Arabs unify in ‘cyber-war’ against Israel Hackers
crash Jewish state’s most high-profile websites
Ranwa Yehia
Daily Star staff
Arab internet users all over the world succeeded in
crippling two major Israeli websites on Wednesday in an
attempt to counter-attack Israel’s efforts to overload
Hizbullah websites. Alerted by an article published in The
Daily Star on Tuesday detailing how Israelis have established
a site to attack Hizbullah’s, Arab users began a
counter-offensive. By 1pm Wednesday, the main Israeli
government website (http://www.israel.org/) and
the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s website (http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/)
had been downed by hackers. The
Jerusalem Post website issued a report at 2.10pm
confirming that the Israeli Foreign Ministry website was down.
“Spam (overloading) and hacker assaults have also been
detected on a number of other government sites as well as the
IDF (Israel Defense Force) website. Ministry sources told
Israel Radio the attackers were traced to “Islamic internet
sites,” according to the Jerusalem Post. An Israeli
Foreign Ministry official said: “The site itself was not
damaged, but at the moment, no one can access it.” The
official said the website attack could be traced to a
“pro-Palestinian and pro-Shiite Muslim” website in the US that
urged internet users to flood the Foreign Ministry site.
Several local internet service providers (ISPs) had
published The Daily Star article early Wednesday. Activity was
detected soon afterward, with the article being widely
circulated through e-mail. Chat rooms frequented by Arab
users throughout the world were also mobilized, with
information about how to attack Israeli websites posted and
updates on which websites have already been targeted. “If
we continue like this, we should arrive at a time when an
Israeli website is crippled every hour. This is our new
battle,” said one internet user who, like others interviewed,
requested anonymity. Another internet programmer said that
the attack against Israeli websites was more professional than
the attack staged by Israeli supporters over the past two
weeks to cripple Hizbullah websites. “While the Israelis
and their supporters simply overloaded Hizbullah websites and
those related to the resistance and intifada to eventually
cripple them, our attack was destructive,” he said. The
programmer explained that Lebanese hackers detected the
security loophole on the Israeli websites, allowing them to
have full control over all data on these sites. “Hence,
all data was deleted,” the programmer said. Another
difference is that while it requires thousands of Israeli
supporters to overload a Hizbullah or resistance related
website, it can take one person using one single dial-up
connection to hack and crash an Israeli website. “Both are
illegal, but this is war,” the programmer said. By 10pm
Wednesday, the two Israeli websites were still down. The
Jerusalem Post reported earlier Wednesday that “the newest
Arab target is Israel’s virtual government.” The
English-language daily quoted an Israeli Foreign Ministry
official as saying that the ministry’s site was “neutralized
for several hours late Monday night by a flood of intentional
web traffic, most likely e-mail messages and requests.”
The attack has caused the near-total collapse of Israel’s
ISP system, according to the Jerusalem Post. Arab internet
users are making sure they stage their attacks from individual
PCs or internet cafes to reduce the possibilities of an
Israeli counter-attack that would cripple their systems.
One such person, identifying himself as Walid, said he
intended to hack the Knesset server late Wednesday night.
“We’ll target and hack Israeli websites one by one. This will
continue,” he said. Walid added that the attacks may get
fiercer, with an e-mail war between Israel and Arabs seeing an
exchange of viruses designed to crash systems. More
websites are being built to attack Israeli sites. One is www.ummah.net/unity/defend/.
Its front page has Hizbullah’s logo with the word “UNITY.”
Similar to an earlier website, www.members.tripod.com/irsa2000,
it instructs users to target Israeli websites by pressing on a
button that would initiate hits on these sites every second in
an attempt to overload and eventually cripple them. An
e-mail circulated about the website urges users to log on and
help defend Hizbullah. Hackers have since broken into a
Hizbullah website which was downed last week, http://www.hizballa.org/,
and replaced its home page with an image of an Israeli flag
and an instrumental recording of “Hatikva,” the Israeli
national anthem. The website’s front page said: “This page
was uploaded to protest against the Arabic attacks in the past
few days.”
Related
stories
|