Op-Israel: Anonymous Strikes Israeli Sites, Israeli Hackers Hit Back
Anonymous, the hacking group that has exposed rapists, attacked corporate America and hit the Westboro Baptist Church may have met their match today. The group has a strong following among Arab hackers and today their wing launched Op-Israel. Op-Israel was an attack on Israeli governmental and private websites in the hope of disrupting the Israeli economy in the name of the Palestinian Cause.
Op Israel claims to have hit thousands of Israeli sites today, but in the end only a few governmental sites reported outages for less than a few minutes while most escaped unscathed. This is the second time Anonymous has launched Op-Israel, the first time coinciding with Holocaust Memorial Day last year, which was also a dud. According to reports, the groups leading the attacks include hackers from Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas, Syria, Iran, India, Malaysia and Jordan.
The Op-Israel website said:
“we urge our brothers and sisters to break, to destroy and take over websites and leak data – to eliminate Israel’s cyberspace. We will not stop until Palestine is freed”.
This year, Israeli hackers decided to hit back with several radical islamist sites and Anonymous’ own www.opisrael.com being commandeered. Israeli hackers put pro Israel links and slogans all over the Op-Israel site and even a video on loop which said there was no such country as Palestine.
Israel’s government and several prominent cyber security firms urged Israeli citizens to be over vigilant in avoiding opening unknown e-mails, in watching video links attached to Facebook and to review credit card statements to make sure that information was not taken and used for nefarious purposes.
Israel is one of the most common destinations for cyber attacks and cyber terrorism in the world. Security experts estimate that the country faces more than 100,000 hack attempts a day and some government officials say that it is a way higher number. The Israel Electric Corporation has been the highest attacked target in Israel but has never seriously suffered from any of the attacks.
