(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
23. October 2012: Israeli police find that all their computers have been infiltrated and compromised. The worst thing is that it has taken them a whole week to figure it out, and malware has spread to other government agencies. The result is that the servers of the police are taken down, the internet connection is cut off and the use of memory sticks is banned. This lasts for another week.
In February 2014, the same thing happens again when hackers break into the Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria, the Israeli agency that handles all administrative issues for the A and B areas of the West Bank. Later, according to security company FireEye, the attacks are linked to the Gaza Hacker Team.
Little has been written about this group, which has been around for almost a decade now. According to themselves, they were established in 2007, but it is difficult to find attacks this year, and the frequency seems to have been rather low in the beginning. One of the first reported successful attacks is that carried out against the Israeli Kadima party 13. February 2008.
Nevertheless – in 2012, the Gaza Hacker Team had managed to create more headlines in both Israeli and international media with thousands of hacked websites.
Breaking the rhythm of everyday life. Looking at the Gaza Hacker Team's stated goals, there are three main points that can be highlighted: financial damage, information warfare and breaches of normalcy in Israeli daily life.
Obviously, it is difficult to get clear figures on how much cyber attacks against Israel affect the economy. Israel is not known for launching information on attacks that have not led to loss of life. Nevertheless, there are examples of how many single attacks can cost. In February 2013, for example, a group of unknown hackers managed to shut down the Haifa tunnel for two days, after hacking the security cameras. The first attack lasted no longer than 20 minutes, while the second lasted eight hours. The cost of the attack is estimated to be over $ 100, and it is reasonably expensive for an attack that lasted no longer than an average Norwegian working day. Add it to all the attacks that are carried out annually and you will get an impression of the damage that can be inflicted.
Another point worth mentioning is the attempts to break the normalcy of Israeli daily life – to suddenly remove Israelis' sense of security to such an extent that they are forced to relate to the occupation of the Palestinian territories. To use the Gaza Hacker Team's own words: "The hacking kills enemy morale, damages the mind and terrorizes enemy people and soldiers."
Forcing an Israeli breach of normality is nothing new in the history of the Palestinian resistance struggle, and can be linked to Naser Abufarha's description of the Palestinian use of suicide bombers during the Second Intifada, as the Palestinians attempted to emulate the same violence that the Palestinians experienced during the Israeli occupation. By bombing Israeli restaurants, cafes and buses during the intifada, the Israelis would brutally remove any sense of normality and security. If the Palestinians had no idea when the next Israeli attack would hit their neighborhood, they would make it clear that security should not be an Israeli privilege either.
Unpredictability. An example of hacking that succeeds in breaking the norms of Israeli daily life is the attack on Israeli airline El Al Airlines and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, which seems to have done something about Israeli self-esteem as a technological superpower. Israeli Minister of Public Service Improvement Michael Eitan stated that the attack did not cause any concern – but interestingly, the Israeli website Ynetnews.com launched its article on the issue with the question: "Cyber safe? ' Marc Goldberg, blogger for the Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, stated that the attacks "have shown us just how vulnerable we are to individuals operating for miles away." "Carl in Jerusalem", which runs the blog Israel Matzav, concluded one of its blog posts with a rhetorical question: "Shouldn't we somehow have the best web security in the world?"
The same panic tool was used in the summer of 2014 during the last Gaza massacre, when the Israeli Defense Forces (Twitter) account published a message in English that went out to the world: "#WARNING: Possible nuclear leak in the region after two rockets hit the Dimona nuclear plant. " A few hours later, an apology was issued from the same account. The account had been hacked, but the IDF had now regained control.
These attacks can be used as school examples of how so-called mimetic violence or imitation violence works: Mimetic violence does not necessarily mean that Israelis sit at home in the living room and fear for their lives, but that they suddenly realize that something is going on outside that they cannot be protected. courage and who they have to deal with. Thus, the hacker attacks cannot be defined solely on the basis of the economic damage inflicted on the Israeli cyber infrastructure. Uncertainty and unpredictability are two of the basic premises. One can simply never know when a necessary part of Israeli cyber infrastructure is being taken down.
Forcing an Israeli breach of normality is nothing new in the history of the Palestinian resistance struggle.
Porn trick. So how were the attacks in 2012 and 2014 carried out? It is easy to believe that you are protected from external threats as long as you remove all loopholes and have the latest antivirus software installed. But the question is not om something can be hacked, but how and when. Cyber security is not just a technological issue. Basically, everything can be compromised by people. The Israeli police and the civil administration had in common that the infiltration became possible because an employee opened a document containing malicious software.
The best example is a group that hacked – and gained access to – several Israeli government sites. Several employees received email from a non-existent sender. When they opened the attachment, a pornographic movie appeared on the screen while malicious software was installed on the computer system and allowed the sender to retrieve information from the victim. Trend Micro, which works with IT security, stated that the use of pornography was "characterized by genius". When the inappropriate content opened up on the screen, employees hesitated to report the incident, since they would not admit to having opened pornography on the job computer. At the same time, the recipients of the email were distracted by the content, which meant that they did not get the malicious software installed. That was how the attack was quietly ignored, while the hackers – for a while – could keep going.
This is a translated and edited excerpt from the book.
Crowd's book Digital Jihad: Palestinian Resistance in the Digital Era can be purchased at Zedbooks.net, Adlibris.no and Amazon.com.
