1/25/2012) Last Monday, hackers targeted the Tel Aviv stock exchange, several banks, and El Al Airlines.

Palestinian Anonymous members took credit for today's attack on their Twitter account. Now, Israeli hackers are threatening retribution.

The Jerusalem Post reports tonight:

Israeli hackers told The Jerusalem Post they are planning to respond to a hacking attack which occurred overnight Tuesday on the websites of two Israeli hospitals.

The websites of the Sheeba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and the Assouta Medical Center in Tel Aviv were struck with a distributed denial of service (DDOS), in which servers are flooded by false requests for information, making them unavailable to others.

"We saw that attack. Soon, a response will come," a member of the 'IDF Team' hacking group told the Post on Wednesday evening. [...]

Israeli hackers have indicated that they may not stick to simple DDOS attacks in future, but instead seek to cause long-term damage to the servers of financial, government, and security websites in the Arab world, in the event of further attacks on Israeli sites.

Ha'aretz reports:

Also on Wednesday, the website of the Israel Festival was brought down. Pro-Palestinian hackers wrote "Free Palestine" in several parts of the site, and featured an image of the Israeli and American flag burning.

The cyber war kicked off in early January, when a hacker calling himself "OxOmar" published online the credit card details of thousands of Israelis, after breaking into what he said were more than 80 Israeli servers.

He said he was then joined by a group calling itself Nightmare, and went on to paralyze several Israeli websites, including that of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and Israel's El-Al International Airlines.

Pro-Israel hackers, for their part, published the log-in details of 20,000 Arab Facebook users, and said they had taken down websites in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Posted by John Shade

Jan 25 2012 - 3:40pm

These DDOS attacks really don't do much. All sides should refrain, because at some point, things will get ugly and real damage will get done to all sides by something more than a DDOS.

Posted by Mairead

Jan 25 2012 - 5:02pm

At a minimum a DDOS attack is annoying, making the sysmanglers scramble to deflect it. I'd prefer that they didn't target hospitals, tho.

But I'm all for them targeting the Zionist civil, military, and economic governments, particularly (if they could find them) Mossad and ShB.

Posted by Gail

Jan 25 2012 - 5:25pm

I agree, Mairead. Target anything but hospitals!

Posted by namora

Jan 25 2012 - 7:58pm

Gee d'yuh think maybe it would be a nice if the Israilies just up and stopped persecuting the folks they displaced? I know it is an unpopular stand but really after sixty years of continious warfare someone just has got to get smart.

Posted by PantherM120

Jan 26 2012 - 8:54am

Beats bombing people and smashing up infrastructure. The simple defence is not to be connected to the internet. Stop whingeing, Israel.

Posted by mwildfire

Jan 26 2012 - 9:32am

So "Palestinian hackers" attacked several israeli sites, including hospitals, a festival, and a newspaper that publishes more critical op-eds than are allowed in US newspapers, and did mischief to thousands of random Israelis via revealing credit card info. And now Israelis vow revenge, vaguely, on Arab sites. Does it strike anyone else that this scenario has absolutely nothing in it that benefits Palestine, that it's essentially all right-wing Israeli propaganda? Not saying the hacking didn't happen--but who really did it? If it was Palestinians, wouldn't they have chosen less sympathetic targets? This is an old CIA trick, doing minor atrocities and claiming credit in the name of revolutionary groups. And the bonus is it gives them an excuse for a hacking attack on "Arab sites."

Posted by Mairead

Jan 26 2012 - 10:04am

Y'know, now that you point it out....

Posted by D'oile Wrague

Jan 30 2012 - 12:34am

Damage may have already been done. Israel and the U.S. with the help of Siemens Corp,who manufactured the centrifuges used by Iran,destroyed hundreds of them by infecting them with a sophisticated viral program.

Attacking ANYTHING to do with nuclear energy is stupid beyond belief, and that program is out there now and may NOT be confined to Iran.

It has been claimed, but I have seen no proof, that the computers at Fukushima were infected with the Israeli/American viral creation and, as a result, failed to shut down properly when the earthquake hit.

If this is true, then heads need to roll! First there should be an investigation to see if there is any proof of the viral infection at Fukushima and this question needs to be put to rest or verified. If it is untrue, then we need to say so in clear terms. The mere possibility of this is astounding!

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Mideast Cyberwar Continues to Claim More Victims

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