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Tel Aviv [Israel], December 19 (ANI/TPS): The Israel National Cyber Directorate announced on Monday that Iran and Hezbollah were behind an attempted cyberattack on the Ziv Medical Centre in Safed in late November. “The attack was thwarted before it could successfully disrupt hospital operations and impact citizens’ medical treatment,” the INCD stated. “However, the attackers managed to extract private data stored in the hospital’s systems.”
While the INCD defends Israeli civilian and government cyberspace, including hospitals, and Internet and phone service providers, military cybersecurity is a very different matter, according to Alon Arvatz, CEO and co-founder of Stealth Startup. Most computers with any sensitive information are not connected to the Internet, and Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza aren’t allowed to carry cell phones for fear of exposing their locations or other sensitive data, Arvatz told the Tazpit Press Service in an interview last month.
“We read the frustrations from their families, saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with my son, or wife or child.’ So it’s heartbreaking,” he said. “But from a security perspective, it means very good things about the army and how it handles it. The worst thing that can happen is that a soldier would accidentally expose his location and the plans of the army.” On Oct. 7 and since, there has been widespread speculation about how Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel in such large numbers, as well as how they were able to murder, torture and kidnap so many Israelis and others. Despite Israel’s reputation as one of the world’s cyberspace superpowers, Hamas appears to have sought to sabotage Israel’s vaunted rocket-alert system and siphon off donations intended for Oct. 7 victims, Arvatz told TPS.
Hackers Leveraging People’s StressParallel to Hamas’s ground invasion, the terrorists also launched “attacks into cyberspace, targeting various civilian and governmental targets,” said Arvatz, a veteran of the Israel Defense Force’s elite cyber Unit 8200 and author of The Battle for Your Computer: Israel and the Growth of the Global Cyber-Security Industry. Hamas’s multi-pronged attack–from land, sea, air and cyberspace–sought to…
A study conducted by the Israeli cybersecurity company Security Joes, has found a new type of wiper malware in Israel that has the capability to erase computer systems and render them inoperable, which is believed to be used by Hamas terrorists or other hackers affiliated with or working for the terrorist organization.
The malware, was discovered in several Israeli corporate networks, causing significant damage wherever it was deployed. Named BiBi-Linux wiper, the malware can erase and corrupt crucial files in Linux operating systems and cause significant damage. Additionally, the word BiBi (a reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname) is coded within the malware itself.
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BiBi-Linux wiper malware can erase and corrupt crucial files in Linux operating systems and cause significant damage
(Photo: Ido Naor, AI)
The hackers may have attempted to send a message through this malware, though it is unclear whether it is merely an attempt to mislead or obscure the malware’s footsteps.
The malware’s characteristics resemble advanced cyberweapons previously developed by other states. A notable example is Shamoon, a malware that was used by Iranian hackers to attack computer systems in the Middle East.
The use of such malware demonstrates an escalation in the capabilities of Hamas supporters who are involved in cyber warfare
Shamoon was reportedly based on cyberweapons that were used to target Iranian entities almost a decade ago, allegedly developed by Israel and the United States, according to foreign reports. It’s unclear if the current malware is a version of an existing cyberweapon or an original development, and its source remains unknown.
The development of such malware requires advanced capabilities, which are typically not found in activist groups or even cyber teams of terrorist organizations. “We identified this malware in a group of Hamas sympathizers. Hamas could have the capabilities to develop such malware, but at the moment, we’re still investigating the group’s capabilities,” according to Security Joes CEO Ido Naor.
The malware’s discovery was made after the company was called upon to assist Israeli companies that were attacked as part of…
“I have not slept for almost two weeks now, but every time I start falling asleep I have pictures of the hostages on my desk that get me up and running again,” says Omri Marcus, who is heading one half of the Gitam BBDO “war room” in Tel Aviv.
This time two weeks ago, Gitam BBDO was not a “war room” at all. It was a leading creative agency based in the Israeli capital.
The day after Hamas launched its attack on the country, it restyled itself into what it calls a war room, made up of volunteers who have abandoned their day jobs to turn their efforts towards trying to rescue the 203 hostages the militant group captured and are holding across the border in Gaza.
The Gazan enclave is under Israeli siege with food, fuel and water access blocked off. The territory, often likened to an “open air prison” has been under Israeli bombardment since Hamas, the militant group which govern it, launched the attack on Israel in which the hostages were taken and civilians deliberately targeted to be killed.
The war room in Tel Aviv has two floors – one utilises the talents of creatives to build support for the hostages around the world, while the other is more practical. It uses face recognition tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to verify whether hostages are dead or alive, and pinpoint their last recorded location within Gaza.
Refael Franco took i through the process of tracking the hostages. The group collects data on social media usage within Gaza, with graphs showing the number of texts sent and app usage on the tracked phones – even down to the number of times particular emojis were sent.
Data collected from social media usage and photos and videos from the Gaza strip are then uploaded to a software called tag box, which links it to hostages using images of them provided by their families and the military.
Any matches detected are shared with the IDF’s newest unit – the task force for finding missing and displaced people.
Franco, who founded Code Blue, a crisis management company based in Israel and Germany and is the former head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, showed i how one hostage had been detected from a TikTok uploaded from Gaza…