Check Point: Iran has doubled its cyber attacks on Israel in the past week
Check Point: Iran has doubled its cyber attacks on Israel in the past week
According to an estimate by the cybersecurity company, the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence carried out more than 2,000 attacks each in the past week. Among the targets - academic colleges and local authorities. "Israel is attacked 30% more than anywhere else in the world," the company said.
The Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) doubled their number of cyber attacks against Israel in the past week, according to cybersecurity company Check Point. According to the estimate, each of the organizations, which together operate about ten different attack groups, carried out about 2,100 attacks in the past week compared to 1,000 the week before.
According to Check Point, in recent days the organizations have been able to successfully attack organizations such as the Golan Regional Council, Levinsky College and the Israeli Study Center. Among other things, they managed to send emails from the organizations' servers to Israeli media organizations and to private or corporate email addresses of journalists. In emails sent from hacked legitimate addresses, a malicious link is attached which, when clicked, downloads remote control software called Atera onto a computer or mobile phone. "Israel is attacked 30% more than anywhere else in the world," said Gil Messing, chief of staff and head of global corporate communications at Check Point, "this is the only arena where the Iranians are active and fighting themselves and not through proxies."
The Iranian offensive cyber effort is mainly successful in intermediary companies, such as IT companies, web hosting or cloud services, which provide diverse services to large clients. One successful attack for example was on a company called Rashim - a subsidiary of Malam Team. According to the hackers, this attack obtained data from Sapir College, Beit Berl, Levinsky College and Kinneret College. New versions of the BiBi Wiper malware were also discovered. The malware penetrates systems and deletes them. According to Check Point, the damage was focused on local authorities, even in the period before the local elections. "These are not as strong attacks as they would like it to be, but they are successful," added Messing.
At the end of last week, an Iranian attack group announced that it had hacked into the servers of the Ministry of Justice, The National Insurance Institute and the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Justice and the National Cyber Directorate claimed that only old documents had been obtained, but a gag order was placed on the investigation. An attack group documented the event in a long video where you can see how they managed to break into the various websites, including those of The National Insurance Institute and those of the Ministry of Defense and reveal sensitive private information.
