Israel is investigating the alleged hacking of at least one computer secured by the country’s army-backed cyber defence unit in recent weeks, an Israeli security official briefed on the affair said on Tuesday. Hackers penetrated at least one computer belonging to Israel’s defense ministry in recent weeks and 14 others from private Israeli companies via malware delivered through rogue emails, according to an Israeli cyber security firm. Aviv Raff, chief technology officer at Seculert, said on Monday the company detected malware that had penetrated a computer used by Israel’s Civil Administration, which controls traffic of people and goods at the borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, allowing the attackers to control the machine and to access any computer in the same network. “They can do what ever the machine can do,” he said. “If this was a machine in the civil administration that allows them to provide entrance permits to certain people, the attackers could do that as well.” The Israeli security official, who declined to be identified, clarified that computers on the network which control permits for the Gaza Strip and West Bank were not damaged, but would not confirm or deny whether a Civil Administration’s computer was hit. Some of the rogue emails claimed to be from the country’s Shin Bet security service and others contained information about former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who died on January 11. News of the infiltration was first reported by Reuters on Monday. Mr. Raff said that while the attack represents a “sophisticated” effort to target specific Israeli computers, it was likely carried out by ideologically-motivated “hacktivists” who seek to embarrass nations and corporations using unsophisticated malware that can be purchased over Internet. He said the attack was not the kind of costly offensive against critical national infrastructure mounted by governments that take months to plan and execute, such as Stuxnet – a virus believed to be developed by the U.S. and Israel against Iranian nuclear centrifuges. The announcement’s timing was awkward for Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days has been touting Israel’s prowess for developing cyber security technologies, appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos last Thursday and at a two-day cyber tech conference in Tel Aviv that began Monday. In Mr. Netanyahu’s address to the conference he said “Everything is vulnerable. Networks are exposed, and information is liable to be revealed…. Israel can act to find solutions”.
