Yesterday was the official Independence Day of Israel, and the event was marked by an unwelcome surprise for the country’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. His Facebook account was hijacked, albeit briefly, by malicious hackers who managed to post a video of prayers at a mosque, accompanied by Arabic verses from the Quran. At the same time, the official website of the Prime Minister was also briefly knocked offline by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
Anonymous Sudan, the group who claimed responsibility for the attack, is also thought to have been behind other attacks on Wednesday against Israeli targets. This included swamping the websites of Haifa Port and the Israel Ports Development Company with unwanted web traffic and making them inaccessible. On Monday, the same group claimed that they had managed to also bring down the websites of the National Insurance Institute and Israel’s spy agency Mossad.
A distributed denial-of-service attack, while disruptive, does not mean that hackers have managed to compromise systems or gain access to any sensitive information. It is a much easier attack to pull off than say, intruding into a system after stealing passwords or exploiting a vulnerability to gain unauthorised access to an organisation’s infrastructure.
However, the hijacking of Netanyahu’s Facebook account is of more interest. According to media reports, the hackers are said to have exploited “a Facebook feature that allows collaboration between pages” to post the unauthorised content. This suggests a failure of Netanyahu’s social media team to properly lock down Facebook’s settings – which should have been able to control who could share contact with the page.
To conclude, yesterday was a day of disruption for Israeli citizens and its Prime Minister. Despite the claims of Anonymous Sudan, the attacks were largely disruptive in nature and did not cause any major damage. However, the hijacking of Netanyahu’s Facebook account is of particular interest, as it suggests a failure of his social media team to properly secure the page. Investigations into the incident are ongoing, and hopefully care will be taken to reduce the chances of a similar attack succeeding in future.
Key Points:
• Yesterday was the official Independence Day of Israel, which was marked by malicious hackers hijacking the Facebook account of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and briefly knocking his official website offline.
• The group responsible for the attack, Anonymous Sudan, is also thought to have been behind other attacks on Wednesday against Israeli targets.
• A distributed denial-of-service attack does not mean that hackers have managed to compromise systems or gain access to any sensitive information.
• The hijacking of Netanyahu’s Facebook account is of more interest, as it suggests a failure of his social media team to properly secure the page.
• Investigations into the incident are ongoing, and hopefully care will be taken to reduce the chances of a similar attack succeeding in future.
