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Israel’s largest telco has been taken down by hackers as part of its war with Hamas, just as the Gaza Strip loses digital communications for the 10 time in three months, according to new reports.
The infamous Anonymous Sudan hacking group claimed an attack on the Israeli Pelephone telco on its Telegram channel on Tuesday (23 January).
“We have conducted devastating cyber attack on the infrastructure of one of the biggest mobile network operators and telecommunications companies in Israel,” the group wrote on its Telegram.
“Pelephone is a mobile network operator in Israel. It is one of the leading and oldest telecommunications companies in the country.
“We have practically hit their entire infrastructure, yes you heard it right, the vast majority of the digital infrastructure of Pelephone is now offline by our sophisticated cyber attack. And what is hidden is greater.”
The group added that its attacks against Israel would continue as long as the country continues what it called a “genocidal campaign on Gaza”.
It also said it would claim any collateral damage done as a result of the Pelephone attack.
“The collateral damage will be quite big as it hosts many critical systems, including SCADA and other infrastructure based endpoints & companies which relies on the infrastructure of Pelephone,” it said.
Following this, the group reposted data from NetBlocks showing that Pelephone’s systems were down.
“Confirmed: Metrics show a disruption to the network of #Israel mobile operator Pelephone, a Bezeq subsidiary, corroborating user reports of outages; hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan has claimed the cyber attack as the latest in its campaign against prominent Israeli targets,” the post said.
The attack on Pelephone closely followed NetBlocks’ reports that the Gaza Strip had faced telecoms blackouts since 22 January, which lasted over 24 hours.
“Update: Live metrics show the #Gaza Strip has now been in the midst of a telecoms blackout for 24 hours, the tenth such incident since the start of the conflict with Israel; the incident affects the few networks that remain after months of steady decline in connectivity,” the post said.
Since then, NetBlocks has said that digital communications have returned to Gaza but at still much lower standards than before the war.
Just earlier this month, following the unrelenting conditions residents face as a result of the war, the UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths ruled Gaza as uninhabitable, citing famine and public health disaster.
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