Israeli cyber chief says country thwarted major virtual attack on water systems

Israel’s national cyber chief on May 28 officially acknowledged that the country had thwarted a major cyberattack last month against its water systems, an assault widely attributed to Iran. While speaking at the digital international cyber conference, Yigal Unna did not mention Iran directly, however, he said that it was a ‘synchronised and organised attack’ aimed at disrupting key national infrastructure. He added that the recent developments have ushered in a new era of covert warfare, ominously warning the ‘cyber winter is coming’. 

Unna said, “Rapid is not something that describes enough how fast and how crazy and hectic things are moving forward in cyberspace and I think we will remember this last month and May 2020 as a changing point in the history of modern cyber warfare”. 

He added, “If the bad guys had succeeded in their plot we would now be facing, in the middle of the Corona crisis, very big damage to the civilian population and a lack of water and even worse than that”. 

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Attack over Israel’s national security 

Israel and its arch-enemy Iran have been engaged in years of covert battles that have included high-tech hacking and cyber attacks. According to an international media outlet, a few years back US and Israeli intelligence agencies were also suspected if unleashing a computer worm called ‘Stuxnet’ in an attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. However, Unna reportedly said that the attempted hacking into the country’s water systems marked the first time in modern history that the authorities can see something like this aiming to cause damage to real life and not to IT or data. 

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Unna also said that is Israel’s National Cyber Directorate not detected the attack in real-time, chlorine or other chemicals could have been mixed into the water source in the wrong proportions and resulted in a ‘harmful and disastrous’ outcome. While the official statement released claimed that no damage had been caused, Unna’s comments, on the other hand, marked the first official detailed account of what happened. 

Unna said, "It is a part of some attack over Israel and over the national security of Israel and not for financial benefit”. He added, “The attack happened but the damage was prevented and that is our goal and our mission. And now we are in the middle of preparing for the next phase to come because it will come eventually”. 

(Image/Inputs: AP)

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