CyberwarHackers with “Anonymous” threaten to “erase Israel from cyberspace”

In a new video posted online, hackers operating under the “Anonymous” flag have threatened to erase Israel from cyberspace. Citing reasons which include “continuous aggression, bombing, killing, and kidnapping of the Palestinian people,” the hackers vowed to unleash cyber “squadrons” that will launch a “cyber holocaust” on 7 April, a little more than a week before Israel’s 16 April Holocaust Remembrance day, known as Yom HaShoah.

The increasing volume of cyberattacks by hackers targeting the Israeli government has raised the credibility of the Anonymous threat. During Operation Protective Edge — the 1.5 month-long Hamas-Israeli war last summer — cyberattacks grew by 900 percent, said Isaac Ben-Israel of Tel Aviv University. Those attacks were blamed on anti-Israeli hackers supported by the country’s Arab neighbors.

 “Instead of the usual 100,000 attacks we get each day, we were now getting a million such attacks from all over the Arab and Muslim world,” Ben-Israel told The Times of Israel.

Cyber-analysts note that Anonymous hackers receive orders from no single authority, therefore “Anons” as the group’s hackers are called, could be hacking on behalf of Islamist interests. Additionally, this is not the first time that Anonymous has carried out cyber threats against Israel.

For the past four years, the group has threatened to “erase Israel from the internet,” in coordinated attacks dubbed #OpIsrael, saidBenjamin T. Decker, an intelligence analyst at the Tel Aviv-based consultancy, the Levantine Group. “As the years have progressed we have seen that, despite their increasing sophistication in hacking techniques, we have seen less damage against Israeli cyber infrastructures, largely due to Israel’s pioneering of most cyber warfare tactics, both offensive and defensive.”

According to Yahoo News, a 2013 attack by Anonymous hackers, allegedly working on behalf of Islamic interests, caused some $3 billion in damage. The hacks affected more than 100,000 Web sites, 40,000 Facebook pages, 5,000 Twitter accounts, and 30,000 Israeli bank accounts, according to a report by Haaretz. The Israeli government claimed no major disruptions occurred, but some government officials found their contact and other personal information posted online.

The FBI has issued notices to U.S. and Israeli businesses operating in the United States and Israel to take the threats seriously. “Given the perceived connections between the government of Israel and Israeli financial institutions, and those of the United States, #OpIsrael participants may also shift their operations to target vulnerable U.S.-based financial targets or Jewish-oriented organizations within the United States,” the FBI warning read. “Based on historical attacks, the FBI assesses that attacks which may spawn from #OpIsrael to target U.S.-based systems will likely constitute only a small percentage of overall activity.”