The long electronic war that Israeli hackers warned of last week shows no sign of abating. Internet security experts have identified a list of 40 central websites that hackers hostile to Israel have been threatening to take down in the coming days. The "bank of targets," as the hostile hackers like to call it, reportedly include critical websites whose paralysis would cause a major disruption in Internet use in Israel. The targets were posted in a hacker forum, according to Shai Blitzblau, managing director of Maglan Information Defense Technologies Ltd. The nature and scope of the impending attack on the sites remains shrouded in secrecy, Blitzblau said. While hackers employ a suite of tools to interfere with a website's operation, a common attack is known as the denial-of-service or DoS attack. The hacking simulates or manages to manipulate thousands upon thousands of users attempting to enter a site simultaneously, while the website under attack cannot discern between normal traffic and the traffic from the attack. As a result from an overload of traffic, its servers collapse. Many Israeli websites are currently experiencing a lag in their response times, as a result of hackers' attempt to overload their servers. Erez Metula, CEO of AppSec Labs, an Internet security firm that performs immunity tests on websites and information systems, claimed his company has received dozens of requests for immunity checks every day and over a thousand since the first reports of the hacker attack two weeks ago. Expert hackers claim there is no way to thwart the sabotage of websites. Last Wednesday, the Israeli hacker group "IDF Team" announced it would shut down the website of the largest bank in Gaza, Arab Bank Palestine, at 10 a.m. Their intention was clear, their plan was made public, and yet the bank was powerless to stop the attack and the site was brought down by the hackers as promised. Meanwhile, Israel's Law, Information and Technology Authority (ILITA) is set to announce on Sunday new protocols for information security on Internet websites. At ILITA's request, courts issued closure demands to 1,700 businesses who did not follow the security protocols already in place. "We are going to issue a directive in the coming days that prohibits the storage of ID numbers without meeting the proper requirements," ILITA representative, attorney Yoram Cohen said during a debate at the Israel Democracy Institute. ILITA will release an extensive document next week outlining the necessary preparations for cyberwarfare. The Knesset's Science and Technology Committee Chairperson MK Ronit Tirosh (Kadima) said that her committee has long warned about the cyberspace threat. "The committee has warned for months about Israel's new front, the Internet front. A cyberwar waged against Israel is no less dangerous than conventional war. Israel has some of the best Internet security experts in the world; the National Cyber Directorate must make use of these experts and do everything in its power to protect sensitive sites and infrastructure before one of them is attacked," she said. Meanwhile, the hacker "Hannibal" announced on Saturday that he had released more than 100,000 Facebook and email accounts belonging to "Arabs." "I want show... my huge strength. The Arabs should learn a lesson and know not to mess with me," he wrote on a forum. Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers have been engaged in an escalating, tit-for-tat cyberwar, starting with a hacking attack on Israeli websites two weeks ago that included the publication of over 15,000 Israeli credit card details. Since then, self-styled Israeli cyber vigilantes like Hannibal have taken it upon themselves to exact revenge on pro-Palestinian and Arab websites. Both sides have exposed the relative ease for a group of expert hackers to break into databases and extract sensitive information about users.
Imminent hacker attack on 40 critical websites
The targets are posted in a hacker forum • Targets reportedly include critical websites whose paralysis would cause a major disruption in Internet use in Israel.
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