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Israel Faces Escalating Cyberwar
New submitter 9re9 writes "The NY Times describes what may be the beginning of an actual cyberwar between a pro-Palestinian group and Israeli companies, specifically El Al and the Tel Aviv stock exchange. From the article: 'A hacker identifying himself as oxOmar, already notorious for posting the details of more than 20,000 Israeli credit cards, sent an overnight warning to Israel's Ynet news outlet that a group of pro-Palestinian cyberattackers called Nightmare planned to bring down the sites in the morning.' Though the article is skimpy on technical details, the group appears to have engaged merely in a DDOS attack. Hamas praised the attack as opening 'a new resistance front against Israel.' Is this the first acknowledged cyberwar?"
Disagree.
If a nation-state or organized political entity orchestrates a campaign over time to destroy an enemies assets, be they economic, social or military, it's a war.
Note that I don't include the war on drugs in that definition - that's just a massive black market. It would be a different matter if a foreign power was feeding us cheap drugs in order to put the nation into a stupor, but we're doing that ourselves.
Nor do I include the War on Terror as a bonified war - in that case, it's too general, and it fails the first part of the definition ("organized political entity"). Now, you can have a war on al Quaeda, but not on terror in general.
Check your premises.
I'd rather see cyber war between Palestine and Israel than real war. The can DDOS each other all day as long as it keeps them away from car bombs.
Taking down someone's web page is a cyberwar now? When two countries (not companies vs script kiddies) start destroying actual (not virtual, potential or imagined) property within each other's borders and killing actual people, with the goal of conquering or annihilating each other, then maybe it'll be a cyberwar.
If your neighbor hacking into your computer, stealing your financial information and destroying your critical files, you're going to be as much or more impacted than if he's making his dog shit in your yard and spray painting your car. As a matter of scale the former is ultimately more harmful than the latter.
If a foriegn entity is able to grind your nation's economy to a halt or eliminate communications or cripple your electrical infrastructure you are potentially more screwed than if there are some deaths through violence. And it can be done with relatively minor risk by a very small group.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Rest assured that Israel dishes it out at least as well as they get it. They're hardly innocent babes in the woods.
I'd like to nominate that as the understatement of the year.
Fixing a non working system is easy.
Corruption can't be fixed. If you want to cause real damage, you corrupt data, you don't delete it. Corruption, is very difficult to recover from, and the longer the corruption goes on unnoticed, the worse it is to recover.
Taking down a system denies the use of the system as an asset. Corrupting the data or processes on the system makes that system work against it's owner. It becomes worse than useless.
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If you're going to, as a nation, threaten your neighbours, arm yourself with nukes and the best military technology money can buy while oppressing and condemning a minority within your population (the Palestinians). If you're going to talk the talk about "peace" while continuing to invade and build on the occupied territories in dispute and supposedly under negotiation at peace talks. If you're going to take hundreds of millions in "Aid" dollars from someone your neighbours see as the "Great Oppressor".
Well, if you do these things, don't be surprised if cyber terrorism is the least of your worries.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Everyone knows what they (the Iranians) are doing. The Americans know it, the Europeans know it, the Russians know it and yes the Israelis know it too
Yes we all see it. They're minding their own business. Which happens to be nuclear power. So, lets hear again why shouldn't Iran have nuclear power, military or otherwise?
I'll anticipate the answer: "Why, because they are Islamic fundamentalists and raving lunatics and they'll use it to wipe Israel off the map!!!!111!!"
Let's see, they are 1) Islamic fundamentalists - I don't see the problem, so is Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. (and to a much worse degree), but they're considered good friends of the US. I wonder why... Anyway, Islamic fundamentalism has never got in the way of being on the good graces of the West. 2) They're raving lunatics - well I wish the whole world was raving lunatic like they are, given they haven't invaded any country in centuries. Don't see why that would suddenly change now. 3) They want to wipe Israel off the map - ahh, now we're getting somewhere aren't we. But, in fact, that is completely baseless and pretty much amounts to deception. What the president of Iran said, was that Israel should disappear from the maps. The 'we'll wipe it off the map' thing was a (deliberate) deceptive translation from Farsi by MEMRI which is a shill for Israeli interests and provides translations of Muslim media, carefully tailored to their master's objectives. It is, by no means, an unbiased news source. And even if it was, their translation is wrong.
The question now is: Do you see what the US and Israeli elite are doing? Everyone knows. Anyone who cares to look can see this. They're leaving a pretty unmissable breadcrumb trail, and it passes through Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan. Except they're not using breadcrumbs. They're using cluster bombs.
I don't know if you're American, but if you are, they're using your tax money for it while at the same time claiming they can't pay for your healthcare. Anyone can see this. For a lot of people indeed, it was the last thing they ever saw. Why can't you?