Hacking groups, including some tied to Russia, are attacking Israeli government and media websites, allying themselves with the Palestinian military group Hamas which launched a series of deadly attacks on the country over the weekend.
Killnet, a group made of up patriotic Russian volunteer hackers, announced on Sunday that it would target all Israeli government systems with distributed denial-of-service attacks, a type of cyberattack known as DDoS that floods websites with traffic and forces them offline. The group said it blamed Israel for the bloodshed and accused the country of supporting Ukraine and NATO. Killnet then claimed it brought down an Israeli government website and the website of security agency Shin Bet for a period of time on Sunday.
“It is clear that other Russian hacktivists are also choosing sides and actively support Hamas in their war against Israel. Their actions look more like opportunistic strikes. The conflict creates headlines which attracts groups like Killnet that try to monetize DDoS attacks. It still sends the message that Russia is on the side of Hamas and against Israel,” Mattias Wåhlén, threat intelligence expert, Truesec AB, a cybersecurity firm, explained.
Rob Joyce, director, cybersecurity, National Security Agency, mentioned that there hasn’t been a major cyber component to the conflict yet. The agency is expected to have seen small denial-of-service attacks and minor web defacements, along with the expectation that outside parties would join in amplifying messaging on Hamas’s behalf.
