A hacktivist group known as Anonymous For Justice claims to have carried out a massive cyberattack against the servers of Israel’s Ministry of Justice. In multiple online posts, the group claim they have wiped all data from the ministry’s servers during several hacking operations.
The Attack and Alleged Data Breach
According to Anonymous For Justice, the hacking group had managed to breach servers of Israel’s Ministry of Justice in multiple coordinated attacks which have resulted in the theft of nearly 300 gigabytes of sensitive data from the Israeli government agency. This includes official letters, documents, employee records with names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.
Our team has been unable to verify the accuracy of Anonymous For Justice claims regarding the breach and data theft from Israel’s Ministry of Justice servers.
Yet, this incident adds to growing tensions in the cyber space between the Israeli state and pro-Palestinian hacking groups. It also highlights the increasing use of cyberattacks as a geopolitical tool by hackers seeking to influence the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza.
Escalating Hacktivism Hits Israeli Networks Amid Gaza War
Just last month, Iranian-linked hackers managed to steal sensitive data including IDs, credit cards, and personal documents from thousands of Israeli college students across multiple universities.
In October 2023, amid the start Israeli-Gaza warfare, the “BiBi” data-corrupting malware emerged, designed to obliterate systems and information irreversibly rather than enable typical data theft or ransom demands. Attributed to pro-Palestinian hackers, these attacks sought to inflict maximum disruption through indiscriminate data deletion and file corruption.
Also in October, the collective “Anonymous Sudan” launched cuber attacks against Israeli universities, citing retaliation for the “genocidal campaign on Gaza” as their motivation despite acknowledging collateral damage. In December 2023, self-proclaimed “Anonymous Jo” hackers from Jordan hacked and defaced the Israeli Defense Forces’ website, accusing Israel of “arrogance, injustice, barbarism and the killing of vulnerable people in Gaza.”
Israeli Medical facilities have also come under digital siege. Last December, hackers claimed an attack on Ziv Medical Center in Safed exfiltrated over 100,000 Israeli military personnel medical records in the third such breach there in just four months.
