When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week began taking military action in the Gaza strip against Hamas (as the IDF announced on Twitter), Anonymous declared its own war as part of #OpIsrael.
A press release posted on the Anonymous affliated Anonpaste website deplores what the hacking group says is "the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of Palestinian people in the so-called Occupied Territories by the Israeli Defence Force".
The group’s Twitter account, @YourAnonNews, urged followers to help crash over 40 sites of the Israeli government and military.
Anonymous announced its plan to crash and deface websites of the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, among others belonging to security and financial companies, the Global Post reported.
The hackers threaten Israel that it must not shut down the Internet or it "will know the full and unbridled wrath of Anonymous."
According to a statement made by Anonymous Press on Twitter yesterday, over forty Israeli government and military websites had been taken down in three hours.
A list of data captured from breached sites, including a claimed list of personal information and credit card numbers for 35,000 Israelis, was published on the Oz Data Centa site.
The Times of Israel reported that Anonymous managed to take down the site of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC and the official blog of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) but doesn't appear to have had much success otherwise with its campaign.
A list of 658 Israeli civilian sites said to be defaced was published on Pastebin on Thursday but a check of twenty of them revealed that they are operating normally. No government sites are on the Pastebin list.
On Saturday, Anonymous claimed to have deleted the database for Israel's ministry of foreign affairs website, mashav.mfa.gov.il.
iTnews was able to confirm that the MFA site is down and displays a database connection error, but there has been no official confirmation of the attack.
While the Israeli government almost certainly has backups of the aformentioned databases, these attacks as well as the defacements show Anonymous isn’t just doing its usual spree of overloading target sites. OpIsrael appears to have gotten multiple hackers involved who are interested in doing actual damage, or at least something that is slightly more permanent than just a 404.
Lack of electricity across Gaza meant many were left out of touch, but the hackers gave instructions on their twitter account for residents to get reconnected.
The hacker group suggests measures such as using dial-up, Nintendo DS, satellite access and wireless networks, to stay connected if Israel isolates Gaza from the Internet.
“If you have friends in Gaza who still have phone, but need internet, give them these dial-up numbers and instructions:
http://pastebin.com/6dYQruHu”
Anonymous posted a message on a site saying they took down Israel’s “top security and surveillance website.”
The group said in a statement that it refuses to sit back while “a cowardly Zionist State” ruins innocent lives.
Israeli hackers meanwhile are counter-attacking, aiming to bring down Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks used by Anons to communicate and coordinate attacks. The Jewish nation is also heavily employing social media, with the Israeli Defence Force providing up to date tweets on the Gaza conflict on Twitter for instance.
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