Iranian hackers have attempted to carry out numerous cyberattacks on Israeli water facilities – all of which have been thwarted – prior to the one that took place at the end of April, Walla! News reported on Sunday morning.
After the attack which did succeed, in which Iran used US servers to hack into the facilities, security was increased due to the severity of the attack. The National Cyber Authority decided to open a tracker war room which will be in charge of recognizing the early stages of a cyberattack on Israeli infrastructure.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of Iran's repeated attempts to cyberattack Israeli facilities at last year’s CyberTech conference in Tel Aviv, saying that “Iran is attacking Israel on a daily basis. We monitor it and prevent it every day.”
The Israel National Cyber Directorate warned in May that Iran and several other anti-Israel forces were expected to stage a number of cyberattacks near the end of May. Indeed, around the same time, a number of Israeli websites were attacked and displayed a video of Tel Aviv burning down.
Known as #OpJerusalem, the annual attacks in recent years have used Iran’s Quds (Jerusalem) Day, May 22 – dedicated to “liberating” Jerusalem from the Jewish state – as well as the end of Ramadan and Israel’s Jerusalem Day as a pivot points to organize around.
In addition, numerous cyber experts warn that the attacks at the hands of Iran are just the beginning, and that a flood of them is expected in the future.
Yonah Jeremy Bob and Alex Winston contributed to this report.