Israeli hackers deface Iranian Government websites
Message for Ahmadinejad as digital war continues
By John E Dunn | Techworld | Published: 16:24, 26 January 2012
An Israeli group has claimed responsibility for the defacement of several Iranian Government websites as the tit-for-tat digital war between hackers in the Middle East shows no sign of waning.
The Israeli 'IDF Team' attacked websites belonging to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, and an English-language TV channel called Press TV, replacing the content with an image of the Israeli flag.
"Ahmadinejad what do you have to say about that?," read a message on the Press TV site.
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The attacks were apparently crafted as reprisals for yesterday’s attacks on the Assouta and Sheba Medical Centres in Tel Aviv, which came under DDoS from pro-Palestinian hackers.
Attacks into and out of Israel have gathered pace since a Saudi hacker group calling itself Group-xp leaked the credit card details of 15,000 Israelis in early January. An Israeli hacker calling himself ‘Omer Cohen’ later retaliated by releasing the credit card data for several hundred Saudi Arabian accounts.
A second pro-Israel hacker using the name 'Hannibal' posted details of 100,000 Saudi Facebook users on the Pastebin website.
Other attacks against Israeli interests have included those earlier this week on the websites of El Al Airlines and the Israeli Stock Exchange. The Haaretz daily newspaper was also attacked by a group calling itself ‘Anonymous Palestine.’
The website defacements and DDoS will be seen as low-level nuisance attacks that happen to have a political or nationalistic theme to them to raise their profile; the data breaches are probably more serious developments. Both look set to flare up from time to time in the coming months.
