Cyber Strike Against Israel… Penetration of Sensitive Databases and Information Leakage
Israel faced a cyber strike amidst the ongoing war in Gaza, now entering its seventh month, coinciding with escalations with Iran.
International hackers established a website dedicated to publishing leaks obtained from several recent breaches of sensitive databases in Israel.
The Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” reported today, Tuesday, that “thousands of documents have already been published on the site, purportedly obtained through breaches of systems belonging to the Ministry of Defense and the National Security Agency, and recently, systems related to the Ministry of Justice and the nuclear research facility in Dimona were also breached.”
The newspaper added that the site, by publishing the leak attributed to a new and unknown hacking group called “NetHunt3rs,” demanded Israel to release 500 Palestinian prisoners to prevent the full publication of the information.
It was reported that the Israeli Ministry of Defense confirmed this week that “non-sensitive sites” had been breached, but “Haaretz’s” examination of some of the leaked materials reveals they were taken from the administrative portals of the Ministry of Defense.
These data include employee information, tenders, and details about the technological systems of the Israeli army, including details about armored vehicles, engineering diagrams, technical information about satellite imaging systems, and identification information about soldiers and the units they serve in.
“Haaretz” stated that “another unknown group called ‘Eagle Claws’ claimed to have breached the National Security Agency and possess personal information on 8 million Israeli citizens, including bank details and addresses, threatening to distribute them online.”
However, “the National Security Agency denied any breach, but the group circulated a video showing they had managed to obtain personal information about Israeli citizens.”
According to “Haaretz,” “based on a video released, ‘NetHunters’ hackers obtained a username and password for a disabled person in the Israeli army, which they used to log into a relevant system as a full user, exactly the same method used by ‘Eagle Claws’ to breach systems related to the National Security Agency and bypass internal security mechanisms to extract many details that should only be accessible to other users.”
The material was published on a specially created website at the beginning of the current month under the name “Electronic Court,” considering it as a “kind of WikiLeaks for pro-Palestinian activists,” providing a platform for a large amount of digital loot stolen from networks in Israel.
“Haaretz” added: “Most of these groups are second-tier in the cyber domain, they are professional groups with much more familiar capabilities in the world of digital crime, not government groups with military cyber capabilities.”
The newspaper assessed that these cases add to the significant increase in digital attacks against Israel since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7th, and said: “Top Israeli online researchers caution against underestimating the effects of hacking in all its forms and concentrating much information on Israeli citizens, especially on members of the security institution and holders of secret positions.”
It further stated: “According to researchers, infiltrators know how to use leaked personal information for targeting and phishing purposes, which could allow them to extract more details to hack into other sensitive systems.”
