The Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and Russia-linked hackers have stepped up cyberattacks against Israel since the war with Hamas began, according to the chief technology officer of Israel-founded cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.
“While a lot of the war right now is with Hamas, actually the entity that has the strength in the cyberspace is Iran,” Check Point’s Dorit Dor said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. “And Iran is activating Hezbollah.”
Hackers on both sides of the conflict have sought to disrupt their opponents’ digital capacity since fighting started on Oct. 7. Israeli targets have seen a 20% increase in cyberattacks since then, with the figures rising to 50% for defense-linked companies, according to Dor.
While attacks have become more frequent, the tactics being deployed — includingdistributed denial-of-service attacks and intelligence-gathering efforts — aren’t novel, she said.
“There is an increase in play from Russia” targeting Israel, although it isn’t clear if those attacks are state-backed or opportunistic, Dor said.
Israel and Hamas have been at war since Palestinian militants invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, according to government figures. More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s air and ground invasion in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.
While the fighting is concentrated in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire nearly daily along the border with Lebanon, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians have been evacuated from northern towns.
Iran’s alliance of militias includes Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels that have been targeted by US and UK airstrikes in an attempt to stop shipping attacks in the Red Sea. Hamas and the military wing of Hezbollah are designated terrorist organizations by the US and European Union.
Israel last month said it thwarted an attempted cyberattack on a hospital that the government attributed to Hezbollah and Iran. The same day, Iran blamed cyberattacks that disrupted gasoline stations around the country on Israel and the US.
Photograph: A computer set up arranged in Danbury, UK, on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2020. Photo credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
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