Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2002/04/17/middle_east_conflict_spills_over/

Middle East conflict spills over into cyberspace

Israeli Web page defacements on the up

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 17th April 2002 11:29 GMT

The political crisis in the Middle East has spawned an increase in defacement attacks on Israeli Web servers.

Israel was the victim of 10 of 15 significant web defacements in the Middle East over the last two weeks, according to security consultancy mi2g.

The most active anti-Israel hacker group, which claims to be Egyptian, started its activities just weeks after 11th September. Other Middle Eastern countries - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - have also been hit in April by politically motivated hack attacks, many international in origin.

mi2g reckons this is just the tip of the iceberg and that the tense situation in the Middle East in reflected in both overt and covert attacks.

Israeli Web sites with the ".il" domain were defaced 413 times in 2001 - up 220 per cent from the year before.

Nato's war in Serbia of April 1999 and the US / China spy plane incident of April last year, were also accompanied by upswings in hacking activity. ®