Hackers reportedly associated with Russia and Iran have unsuccessfully sought to disrupt Israeli rocket alert applications amid escalating violence with Gazan militants, according to Telegram messages reviewed by The Times of Israel.
The attempt to disable the crucial early warning network by the so-called Anonymous Sudan group and an Iranian hacking group known as Asa Musa, meaning Moses Staff in Persian, only succeeded in briefly taking some secondary websites offline, without impacting the official system that notifies Israelis of impending missile attacks through siren and phone alerts.
This effort underscored a burgeoning threat for Israel, characterized by an apparent collaboration between hackers and Palestinian attackers, with a discernible Iranian imprint on both cyberattacks and rocket assaults.
In a communication with the owner of the targeted rocket warning app Cumta, one individual claiming to be an Iran-linked hacker ominously stated, “There will be rockets and cyberattacks at the same time,” during the alleged May 2nd hack.
With the recent resurgence of violence between Israel and Gaza, hackers continue to boast about their potential to compromise Israel’s civil defense infrastructure. Even though their current strategy of flooding servers hosting government websites and third-party apps is unlikely to inflict considerable damage, there remain valid concerns.
Despite no official reason being provided for faulty rocket alert warnings received by Gedera residents, speculation is rife that Iran is trying to enhance its cyber capabilities, possibly under Russian guidance.
The initial cyberattack attempts coincided with a missile launch on May 2nd by Palestinian Islamic Jihad-led fighters in response to the death of a high-ranking terror official who had been on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison.
Following a barrage of missiles, Anonymous Sudan alleged on Telegram to have hacked Cumta and another rocket alert app, RedAlert. They claimed to have taken offline the website of Tel Aviv-based Evigilo, an emergency notification service provider for Home Front Command and other global clients, and the landing page of Halamish, a government firm centered on urban renewal projects. These attacks were executed in the form of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, capable of temporarily disabling a website by overwhelming a server with data requests, but without inflicting harm to internal infrastructure.
Despite their claims, experts have cast doubt on the hackers’ ability to influence the operation of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Moreover, Anonymous Sudan is believed to have no actual connection to the nation currently engulfed in civil unrest, and has previously been associated with the Russian hacker gang Killnet due to its history of DDoS attacks in Ukraine-supporting European countries.