On Jan. 26th, 2012, Yaakov Lappin reported for the Jersualem Post on the on-going tit-for-tat cyberwar going on in the Middle East. For those that don't know, Israeli and Arab hackers have been going back and forth with cyberattacks for the past few weeks. These cyberattacks aren't necessarily major: most of them are DDOS attacks (i.e. taking down a site by overloading it with traffic), credit card number leaks, Facebook account leaks, or simply defacing a website. It's important to note that these cyberattacks have not taken down any critical infrastructure, or compromised any databases. They are basically the equivalent of tearing a poster off of a wall. However, these cyberattacks have taken down the websites of some pretty notable entities (like the Israeli stock exchange).
According to the article, Israeli hackers have expanded the cyberwar by bringing down Iran's Press TV website and Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education. These Israeli hackers probably aren't Israeli government hackers, but rather a group of Israeli teenagers. The Israeli hackers also defaced several other Iranian websites. This attack was apparently in retaliation for a cyberattack–likely by Arab hackers–that brought down the websites of several Israeli hospitals. The hackers also took down the website of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
You can find the Jerusalem Post source article here.
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YNetNews.com had an interesting article that argued that these cyberattacks are mere cyber vandalism. Again, taking down a website with a DDOS attack is more annoying than dangerous. The prevalence of boasting and website defacement seems to suggest that these hackers are just bored teenagers acting on the usual religious and political motivations.
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