Wednesday April 15, 2015

I've Been Thinking:

The results are in.

April 7th was to be the day for the annual, all out, cyber attack against Israel. It was a huge failure.

The attack is called #OPIsrael. There were to be hackivists from all over the Muslim world drumming up support and energy for a huge tidal wave of hacking against Israel. It was described as a cyber Holocaust against Israel. In fact, the date April 7th was selected because the first year the attack was planned, that date coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day.

This was the third year of the hack. It is coordinated by a hacker named AnonGhost. This particular hacker works out of Tunsia.
There was more hype leading up to the day than actual hacking on the day. A few hundred private websites were hacked and a few thousand email accounts and passwords were leaked - but most of those were recycled from last year's list.

The best analysis I saw was by SenseCY, a cyber security firm in Israel. They monitored the entire event. Most of the chatter was on social networks and not in the dangerous areas like the darknet, where real hackers hang and act.

Even in the social media world the hack against Israel barely got noticed. It peaked at 3000 tweets. That is hardly an international movement.

On one message board people were bemoaning the small turnout and lack of impact relative to previous years. They suggested that people were simply bored and tired of repeating the same hack.

That is not good news for Israel. When amateur hackers get bored and try to work out new plans, the results are often diabolical. This year, Israel got lucky.

Read my latest book THUGS. It's easy. Just click.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=halpern%2C+micah

To reprint my essays contact sales (at) www.featurewell.com