Anonymous launches massive cyber assault on Israel

Hacktivist group Anonymous has launched a second massive cyber-attack against Israel, dubbed #OpIsrael. While the hackers claim to have caused multi-billion dollar damage, Israel declares there haven’t been any major disruptions.

Anonymous threatened to "disrupt and erase Israel from cyberspace" in protest over its mistreatment of Palestinians.

Dozens of Israeli websites were unavailable as of early Sunday, with one of the latest being the Israeli Ministry of Defense online page, according to Anonymous on Twitter.

However, the country's officials indicated that the disruptions haven't been serious.

The Israel Police website had difficulties loading for only a short time before going back to normal. The same went for the Defense Ministry page, which was hacked for a few hours, and then restored.

Anonymous pointed out on Saturday night that they had shut down several government sites, including those of the Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Securities Authority, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics, but the government denied the claim, Haaretz reported.

The hackers also released a list of email addresses and credit card numbers, reportedly lifted from the online catalog of Israel Military, a privately-owned business that sells military surplus, Haaretz reported. Israel Military officials indicated that the information made public did not come from its site.

Yitzhak Ben Yisrael of the government's National Cyber Bureau told AP that hackers had mostly failed to shut down key sites.

"So far it is as was expected, there is hardly any real damage," Ben Yisrael indicated. "Anonymous doesn't have the skills to damage the country's vital infrastructure. And if that was its intention, then it wouldn't have announced the attack of time. It wants to create noise in the media about issues that are close to its heart.”

Anonymous, however, claimed that more than a hundred thousand websites have been brought down since the start of OpIsrael, and some 30,000 Israeli bank accounts hacked, saying the damage has topped $3 billion.

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/news/opisrael-anonymous-final-warning-448/