” In the past few hours, a denial of service attack against a communications provider has been identified This message was published on the evening of March 14 by the National Cyber Directorate, the Israeli cyber authority. The targets ? Several government sites in the country.
One of the largest cyberattacks against Israel
The Prime Minister’s web pages, those of the Ministry of Interior, Health, Justice and Social Affairs, all were rendered inaccessible by the denial of service (DDoS) attack. The sites with the domain name .gov.il, the Israeli equivalent of .gouv.fr, were all affected by the cyberattack with the exception of the Ministry of Defense, which was better protected.
French Ubisoft victim of a cyberattack
According to a media source Ha’aretz, it is the largest cyber attack suffered by Israel. Defense and the National Cyber Directorate have declared a state of emergency to verify the extent of the damage and verify the situation of the websites of essential or vital interests of Israel.
The source of Ha’aretz said that given the scale of the attack, only a state actor or a large and organized group could have carried it out. In the columns of another Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Postsuspicions are already falling on Iran, the great regional adversary of the Jewish state.
On the day of the attack, March 14, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence service claimed to have arrested a sabotage team from Mossad, Israel’s intelligence services, as they attempted to get away. take to a nuclear enrichment site.
Israel-Iran tensions play out in cyberspace
These statements are questionable, as the Iranian regime has taken to describing its opponents as Mossad affiliates. Nevertheless, the concomitance of the two events suggests to some Israeli experts that the DDoS cyberattack could be a retaliatory measure by Iran.
It wouldn’t be a first. In the latest report from the National Information Systems Security Agency (ANSSI), the French cyber defense authority, cyber exchanges of kindness between the two countries are listed: in 2020 Iran allegedly hacked installations wastewater management. A month later, Israel is suspected of having hacked into the computer system of an Iranian port.
Rafarl Franko, a former senior Israeli Cyber Authority official warned the Jerusalem Post As the Passover holiday approaches in mid-April, cyberattacks against the country tend to increase. In the meantime, Israeli government sites have been restored.