Haaretz says hackers published thousands of confidential documents on a website they created (Getty)
Jerusalem-International hackers have created a website dedicated to publishing leaks that were among several recent breaches of sensitive databases in Israel, which escalated during the war on Gaza, according to a report by the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz", on Tuesday.
According to the report, thousands of Israeli documents have already been published on the site launched by hackers, who claim that they were obtained by hacking systems belonging to the Israeli Ministry of security and national insurance, and recently, systems related to the Ministry of justice and the nuclear research facility in Dimona have also been hacked.
Since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza, cyber attacks on Israeli security and civilian sites and facilities have increased, as sensitive legal, civilian and security information has been leaked through hackers and hacking websites, according to the report of the Israeli "National Cyber Unit".
According to the newspaper, international hackers with ties to Iran have concentrated and circulated the leaked Israeli information and data, and published them on websites, making it difficult to remove them from the web.
The site published the leak, which was blamed on a new and unknown hacking group called "net hunters" (NetHunt3rs), which demanded that Israel release 500 Palestinian prisoners to prevent the publication of information in full.
The Israeli security ministry confirmed in a statement this week that "non-sensitive sites" had been hacked, as it claimed, but Haaretz's examination of some of the leaked materials reveals that they were taken from the administrative portals of the Ministry of security.
The leaked materials included identifying information for the ministry and the ministry's employees, tenders, as well as data and information about the IDF's technological systems, including details on armored vehicles, engineering schemes, technical information on satellite imaging systems, and identifying information about soldiers and the units in which they serve.
Eagle claws
Another unknown hacker group, EAGLE Claws, claimed that it had hacked the National Insurance Institution and that it had personal information of 8 million Israeli citizens, "including bank account details and residential addresses".
The group, according to the newspaper in its report, threatened to distribute and publish the personal data of Israelis via the internet, while the National Insurance Institution denied any hacking of its computer systems, but the group distributed a video in which it seems that it managed to obtain personal information of Israeli citizens.
According to a video they posted, the hackers of "net hunters" managed to obtain a username and password for a person with disabilities in the Israeli army, and used them to log into a relevant system as a full user, which is exactly the same method used by the hackers of "Eagle close" to break into systems related to national insurance and bypass security mechanisms from within, extracting a lot of information that should be available only to other users.
The newspaper pointed out in its report that the materials that were pirated from Israeli sites were published on a dedicated website launched in early April under the name of the "electronic court", and there is talk about a kind of pro-Palestinian activists, and it provides a platform for a large amount of digital booty stolen from network systems in Israel.
The digital front
Another unknown group, "Anonymous South Africa", also threatened to leak more information obtained by hacking an Israeli database.
Haaretz reported that cyber researchers in Israel and around the world who are intensively following Iranian cyber activity did not know these groups before, and after what they revealed was echoed at the leak site, the mentioned groups received media coverage in the Iranian official media, as has already happened in the past to attack groups associated with Iranian cyber arms.
Electronic court
These hacker groups are working behind the so-called" electronic court", which they claim is the digital equivalent of the action against Israel at the International Court of justice in The Hague.
The "electronic court" claims that other active and well-known hacker groups have joined its alliance of hackers, including anonymous Sudan, which previously led a wave of cyberattacks against Israel and is considered close to Russia and its interests, and the "mysterious Bangladesh" team, a group that often attacks targets associated with Israel, India and secular organizations perceived as a threat to Islam.
Most of these groups, according to the Israeli newspaper in its report, are second-rate in the cyber world, professional groups with capabilities more familiar in the world of digital crime, and not government groups with military cyber capabilities.
The "electronic court", according to the newspaper, looks more like an influence operation aimed not only at collecting hacked information, but also at humiliating Israel, creating a sense of international mobilization of activists from Sudan, Bangladesh and South Africa, who are trying to avenge the murder in Gaza through a wave of interventions, even if they are not large-scale, destructive or even real.
Israeli warnings
Leading Israeli cyber researchers warn that the effects of hacking of all kinds and the concentration of a lot of information on Israeli citizens should not be underestimated, especially on members of the security establishment and holders of secret positions.
According to Israeli researchers, the publication of the leak in many cases is nothing more than the general endpoint of a much longer and deeper secret operation, an attempt to wrest the victory of consciousness after the loss of the breakthrough with which they collected a lot of secret information.
According to the researchers, hackers know how to use leaked personal information for targeting and phishing purposes, which may allow them to extract more details to penetrate other sensitive systems.
According to them, it is possible that a hack into the National Insurance and the Ministry of security is possible, due to the information that was previously leaked as part of the hack into the insurance company "sherbet", which insures the vehicle fleet in Israel.
The information included personal details of civil servants and the government ministries in which they work, including sensitive security agencies, or the leak of the "elector" application used by Likud in the elections.
After the leak of the application, the details of about 6 million Israelis were revealed, including identity card numbers, addresses and phone numbers, and today a lot of information about citizens of Israel is available on the internet, it can be purchased and used in attacks.
Source: Al Jazeera + Anatolia
