The Israeli-Hamas conflict shows cyber warfare Is now the new normal

JVL Introduction

As Jeremiah Fowler remarks:

“Cyberspace acts now as a second front with no defined rules of engagement. Hacktivists and government-affiliated groups can choose a side and launch numerous attacks based on their specific skill sets, tipping the scales of the conflict with seemingly just a few clicks.”

According to CyberKnow, a cyberwarfare tracker, an estimated 58 different groups participated in cyber attacks in the first days of the war on Gaza, c.10 in support of Israel and c.48 in support of the Palestinians

Tactics used range widely:

• denial of service (DoS) attacks simply flood websites with an overwhelming volume of traffic requests and leave virtually no capacity for legitimate user requests;
• propaganda and disinformation carried out by bots (e.g. during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine bots promoting pro-Russian content placed an estimated 20 percent of all messages);
• cyber espionage, seeking to monitor communications, infiltrate networks, and gain valuable information and, linked to this;
• hacking (and selling on of data); and
• defacement, in which the hacker can take control of the website and deface it.

It is hard to estimate the significance of this activity – counter-measures have greatly improved as well – but it clearly represents a new front in war.

RK

This article was originally published by Website Planet on Mon 10 Jun 2024. Read the original here.