14 DAY TRIAL // A group of Israeli hacktivists called the Israeli Elite Force claim to have identified several of the people who have taken part in OpIsrael, the campaign that took place on April 7.
Several hacktivist groups have taken part in Operation Israel. Some websites belonging to Israeli government agencies and financial institutions have been disrupted with distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks.
In addition, a large number of smaller websites have been defaced. Personal data allegedly belonging to Israelis has also been published online.
However, Israeli authorities, cited by the Jerusalem Post, claimed that OpIsrael wasn’t as successful as the hacktivists said it was. The country’s Shin Bet security agency established a special cyber operations room to deal with the attacks, but the cyberattacks only slowed down some government websites, officials noted.
Israel had plenty of time to prepare for the attacks since hacktivists announced their intentions months before the start of the campaign.
Similarly to last year, Israeli hackers have responded to the attacks. Buddhax, a member of the Israeli Elite Force, has published files containing information on the identities of 16 individuals who have allegedly taken part in OpIsrael.
Names, email addresses, IPs and photographs taken via their webcams have been published by Buddhax. The alleged hackers are said to be mainly from Indonesia and Malaysia, but some are from Portugal, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Algeria.
The information has been published on Dropbox, but the account’s links have been temporarily disabled because they’ve generated too much traffic.
“I’m not a great hacker,” Buddhax wrote after publishing the information. “But I’m at least good enough to expose you.”
He added, “next time do not take part in an offensive against Israel. We know who you are, we know where you are. Hail Israel.”
In addition to leaking the details of alleged OpIsrael hackers, Israeli hacktivists have also targeted a number of websites from the Arab world.
“We carried out some small operations that hit the Arab world, websites and some online accounts, but this was not an official Israeli response. It was just child’s play,” one hacker told Israel Today. “It is really not recommended that they [Anonymous Palestine] mess with Israel, and they know this well.”
Judging by previous anti-Israel campaigns, hacktivists will probably soon announce something like OpIsrael Reloaded. When it comes to hacker operations initiated by actors in Asia, Israel seems to be the most targeted. Such campaigns have taken place for years, and they’ll probably continue.