Iran and Arab Allies Up Cyber Attacks on Israel, Says Netanyahu
Image by Thinkstock
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran and its Palestinian and Lebanese allies on Sunday of carrying out “non-stop” cyber attacks on major computer systems in his country.
He gave no details on the number of attacks but said “vital national systems” had been targeted. Water, power and banking sites were also under threat, he added.
“In the past few months, we have identified a significant increase in the scope of cyber attacks on Israel by Iran. These attacks are carried out directly by Iran and through its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah,” he told a conference on cyber warfare in his country’s commercial hub Tel Aviv.
“Despite the non-stop attacks on us, you hear only about a few of them because we thwart most of them,” he added.
Netanyahu established a national cyber directorate in 2011 charged with protecting Israel’s computer systems from disruption.
Israel and the United States are widely believed to be behind a series of cyber attacks in recent years against an Iranian nuclear programme they say is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Iran says its nuclear activities are peaceful.
Two months ago, Israel said it weathered a pro-Palestinian cyber attack campaign against government websites. Israeli officials said those attacks briefly disrupted several sites and security protocols were updated in response.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
