Israeli Government Websites Taken Offline in Large-Scale Cyber-Attack

Israeli government websites were taken offline yesterday in what was described as the largest ever cyber-attack to be launched against the country.

The widescale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) successfully took down the websites of Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office and its interior, health, justice and welfare ministries. However, all these websites appear to be operational again.

The official Twitter account of the Israel National Cyber Directorate confirmed the incident, writing: “In the past few hours, a DDoS attack against a communications provider was identified. As a result, access to several websites, among them government websites, was denied for a short time. As of now, all of the websites have returned to normal activity.”

The Israeli government has declared a state of emergency to study the extent of the damage caused and determine whether critical infrastructure services, such as electric and water firms, were affected.

Israeli publication Haaretz reported that the Israeli defense establishment said the DDoS attack targeted all websites using the gov.il domain, which is used for all government websites except defense-related ones.

A defense establishment source informed Haaretz that the incident represents the largest cyber-attack to strike Israel. The source also believes the attack was perpetrated by a nation-state actor or large organization but cannot currently determine who was behind it.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Iranian threat actors may have conducted the attack in retaliation for other events amid ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran.

Several alleged cyber-attacks have taken place between the two nations in the past year. For example, Israel was blamed for attacks on gas stations and a nuclear facility in Iran, while suspected Iranian hackers reportedly hit multiple Israeli companies with ransomware.