A pro-Palestinian Malaysian hacker group known as "DragonForce" claimed that it hacked into AcadeME last week, stating "THE LARGEST AND MOST ADVANCED STUDENT AND GRADUATE RECRUITMENT NETWORK IN ISRAEL Hacked By DragonForce Malaysia" in a Telegram message on 20 June. The group claimed that they leaked emails, passwords, first and last names, addresses and even phone numbers of students who were registered on AcadeME. DragonForce attacked screenshots of code, server addresses and a table including email addresses and names.[1]
The hackers leaked the details of about 280,000 students who used the service since 2014, May Brooks-Kempler from the Think Safe Cyber Facebook group told Israeli media. The AcadeME site was taken offline and listed as "unavailable" early this week. A notice which appears when attempting to access the site said the site "should be back soon."
"This is an urgent call for all Hackers, Human Right Organizations and Activists all around the world to unite again and start campaign against Israhell, share what is really going on there, expose their terrorist activity to the world," wrote the hackers on Telegram. "We will never remain silent against israhell war activity."
Later on the same day, the group claimed that it leaked a "massive" number of Israeli passports. The same group also launched DDoS attacks against Israeli banks on 25 June, including Bank of Israel, Bank Leumi and Mizrahi Tefahot.[2]
Earlier this year, Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) chief warned that cyberattacks could disable Israeli academic institutions if proper action is not taken to prepare for such situations. "In light of repeated alerts and cyber incidents in the academic sector, the cyber threat posed exposes the institutions to a reasonable scenario of actual harm to the various operating systems –to the point of disabling the institution's activities, and further damage to the information assets and even the reputation of the institutions," the chief wrote in a letter to the Committee of the Heads of Universities at the time.
The INCD chief warned that the extensive connectivity between academic institutions and other bodies and organizations could pose a risk to other bodies as well and may lead to liability. The letter came 11 days after a cyberattack targeted Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, resulting in a breach in a number of its servers.
A combined team of researchers from the INCD and Ben-Gurion's Technologies, Innovation & Digital Division was formed after the breach was discovered, which worked to prevent information leaks and to contain the incident. It is still unclear who carried out that attack.
A series of cyberattacks have plagued Israeli businesses and institutions in the past year, including Israel Aerospace Industries, the Shirbit insurance company and the Amital software company.
The National Cyber Directorate reported that it handled more than 11,000 inquiries on its 119 hotline in 2020, some 30% more than it handled in 2019. The directorate made about 5,000 requests to entities to handle vulnerabilities exposing them to attacks and was in contact with about 1,400 entities concerning attempted or successful attacks.
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[1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/details-of-over-200000-students-leaked-in-cyberattack-672179
[2] https://www.jewishpress.com/news/police-news/mammoth-cyber-attack-on-israels-banking-system-fails/2021/06/27/
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