Israeli hacker team brings down Iranian websites

English-language Iranian media outlet Press TV, Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education are hacked and taken offline.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
'IDF Team' hack 390 cropped tighter (photo credit: Screenshot)
'IDF Team' hack 390 cropped tighter
(photo credit: Screenshot)
Israeli hackers brought down Iran’s Press TV website and two websites belonging to the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education on Thursday.
The hackers, who call themselves IDF Team, said their actions were a response to a series of attacks on Israeli sites the previous day.
Three additional Iranian sites were hacked and their servers altered to display an Israeli flag and anti-Arab text in English.
Press TV, the Iranian regime’s English language satellite channel, was unavailable following the announcement by the hackers.
“At 16:30 Israel Clock the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education website will be down until further notice. In addition to Iran’s television network, broadcasting in English round-the-clock, based in Tehran that [is] called Press TV will be down until further notice,” the hackers wrote in a message.
“Ahmadinejad what do you have to say about that?” they added.
The attack represents the latest chapter in an Internet feud that began early January when an Arab hacker published tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers on the Internet.
Earlier, IDF Team told The Jerusalem Post it was preparing a response after the websites of two Israeli hospitals – the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and the private Assouta hospital network – were taken offline on Wednesday.
IDF Team has played a pivotal part in Israeli counter-strikes on high-profile Arab websites following attacks by Arab hackers. The team appears to have employed a combination of attacks to disable the Iranian websites on Thursday, by launching distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) attacks and breaking into Iranian servers.
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 site The Marker was also unavailable Wednesday.
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.