THE RUNDOWN

Amidst the ongoing chaos in Israel as a result of the Hamas invasion, cyber attacks have played a role in the unraveling events, adding an additional layer of complexity. 

In the first hours of the assault, Anonymous Sudan, a Russia-aligned hacktivist group, pledged its support for Hamas and launched attacks against Israel’s alerting system. Used to alert citizens of attacks, this may have led to delays resulting in direct casualties. It is unclear what the final impact these Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks may have had.

Opposing the offensive, ThreatSec has countered these attacks with some of their own. Stating they initially intended to gain access to “some infrastructure”, the group was able to compromise the Internet Service Provider (ISP) AlfaNet. In their Telegram, ThreatSec claimed the provider services over 5000 servers on the Gaza Strip. Strike Source was able to confirm 233 servers that have been indexed by Censys. Attempting to request resources from a select number validated they were unreachable.

ThreatSec showed in a screenshot, seen below, the deletion of Alfanet Palestine’s record from the RIPE Database. The RIPE Database is a collection of information related to Internet number resources, which includes IP addresses and Autonomous System (AS) Numbers. This database is managed by the RIPE Network Coordination Centre and is responsible for the allocation and registration of Internet number resources within their region. In doing so, ThreatSec has disrupted the routing of all IP addresses assigned by AlfaNet Palestine.

THE TAKEAWAY

It remains to be seen how much of an impact the cyber attacks have had on the conflict thus far. Claims that this will impact Hamas directly remain to be seen. However, it is clear that cyber will play a key role for both parties. It can be anticipated that Hacktivist groups will continue to involve themselves in this conflict in one form or another for the foreseeable future.