Hackers Launch Massive Attack on Israeli Universities

Jerusalem, 4 April, 2023 (TPS) -- A hacker group known as Anonymous Sudan is believed responsible for a massive cyberattack on Israeli universities on Tuesday, said Checkpoint, a cybersecurity company.

The websites of Hebrew University, Bar-Ilan University, The Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, The Technion, Ben Gurion University, Ariel University and Reichman University were disrupted throughout the day.

According to Checkpoint, hackers based in Sudan and Bangladesh were likely crashing the sites’ servers by flooding them with commands, a cyberattack method commonly known as a Distributed Denial of Services, or DDoS attack.

It wasn’t clear if the hackers also penetrated internal university networks.

Anonymous Sudan wrote on its Telegram channel that the attack was a response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anti-Israeli hackers have been launching organized cyber attacks every April in what they call the annual #OPIsrael campaign.

The Israel National Cyber Directorate, which is responsible for all aspects of cyber security in the civilian sphere, predicted that the attacks will continue through Iran’s “Quds Day,” the last Friday of Ramadan which Iran instituted as a day of demonstrations against Israel.