MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – A group of anti-Israel hackers, calling themselves “Anonymous Operation Israel,” attacked hundreds of Israeli government websites Monday in protest of the country’s policies.
“On April 7, 2014, we call upon our brothers and sisters to hack, deface, hijack, database leak, admin takeover, and DNS terminate Israeli cyberspace by any means necessary,” a video posted by the group on YouTube on Sunday said.
“Your vicious campaigns to attack Palestinian solidarity groups worldwide through censorship and legal wrangling have also not gone unnoticed,” the video added.
Following the threatening statement, websites of a number of Israeli ministries and organizations were taken offline as a precautionary measure. Area residents were warned not to open any emails coming from unknown sources, to monitor their banking activity and avoid suspicious Facebook links, the Times of Israel reported.
Monday’s attack came exactly a year after another hacking spree was organized by the anti-Israel group. On April 7 last year, Anonymous attempted to hack into Israeli websites including the Defense Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office.
Israeli authorities later claimed that attack did not cause significant damage either to government or private Internet services.
Another anti-Israel operation was launched by Anonymous in the wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012, taking down about 700 websites and publicly releasing personal data of 5,000 Israeli officials.
