Fresh from its anti-ISIS hacktivist operation, Anonymous is once again turning its attention to Israel, promising an “electronic Holocaust.”
For the third year in a row, the hacking collective is planning to assault hundreds of Israeli websites on or around April 7, which is the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The group is protesting what it calls “segregationist Zionism.”
“As we did many times, we will take down your servers, government web sites, Israeli military websites and Israeli institutions,” the voiceover in a video posted by the group said. “We will erase you from cyberspace in our electronic Holocaust.”
In April 2013 and April 2014, the group launched a series of massive cyber-attacks against Israel in the name of Palestinian autonomy, claiming to have caused multi-billion dollar damage. Israel brushed this claim aside however, and said that there were no major disruptions in either attack.
“It’s not the first time this sort of campaign happened,” said Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). “The last time (though) didn’t see any strategic attacks on critical infrastructure. There was the defacement of websites and sowing fear among Israeli citizens.”
It warns that this year, the Anonymous splinter group called AnonGhost will be carrying out the attacks. Daniel Cohen, INSS’ Cyber Warfare program, said that Shi'ite Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas could be behind the attacks.
“These groups call themselves anonymous, but in reality the Op-Israel hackers responsible for the actions are mostly from the Middle East, with connections to our local conflict," he noted, speaking to Israel’s national newspaper.
Anonymous’ #OpIsrael campaign goes back quite a ways, to at least 2012, when the Israeli government threatened to cut off the internet to the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza.
“For far too long, Anonymous has stood by with the rest of the world and watched in despair the barbaric, brutal and despicable treatment of the Palestinian people in the so called ‘Occupied Territories’ by the Israel Defense Force,” it said at the time. “Like so many around the globe, we have felt helpless in the face of such implacable evil. And today’s insane attack and threatened invasion of Gaza was more of the same.”
Anonymous’ political allegiances in the Middle East are varied. It recently wrapped an #IceISIS campaign, claiming to have taken 800 Twitter accounts offline that were linked to the terrorist group.
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