A massive DDoS attack hit Israel, government sites went offline

Many Israel government websites were offline after a cyberattack, defense sources claim that this is the largest-ever attack that hit the country.

Israeli media reported that a massive DDoS attack has taken down many Israel government websites. The Jerusalem Post attributed the attack to an allegedly Iran-linked threat actor that claimed responsibility for the attack.

Multiple ministries were impacted by the attack, including Health, Interior, and Justice, media reported that also the website of the Prime Minister’s office went temporarily off-line.

At the time of this writing, some of the impacted websites are still unreachable.

The defense establishment and the National Cyber Directorate have declared a state of emergency, it is currently working to determine if the attack has caused damages to Israeli critical infrastructure.

“In the past few hours, a denial of service attack against a communications provider was identified. As a result, access to a number of websites, among them government websites, was blocked for a short time. As of now, all of the websites are operational.” said the National Cyber Directorate.

The attack against Israel networks comes after the Iranian state TV announced that Iran had thwarted an attack on the nuclear plant in Fordow.

The tension between Iran and Israel is very high, Teheran has previously accused Israel of orchestrating massive and disruptive attacks against critical infrastructure.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Israel)