Posted on 03/14/22
| News Source: i24
Several Israeli government websites went down on Monday, prompting suspicions of a cyberattack.
The websites of the Prime Minister's Office, as well as several ministries, were inaccessible. Access to some of the websites has been restored.
A senior defense official reportedly told Haaretz that a cyberattack was carried out on Monday evening against government websites, hitting all websites using the .gov.il domain. The gov.il domain is used for all government websites except for defense-related ones.
This is the largest-ever cyberattack carried out against Israel, according to a defense establishment source. They have not yet determined who is behind the attack.
According to Haaretz, the defense establishment and the National Cyber Directorate declared a state of emergency to study the extent of the damage. They are checking government infrastructure, such as Israel's electric and water companies, attempting to see if they were also attacked.
The websites were hit with a DDoS attack, according to Maariv, where multiple systems flood the bandwidth of a server in an attempt to bring it down.
In January, two Israeli news sites were targeted by Iranian hackers, showing an image of a projectile coming out of the hand of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).