The Israel National Digital Agency prevented a significant cyberattack on several Israeli governmental websites, the cybersecurity body announced on Wednesday.
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The attack was a sophisticated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, in which the websites were targeted by over 18,000 endpoint devices from 117 different countries. Israeli officials believe that a state actor is behind the cyberattack.
The Israel National Digital Agency is responsible for ensuring the security of sensitive government agency websites, including those of Mossad, Shin Bet, and the Bank of Israel.
"This is the most significant attack we have experienced in recent times," Hagay Perlmutter, the director of the cyber defense division in the agency, told Ynet in a conversation. He emphasized that the attack was not carried out by "cyber-terrorist groups," unlike many other recent attacks. "You cannot be a small entity and create such an attack."
According to Perlmutter, the attack was thwarted, among other things, using machine learning-based tools developed by the agency following previous attacks.
"On March 14, 2022, we were targeted by the sixth-largest DDoS attack in the world, which resulted in 46 minutes of unavailability," he explains. "Since then, we have learned a lot, and today, when we identify such an attack, we have a solution that provides defense within a very short timeframe, a matter of minutes."