Today: Cyber Attack on Israel

Today: Cyber Attack on Israel

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Today, April 7: A potential cyber attack on the state of Israel: Don’t panic, don’t be scared, but don’t ignore the threat and get ready – say the experts

11009362_m featureAhead of the planned cyber attack set for today, April 7, experts agree: Don’t panic, don’t be afraid, but still prepare yourself. A suggestion for private citizens – if it’s possible don’t use your computers today, and change your passwords.

Anonymous attacked last year on the same date as well, and it’s possible that the attackers want to do it again. Avi Weissman, owner of the SEE Security company, believes the attackers are a “group of hackers rather than government agencies”. Rami Efrati, a former senior official for Israel’s National Cyber Command, said that they expect two types of cyber attacks: Denial of service and website defacing. “The attackers want to publicly show that they managed to damage Israeli critical infrastructure and daily life. As for denial of service – those attacks are routine, they happen all the time, although today their scope might be greater. I’m convinced that all relevant systems have been preparing themselves and taking this threat seriously. The general public has to know that cyber attacks happen all the time.”

As for private citizens, cyber security experts claim that there’s a lot of disinformation surrounding this issue and it’s hard to predict exactly what will happen – or if anything will actually happen at all – today. If you can avoid using your computer you should try to do so, and changing passwords is always a good idea.

iHLS – Israel Homeland Security

How do you prepare for this day of attacks? Ophir Hasson, CEO of Cyber Gym, a company training professional cybersecurity personnel for organizations and companies: “You have to mitigate the threats. There are techniques for transferring vulnerable websites to special servers, you can shut down unecessary links and interfaces, avoid network maintenance today.” In Cyber Gym’s training facility the trainees have been preparing for April 7, getting ready for attacks on critical infrastructure, including by investigating earlier attacks. Ophir Hasson: “Don’t get anxious, this isn’t the first time, it’s something that repeats itself every few months. But I hope everybody is preparing to minimize any damage caused, if there’s even any damage.”

Lists of potential targets have been appearing online, including academic institutions, Technion, government institutions, airlines, American Express, All Jobs and many others.