Government sites under cyber-attack

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/10/25/News/News.14291.html

Wednesday, October 25 2000   26 Tishri 5761

By Gwen Ackerman

JERUSALEM (October 25) - The current violence has spread into
cyberspace, and the newest Arab target is Israel's virtual government.

NetVision announced yesterday that official government Web sites,
especially those of the IDF and Foreign Ministry, have recently been
attacked by hackers the company suspects are linked to "Arab
terrorists." Ori Noy, director of the information division at the
Foreign Ministry, said that late Monday night the ministry's site was
neutralized for several hours by a flood of intentional Web traffic,
most likely e-mail messages and requests.

Other than being off-line for several hours the site was undamaged, he
said, noting that the Foreign Ministry, realizing it could be
targeted, had taken security precautions, such as installing a
firewall.

Still, the Foreign Ministry "views with gravity the fact that the site
was not accessible to those who wanted to visit," Noy said. "This
technique of attacking Web sites... is an unacceptable act of virtual
terrorism."

The IDF Spokesman's Office said that the IDF site showed no evidence
of being attacked, despite connection problems stemming from line
overload that the army had been experiencing with the Internet service
provider since Friday.

NetVision's data security experts, working with government officials,
tracked the hackers to university servers in Europe and the US, but
are not certain that the attacks originated in the schools, a company
statement said.

The repeated assaults have slowed NetVision service, at times blocking
subscribers from connecting to the Internet. On Monday, the Internet
service provider's system suffered a near total crash, including its
customer support department.

"As a company that provides Internet service to the IDF and other
government institutions, NetVision has been exposed to violence that
is part of the present struggle between Israel and the Palestinians,"
said CEO Gilad Rabinovich, adding that the company would take all
possible steps to insure that its subscribers would be able to connect
to the Internet.

Jerusalem Post Staff adds:

Retaliation has been swift. Unnamed hackers have broken into the
Hizbullah Web site, www.hizballa.org, and replaced its home page with
an image of an Israeli flag and an instrumental recording of
"Hatikva."


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