Israel’s Nation Cyber Directorate (NCD) is the agency that provides cyber defense for the country. The NCD confirmed that the country’s government websites went down during a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) cyber-attack. It has been confirmed that this is the largest DDoS cyber-attack to ever hit the country.

There are conflicting reports of a state-of-emergency being declared. But these reports cannot be verified. 

A source with Israel’s defense forces said the cyber-attack was the largest ever carried out against Israel, according to Haaretz.

Nation-state suspected 

The NCD reported the sheer volume and size of the attack indicates that the threat actor is a nation-state. A typical cybercriminal gang could not have created such a large-scale disruption. And would not have the resources to pull it off.

The Threat Post reports that Iran is suspected of the attack.

“The recent DDoS attacks against Israel have been attributed to actors aligned with Iran, highlighting the significant ongoing tensions between the two countries,” said Chris Morgan, a senior cyber-threat intelligence analyst with Digital Shadows.

Morgan said the timing indicates a retaliation for Israel’s alleged attempt to breach Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. And comes one day after Iran launched missiles into Iraq at what they claimed was an Israeli headquarters. Iran claims the missile attack is retaliation for two Revolutionary Guards killed in Syria by Israelis. 

“The attacks occurred just hours after Iranian state television announced that its security forces had reportedly stopped an attempted sabotage of nuclear centrifuges against a nuclear power plant in Fordow,” he said.

“Attacking nuclear centrifuges draws parallels to previous cyberattacks against Iran, notably the Stuxnet incident of 2010; some have suggested this destructive malware attack was the work of Israel’s intelligence services.”

Largest DDoS took down nation’s sites

A DDoS attack is used by hackers to make an online service, network resource, or host machine unavailable to its users. Targets of DDoS attacks are flooded with thousands or millions of superfluous requests, overwhelming the host and support resources.

In this case, the cyber-attack was launched via Israeli telecom companies. And took down some government sites along with, sites not government-affiliated.

Sites knocked offline include Israeli departments of interior, health, justice, welfare, and even the Prime Minister’s office. Every page on Israel’s gov.il domain was impacted.

Some service was restored within an hour. And on Monday night, Jerusalem time, most of the impacted sites had access restored.

Government officials said that there was some unsuccessful activity towards critical infrastructure. And Israeli power and water companies were not affected. Israel’s utility websites are also functioning normally.