14 DAY TRIAL // On April 7, 2013, Anonymous hacktivists launched numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against various major Israeli websites as part of the OpIsrael campaign.
Trend Micro has analyzed the source of these attacks and has found that, unlike on a regular day, on April 7, over 90% of the traffic came from outside of Israel.
Based on information collected by Trend Micro’s Smart Protection Network, it’s no wonder that many websites were disrupted on that day, since a significant spike in traffic was recorded (see screenshot).
Another interesting conclusion drawn by experts is that hacktivists were not the only ones launching the attacks. Many of the IP addresses associated with the botnets were under the control of cybercriminals.
More precisely, the IP addresses were victims of ransomware, Fake AV and exploit kit attacks.
“These findings highlight how major DDoS attacks are, at least in part, not just carried out by hacker groups like Anonymous but by cybercriminals as well. These attacks are not nearly as ‘harmless’ as some would think,” Trend Micro Big Data Security Analyst Chris Huang noted.