A suspected cyberattack took Israeli government websites offline for several minutes Monday evening until the National Cyber Directorate was able to restore them.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
The directorate confirmed that it had identified an attack on the sites' suppliers, which prevented users from accessing them, and affected all sites that use the .gov.il domain – meaning all government sites exclusive of defense and security-related ones, according to a defense official who spoke to Haaretz.
Ma'ariv reported that the websites had been targeted using a DDoS attack, in which multiple systems flood a server's bandwidth.
Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel held an emergency meeting Monday with officials in his ministry, and steps were taken with communications providers to restore the sites to their regular activity.
Close to the time the sites were temporarily taken down, a message was posted in a Telegram group identified with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps reading "surprise," with the word appearing in both Hebrew and English translation.
Refael Fanco, founder of the company Code Blue, which handles cyber crises and former deputy head of the National Cyber Directorate, said that the incident Monday was "an emergency situation and an unprecedented attack on government website. We can assume that these are small blows and can be attributed to Iran, given recent events."
In January, two Israeli news sites were targeted by Iranian hackers, showing an image of a projectile coming out of the hand of the late IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
