Jerusalem – More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government web sites since Wednesday when Israel began its Gaza air strikes, the government said on Sunday.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said just one hacking attempt was successful on a site he did not want to name, but it was up and running after 10 minutes of downtime.
Typically, there are a few hundred hacking attempts a day on Israeli sites, the ministry said.
Defence-related sites and those of Israel’s prime minister, president and Foreign Ministry have been targeted.
A ministry spokesman said while the attacks have come from around the world, most have been from Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“The ministry’s computer division will continue to block the millions of cyber attacks,” Steinitz said. “We are enjoying the fruits of our investment in recent years in developing computerised defence systems.”
Steinitz has instructed his ministry to operate in emergency mode to counter attempts to undermine government sites.
Both sides in the Gaza conflict, but particularly Israel, are embracing the social media as one of their tools of warfare. The Israeli Defense Force has established a presence on nearly every platform available while Palestinian militants are active on Twitter.
Last month, U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said cyberspace is the battlefield of the future, with attackers already going after banks and other financial systems. U.S. banks have been under sustained attack by suspected Iranian hackers thought to be responding to economic sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear programme.
way to go . Isreal should cut the power supply in Gaza
I guess the hackers needed to decide between the jews and the whole arab world. Must have been an easy decision. I can not say that as a Jew with jewish ethics I have ever thought that hacking anonymously and causing destruction was in any case a human activity that required any support of any dignified human being. I mean this is the lowest of the lowest calibre of unearthing any type of freedom and they are about as solid as a potatoe in a toilet bowl. But really, I think that I would love to see any hacker prosecuted by the law to the fullest and now that they have chosen to attack the Jewish people online, I hope they get hate crimes as well.
(I signed my name to the above which mostly I do not just so I am not “anonymous” like the fraudsters and psychopaths who try to hack our computers).