Steinitz: Israel beat back 43, 999, 999 and a half cyber attacks

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/steinitz-israel-beat-back-43999999-and-a-half-cyber-attacks/

By David Shamah
The Times of Israel
November 19, 2012

Ever since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense, hackers have 
been working overtime to strike a blow against the Israeli government’s 
computer systems, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said Sunday. No fewer 
than 44 million attacks have been recorded since the operation began 
five days ago — with nearly all of them failing, thanks to the recent 
strengthening of computer defense systems in Israel.

Speaking at a special press conference at the Government Computing 
Center in Jerusalem about the cyber war against Israel that has 
accompanied Hamas’s rocket attacks, Steinitz said that hackers “are 
trying to disable the symbols of Israeli sovereignty, to enter web sites 
and install anti-Israel content, thus compromising information and data 
and damaging the government’s ability to serve the public.” Most of the 
attacks, he said, were against government sites, like the Prime 
Minister’s Office site, and security-related sites, such as that of the 
Home Front Command, the body charged with informing Israelis on how to 
protect themselves in the event of an attack.

Out of those 44 million-plus attacks on government and defense related 
sites, said Steinitz, only one succeeded – partially. One site, which he 
did not name, was “wobbly for a few minutes,” but quickly recovered. 
Even though the government has been successful in warding off hack 
attacks, Steinitz said that government sites were fully backed up and 
mirrored, meaning that they could be replaced by a duplicate site 
instantly if the original site were compromised.

So just who is behind the attacks? Steinitz said that the government’s 
computing unit had traced many of the attacks to IP addresses in the US 
and Europe, and not to Arab countries. While Steinitz could not say 
whether these hackers were affiliated with Anonymous, the international 
hacker organization that has pledged to destroy Israel’s computing 
system in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the methods being used 
by the hackers were consistent with the kinds of attacks Anonymous is 
known for.

[...]

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