Israeli hackers plan response to website attacks

Tel Hashomer hospital, 'The Marker', 'Haaretz', 'Dan' bus company sites attacked; Israeli hackers vow response.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
keyboard computer Internet cyber warfare 311 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
keyboard computer Internet cyber warfare 311
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
Israeli hackers told The Jerusalem Post they are planning to respond to a hacking attack which occurred overnight Tuesday on the websites of two Israeli hospitals.
The websites of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and the Assuta Medical Center in Tel Aviv were struck with a distributed denial of service (DDOS), in which servers are flooded by false requests for information, making them unavailable to others.
“We saw that attack. Soon, a response will come,” a member of the IDF Team hacking group told the Post on Wednesday evening.
IDF Team has played a pivotal part in Israeli counter-strikes on high-profile Arab websites following attacks by Arab hackers.
Also on Wednesday, the Haaretz Hebrew website was downed by pro-Palestinian hackers.
Haaretz said it saw a message claiming responsibility for the attack by hackers calling themselves “Anonymous Palestine.”
The website of the financial news publication The Marker was also unavailable.
Last week, Israeli hackers brought down the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency website and the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange site, in retaliation for a DDOS attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the El Al websites.
Israeli hackers have indicated that they may not stick to simple DDOS attacks in the future, but instead seek to cause long-term damage to the servers of financial, government and security websites in the Arab world, in the event of further attacks on Israeli sites.
During Tuesday’s incident, anti-Israel hackers also attempted to break into the Safra Hospital’s computer system, but security measures were able to fend off the attack, Israel Radio reported.
The Assuta Medical Centers company, commenting on the hacking and temporary disappearance of the website, said that none of its patients should worry about personal medical data stored by the hospitals.
“Our protection measures succeeded in preventing infiltration of our website, but it cannot be active until the attacks cease,” the company spokeswoman said.
She added that attempts to access personal medical information of people who have been treated at the chain of private hospitals were not successful “so there was no danger at all of it leaking out.”
The website of the Dan bus company as well as the Israel Festival website were also hit on Wednesday.