Part 2 (2/2)

However, successfully compromising higher-profile websites not only brings more public attention, it also compels businesses all over Israel to preventively tighten security, which costs money. For that reason, the financial impact of infiltrating a few larger corporate websites may be as important as disrupting thousands of smaller sites.

High-profile attacks or defacements between December 27, 2008, and February 15, 2009, include: Ynetnews.com The English language portal of one of Israel's largest newspapers. The Morocco-based ”Team Evil” accessed a domain registrar called DomainTheNet in New York and redirected traffic from Ynetnews and other Israeli websites. Traffic was redirected to a site with a protest message in jumbled English. Ynetnews.com emphasized that its site had not actually been ”hacked,” but that Team Evil obtained a pa.s.sword allowing them to access a server. The Team then changed the IP addresses for different domain names, sending users attempting to access Ynetnews.com to a domain containing their message.

The website of Discount Bank, one of the three largest banks in Israel, was also registered with DomainTheNet, and Team Evil switched its IP address just as they did with Ynetnews.

Israel's Cargo Airlines Ltd.

An Israeli airline defaced by hackers.

Kadima.org.il The website of Israel's Kadima party was defaced twice during this period.

DZ team, based in Algeria, was responsible for the first defacement, in which they adorned the Kadima's home page with photos of IDF soldiers' funerals, accompanied by messages in Arabic and Hebrew promising that more Israelis would die.

The second time occurred on February 13, 2009, three days after close parliamentary elections in which Kadima and Likud both claimed victory and hackers targeted the Kadima site as a result of the expected spike in traffic. Gaza Hacker Team claimed responsibility for the second defacement.

Ehudbarak.org.il (This URL is no longer active.) Israeli Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Barak's website was defaced by Iranian hackers who call themselves As.h.i.+aneh Security Team. The group left a message in English reading ”ISRAEL, You killed more than 800 innocent civil people in gaza. Do you think that you won't pay for this? Stop War. If you don't we will continue hacking your important sites.”

panies or product lines were also defaced: Skype, Mazda, McDonald's, Burger King, Pepsi, Fujifilm, Volkswagen, Sprite, Gillette, Fanta, Daihatsu, and Kia.

Overview of Perpetrators.

Judging from the graffiti left behind on defaced websites, the most active hackers are Moroccan, Algerian, Saudi Arabian, Turkish, and Palestinian, although they may be physically located in other countries. Applicure Technologies, Ltd., an Israeli information security company, claims that some of the hackers are affiliated with Iranian organizations, as well as the terrorist group Hezbollah. So far, however, neither the messages left behind on defaced sites nor conversations among hackers on their own websites explicitly indicates members.h.i.+p in Hezbollah or other Islamist groups. The hackers involved do not have any unifying body organizing their activities, although some of them congregate in certain specialized hacker forums.

Many active hackers during the current Gaza crisis are experienced. Some of them were involved in the Sunni-s.h.i.+te cyber conflict that intensified in the fall of 2008. Others have numerous apolitical hacks under their belts. Their partic.i.p.ation in the current, politically motivated hacking of Israeli websites is a reflection of their personal political feelings and/or recognition of the increased attention that they can attract with Gaza-related hacks.

The majority of the graffiti left behind on Israeli websites contains images of the victims and destruction in Gaza and exhortations to Israel and/or the United States to stop the violence. The most common motivation of the hackers appears to be to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to register their protest against Israeli actions there. In the words of two hackers interviewed by a Turkish newspaper, ”Our goal is to protest what is being done to the innocent people in Gaza and show our reaction. The reason we chose this method was our bid to make our voices louder.”

Motivations.

The imagery and text left on defaced websites suggests the importance the hackers place on sending messages to Israeli or Western audiences through their attacks. The owner of a Palestinian graphic design company designed images for hackers to use in their defacements. A hacker forum even held a compet.i.tion to see who could come up with the best designs to leave on Israeli websites, with monetary rewards for the winners.

Investigations into the hackers' motivations have revealed the following: Inflicting financial damage to Israeli businesses, government, and individuals A message on the Arabic hackers' site Soqor.net exhorted hackers to ”Disrupt and destroy Zionist government and banking sites to cost the enemy not thousands but millions of dollars. ...”

Delivering threats of physical violence to an Israeli audience One Moroccan hacker's team posted symbols a.s.sociated with violent Jihadist movements and an image of an explosion, along with a threatening message for Israelis.

Using cyber attacks as leverage to stop Operation Cast Lead Many of the defacements contained messages indicating that attacks on Israeli sites and servers would stop only when Israel stopped its violence in Gaza.

Fulfilling the religious obligation of Jihad Some hackers couched their activities in religious terms, insisting that cyber attacks were tantamount to fighting Jihad against Islam's enemies. One hacker wrote, ”Use [the hacking skills] G.o.d has given you as bullets in the face of the Jewish Zionists. We cannot fight them with our bodies, but we can fight them with our minds and hands. ... By G.o.d, this is Jihad.”

Achieving enhanced personal status among the community of hackers or improving one's personal position in rivalries or compet.i.tions with other hackers Two of the hackers' websites held contests to encourage productive compet.i.tion in hacking Israeli sites. Although there is much mutual encouragement and a.s.sistance on hackers' websites, there are also signs of rivalry, with hackers defacing each other's websites and leaving critical or taunting messages.

Hackers' Profiles.

The following are brief profiles of some of the hackers involved. They were identified by press reports or by the content of hacker websites as being the most active or high-profile hackers in the anti-Israel campaign.

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