Cyberattacks Increase as Gaza Conflict Sets Off Hacker Attacks Online
The recent conflict happening in Gaza between Palestine and Israel has sparked more than just a physical chaos but an uproar over thousands of Web pages being defaced by hacker groups from the regions of Turkey, Iran, Morocco and Lebanon. This was discovered by the director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama, Gary Warner.
Many pages hosted on Israel's .il domains such as businesses and vanity sites have been affected by this attack. Some of the small business sites seemed to have been hacked to display word phrases which may be directly related to the Gaza conflict. Other sites have messages that condemn the U.S. and Israel accompanied with very graphic images of the physical violence that is currently taking place.
This is not the first time a string of violence or popular world events have sparked additional hacker activity in the affected regions. The current attack has been reported to be carried out by groups of hackers where it may be composed of over 10,000 hackers. From some estimates by security researchers it is said that many sites on the same host are targeted for as many as 10,000 web sites were hacked within the same host. Other reports have come in stating that one hacker alone was able to hack 5,000 sites. This goes to show that this could potentially end up being hundreds of thousands of sites being hacked before it is all said and done.
Next time that we see a major conflict or even a war started, be rest assured, you will see an increase in cyberattacks that are related to the event. We can even look back to 2008 at the presidential election or even the Beijing Olympics. Related spam and cyberattacks were initiated to accompany the world events in each case.
Do you think if and when the conflict in Gaza ends that the cyber attacks will immediately cease?