In the midst of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, hacktivist organizations claim to be attacking Israeli targets online by interrupting and defacing websites like the Jerusalem Post.
Regularly, the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors draws a great deal of attention from across the world. Politically motivated hackers, or “hacktivists,” also capitalize on the conflict to either promote their preferred side or garner publicity.
Although there are few examples of major or long-lasting harm, the action demonstrates how some supporters utilize digital technologies to carry the fight online.
According to their social media channel, a group of Hamas-supporting hackers going by the name of AnonGhost have so far claimed, among other things, that they had interfered with an Israeli emergency alert system.
A different organization, Anonymous-Sudan, claimed on Telegram that it was actively attacking Israel’s vital infrastructure but offered no support for its assertions.
According to security researchers, basic distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults, which operate by saturating a site with a wave of untrusted traffic, have been used to deface or momentarily interrupt more than 100 websites in Israel.
Requests for comment from Israel’s CERT, or Computer Emergency Response Team, were not immediately fulfilled.
It might be challenging to evaluate the veracity of hacktivists’ assertions. The same situation occurred after Russia invaded Ukraine in full, when a volunteer army of pro-Ukrainian hackers claimed responsibility for several cyberattacks against Russian websites and other internet services.
Analysts do, however, anticipate major covert cyberespionage operations.
Microsoft published a study this week detailing how an Israeli company involved in telecommunications, defense, and energy had been the target of increased cyber surveillance by the Gaza-based hacking group Storm-1133 early this year.
The chief executive of the Israeli cybersecurity company Profero, Omri Segev Moyal, claimed that his company had lately discovered hacking activities connected to the Iranian intelligence organization known as Muddy Water and incursion efforts perhaps connected to Molerats, another outfit that experts think supports Hamas.
Activity by Molerats “ceased after the bombing began,” he claimed.
