Security News > 2022 > March > Huge DDoS attack temporarily kicks Israeli government sites offline

A massive distributed denial-of-service attack forced Israeli officials Monday to temporarily take down several government websites and to declare a state of online emergency to assess the damage and begin investigating who was behind the incident.

In a tweet, the Israel National Cyber Directorate said it had detected the DDoS attack against a communications provider and that several websites had been taken down, though all have since resumed normal activity.

According to internet watchdog NetBlocks, the attacks targeted Israeli telecom providers Bezeq and Cellcom and hit multiple networks run by the companies.

Israel and Iran have been in a long-standing cyberwar and daily newspaper The Jerusalem Post said some unnamed officials were speculating that the DDoS attack was in retaliation for an alleged attack by Israel's Mossad agency on the Fordow nuclear enrichment site.

The state of emergency reportedly is giving Israeli investigators time to study not only the extent of the damage caused by the attack but also checking on critical infrastructure organizations like the country's electric and water companies.

DDoS attacks are designed to send huge amounts of traffic to websites, essentially overwhelming their capacity handle the messages and making it impossible legitimate users to access them.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/03/15/ddos-attack-israel-government-iran/