Israel vs Hamas: hackers are entering the war and it is very dangerous

bloody images and videos coming from the Gaza Strip The war between Israel and Hamas not only demonstrates the power of social media and the Internet in this type of conflict, as hacktivism and hackers from around the world have also entered the ring on both sides, attacking government facilities and critical infrastructure.

Writing in Wired magazine, “I’ve seen at least 60 websites hit with DDoS attacks,” Will Thomas, a cyberthreat researcher at cybersecurity firm Equinix, says he monitors online activity. “Half of them are Israeli government websites. “I have seen at least five websites that have been corrupted to display messages related to Free Palestine.”

Currently, three groups collaborating with Hamas have been identified:

• Self-proclaimed “Islamic” hacktivists who claim to support Palestine. Historically, these groups have targeted India and have been around for many years,” says Alex Leslie, a threat analyst at security firm Recorded Future.
• “Pro-Russian hacktivists who are planning to attack Israel, likely with the intention of sowing chaos and spreading the ideology of the Russian state.
• And groups that are “new” in the sense that they were created last year. [días] and they have limited activity until this weekend.

Hackers from a group known as AnonGhost, which apparently runs pro-Palestinian campaigns, are launching DDoS attacks and attempting to attack infrastructure and application programming interfaces (APIs). The group claimed responsibility for the alleged attack on Israel’s Red Alert missile warning platform.

Internet connections in the Gaza Strip have also been severely disrupted by power outages as Israel carries out what Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called on Monday a “total siege,” cutting off power, water and fuel lines in the region.

The Jerusalem Post website was inaccessible for several hours, sparking speculation on social media that it was the result of a war on cyber attacks declared by hackers against Israel amid a war between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants. Its author will be Anonymous Sudan.

A Human wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Hackers destroyed Jerusalem Post after multiple cyberattacks.”

Cybersecurity firm Group IB said a group of hackers calling itself AnonGhost had hacked a mobile phone app used to send missile warnings to Israelis during periods of conflict. Hackers took advantage of a vulnerability in the app to insert fake notifications with phrases such as “death to Israel” and “nuclear bomb coming” as well as swastikas, according to Group IB and screenshots released by the hackers. Group IB said the app appears to have since been removed from the Google Play Store, where it had 1 million downloads. The developers did not respond to requests for comment.

Israel has as a partner Israeli elite army (iEF, by its acronym in English) is a group hacktivism founded two days before OpIsrael, April 5, 2013, which has been responsible for numerous high-profile hacks and large-scale online vandalism.

Pro-Israel groups have carried out their own attacks targeting Palestinian organizations through cyberattacks. One group calling itself the Indian Cyber ​​Force said it took down the Palestinian National Bank website and the Hamas website on Sunday. Both remained unavailable Monday. The bank could not be reached for comment.