Hacktivist group takes down Mossad website to condemn Israel attack on Gaza

While many have opted to stay silent on the issue of Israel’s military action on Gaza, Anonymous decided to take some action and stand with the people of Palestine. The loose group of hackers, Anonymous has reportedly used its cyber arm power to take down the website of Israel Intelligence Agency Mossad to protest military action in Gaza. The Anonymous group has already targeted a number of other Israeli organizations as part of a campaign titled “Operation Save Gaza” in the mission to stop this “massacre” says a report in TheHackerNews. This was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Mossad’s official website, says a member of the HackCommunity. According to this news report “The hacktivist group launched a hacking campaign Operation Save Gaza against Israeli government coinciding with the Israel’s Operation Protective Edge on July 7. Since then, Anonymous group have taken down “thousands” of Israeli-based websites including Israel’s Defence Ministry and the Tel Aviv Police websites.” The group also posted a video message on YouTube urging to “stop the war“. One can listen to the message here. A message dated 20 July of the group posted on Pastebin says “we are calling upon the anonymous collective, and the elite hacker groups to join our crusade, and to wage cyber war against the state of Israel once more.”

According to RT the ‘hacktivists’ have already targeted a number of organizations in their mission to stop the 'genocide.' The website of Mossad went down on 31st July 2014 after a DDoS attack. It appears that the website is still down. 7 hours ago Anonymous Palestine posted “Tango still down .mossad.gov.il on its Twitter timeline.” (Look at the picture on the left side) About an hour later it posted a screenshot of the internet service provider at Israel which still shows down status. The tweet said “Internet provider in Israhell #Down”. According to a news report in NewsWeek, the Ma’an News Agency reported an Anonymous member was killed by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) fire. This 22 year old member, Tayeb Abu Shehada was shot dead while protesting in Huwara near Nablus, shortly before Israeli government websites began to go down. After the incident, pics were on Twitter showing Tayeb Abu Shehada wearing iconic Guy Fawkes mask that is closely associated with Anonymous hacktivist group. The group has been active since last few years under the @OperatingEgypt name. In 2011 and 2013 it attacked sites in Israel. The twitter handle of this operation says the group is “standing in solidarity with the people of #Egypt struggling peacefully for their basic rights.” One could see heart breaking pictures posted and retweeted by the twitter handle related to killing of innocent lives in Gaza, and bodies of survivors from this land trying to escape to Egypt. The government of Israel is yet to comment on the Mossad hack attack, reports The Hacker News.