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A wave of hacker attacks on Israeli targets has added a cyber dimension to the conflict with Hamas.
The Palestinians’ most significant actions may prove to be preparation earlier this year, when a Gaza Strip group that Microsoft calls Storm-1133 went after energy, defense and telecommunications companies in Israel.
The group used fake LinkedIn profiles and posed as software developers or project managers to send malware to employees at these destinations and install backdoors for subsequent communications, Microsoft said in a recent report. The reference was short and lacked details.
Other hacks, mostly by self-proclaimed hacktivist allies of the Palestinians, aimed to sow confusion or alarm.
Various groups launched dozens of denial-of-service attacks on government and private websites, knocking them offline but causing no lasting damage.
One of the most effective measures targeted the website of the Jerusalem Post, a major source of coverage of the rapidly evolving conflict. The attacks began Sunday morning and continued for much of Monday.
This denial of service was claimed by Anonymous Sudan, which previously deployed enough electronic firepower to make Microsoft services difficult to access. The group, which says it supports causes important to Muslims, is allied with KillNet, a Russian nationalist hacker group.
The Sudanese group has significantly increased KillNet’s capabilities, leading some to suspect that both are fronts for Russian government services.
Pro-Palestinian hacker AnonGhost said he was behind an attack on an Israeli app that warns residents of impending rocket attacks.
The group said it sent out fake missile warnings and even said a nuclear bomb was approaching.
The attack was confirmed by analysts at security firms Group-IB and Recorded Future, who said the hackers abused an application programming interface to send the alerts as if it were a legitimate source of military information.
There are many such apps, and the app in question only had between 10,000 and 20,000 users, said Alexander Leslie, an analyst at Recorded Future.
“For those who used this particular application prior to its removal from the Google Play Store, there are obvious security risks to false missile warnings at a time like this,” Leslie said. “It is a serious escalation of targeting and intent, regardless of the impact.”