Iran accused of cyber-attacks on Israel websites

Multiple Israeli websites have been reported to be the targets of a cyber-attack on Thursday, with their homepages being disabled and replaced by a threatening message.

There has been no official indication yet as to who was behind the attacks, however, Israeli media is accusing Iranian hackers of staging the attack, claiming that the homepages of the sites were replaced with an anti-Israel video displaying a message in Hebrew and English stating: “The countdown to Israeli destruction began a long time ago.”

The Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) issued a warning that people should not visit corrupted websites.

READ: Israel behind major cyberattack on Iran port, report reveals

The hacked websites also displayed a video of Israeli cities being bombed and messages threatening the destruction of the occupation state. However, cybersecurity experts claim the scale of the attack was relatively small because they were all attacked via a single access point.

The targetted sites use the Upress server, a local Israeli WordPress hosting service, which released a statement assuring companies storing data with them that the crisis would be resolved.

A statement issued by the company announced: “We have detected a large-scale cyber-attack on many of our sites. This is a deliberate and widespread attack by anti-Israeli elements.”

“We have identified a security weakness in the WordPress plug-in that caused a breach, and we are working with the National Cyber Directorate, conducting a security investigation, and addressing issues on all websites.”

The attack comes after Israel launched a major cyber-attack on an Iranian port that caused transportation chaos for days, after crashing the facility’s computer system.

READ: Hamas hacks hundreds of Israeli soldiers’ smartphones, according to Israel army

The cyber-attack created kilometres-long queues of vehicles outside the port and vessels stuck in the harbour.

Lavy Shtokhamer, head of the computer emergency response team at the INCD, told Israel Hayom that: “The main purpose of these groups is to create media headlines; to create panic and fear by using attention-grabbing images and slogans.”

“These are not very sophisticated attacks and they have only limited success each year, but the increased reliance on technology due to the coronavirus crisis has created a substantial platform that hackers can exploit,” he explained.