Israel appears to be recovering from major Cyberattacks. According to Amichai Stein of Haaretz and Kan, attackers took control of several Israeli government websites on Monday evening, including those of the Ministry of Health, Interior, Justice, and Welfare. 

The premier’s website was also affected. All of the websites are back online, the country’s national IT directorate said in a statement.

The government hasn’t officially identified the likely perpetrator but said the site was the victim of denial-of-service attacks that flooded them with traffic. Sources in Haaretz say the cyberattacks targeted sites with the gov.il domain and suspected that the perpetrator was a government official as a “large organization”.

DW says an Iran-affiliated hacking group has clearly taken credit and could take revenge for an alleged Israeli operation against Iranian nuclear facilities. However, nothing has been confirmed.

It is unclear whether this is the largest cyberattack on Israel to date, according to defense source Haartz. However, the NCF and defense officials are motivated enough to declare a state of emergency and assess the potential damage, including anything that could jeopardize the website’s other important and critical infrastructure.

Unlike the attacks that brought down the Ukrainian government website prior to the Russian invasion, the attacks on the service probably didn’t cause much damage here.

They make it difficult to access the website, but there is no evidence that the authors damaged the site or compromised the data.

However, the cyberattacks could exacerbate an already tense situation: it comes just the day after Iran fired rockets at the Iraqi city of Erbil in an open warning to the United States and its allies. Israel is already on high alert and the country is known for responding to cyberattacks with physical force.

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