Israel army unveils new cyber defense unit

Source : Xinhua

JERUSALEM, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli military offered Monday a peek into one of its most secretive bases, which houses a newly established unit tasked with defending its own networks against mounting attacks launched in cyberspace.

Teams of programmers and computer experts, aged 18 to 22, man the "Cyber War Room," situated at an undisclosed site in central Israel, where malicious cybernetic activities occurring worldwide are monitored around the clock.

Long gone are the days when cyber was the exclusive domain of computer "geeks" spending their nights and days hacking into data bases in the privacy of dimly-lit bedrooms. In the Israeli military, it has already received recognition as another dimension of warfare, alongside the bombers, ships and tank battalions.

"Cyber isn't just another means, but a dimension that exists all the time between and during wars," Brig. Gen. Ayala Hakim, commander of the Israeli Defense Forces's (IDF) Lotam Unit, which oversees cyberdefense operations, told Israel's Channel 10 during an interview Monday.

Israel is investing vast human and financial resources in defending against the immediate threat posed by computer network attacks launched daily on its strategic infrastructure, government ministries, military and intelligence community. The fear is that a major cyberattack could cripple the country's critical infrastructure, including utilities, banking and cellphone networks, among others.

To illustrate the scope of the phenomena, the government revealed it deflected a staggering 44 million attacks on its main online sites during a nine-day war with Islamist group Hamas in Gaza last November.

Last year, the IDF publicly acknowledged for the first time, in a post on its official blog, that it was engaged in both defensive and offensive cyberwarfare. On the defensive end, efforts are mainly focused on repelling attempts by enemy states, global militant networks and lone hackers from overseas to penetrate the military's computers, either for espionage or sabotage.

"The operations room enables us to monitor the great breadth of the Internet at a single focal point," explained the Israeli military official. "We look at what is happening to us via a proactive approach and by gathering open intelligence. We assess our situation."

Like other cyber units operating in Israel's defense institution, including in the intelligence community, the soldiers of the new Cyber War Room constantly seek to increase the nimbleness of their response to identify and prevent an attack, and exploit it to launch a counterattack.

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Syrian Electronic Army Reveals Documents of Haifa Hack

Source : Fars News Agency

The SEA hacked the main infrastructure system of Haifa, one of the most important ports in Israel, last month, disrupting the operation of the servers in charge of urban management systems and public utilities in the city.

A day later, the SEA said the hacking was done in retaliation for the recent Israeli strike on a research center in suburban Damascus.

FNA released the story, but to our much surprise Google's search engine blocked access to FNA report for over three days.

Yet, the western, including Israeli, media went to ask officials about the veracity of the report, in response to which some said they were uninformed, while others said there had been some minor hacking attacks which were repelled before they could cause any damage to the Israeli servers.

Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said, "We are not aware of any such attempt by Syria, but we do know that Haifa, as the north's symbol, is a strategic target for our enemies and therefore we keep training and preparing for emergencies."

"Haifa was and stays strong," he added.

Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, said, "They attacked two weeks ago the Haifa water system because they apparently spotted an opportunity, which failed."

In response, the SEA sent FNA a set of documents to prove that the hack has been successful.

"Since Fars News Agency was the first media to release a report on our successful hacking attack and to prove that the recent allegations made by the Zionist regime officials about the failure of our cyberattack are nothing but empty words, we send you some documents that we have extracted from the Haifa servers in the hacking attack," said a part of the letter sent by the SEA to FNA.

"Sure, this is just a sample of the information and documents that we have gained in the attack, and for clear reasons, we cannot let the public know more about the more sensitive information that we have extracted in the cyberattack," the SEA letter added.

To the opposite and on the right hand side of the page, you may find the images of a number of documents sent to us by the SEA.

In addition, Hackers usually leave a couple of files for their colleagues to prove that their allegations are true. When the SEA declared that it had had a successful security breach and hacking into the Haifa SCADA system in early May, it left the following files on its website to show others in the hacking industry that its cyberattack had resulted in success.

Hack Screenshots:

https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1367855605244.pdf

https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1367851797457.gif

Cryptome mirror of the PDF and GIF: http://cryptome.org/2013/05/sea-haifa-hack.zip

When the SEA released a statement after hacking Haifa's SCADA systems in early May, it said, "We would like to announce that in response to the unfair and illegal attacks of Israel on DATE, the SEA has penetrated one of the main infrastructural systems (SCADA) in Haifa and managed to gain access to some sensitive data."

The statement which was also left for the Israeli operators of Haifa SCADA system, added that "the SEA is now able to cause irrecoverable damage to the Israelis' infrastructural systems."

The SEA warned that it could cause a major blast by continuing the attack on the servers of the Haifa infrastructural systems, but avoided further move due to inescapable human casualties as it did not want a story like the accident in Texas which claimed the lives of dozens of the people.

The statement asked Israelis "to do the best to express your objection to Israeli policies, since we do not like to see innocent people getting killed like in Texas, US, and this time in Haifa".

The SEA has recently gathered a name for itself in the hacking market by successful attacks on a wide range of the western media, most notably the hacking of AP Twitter accounts and sending of bogus messages which wreaked havoc on stock exchanges. The hackers tweeted that President Obama had been injured in a bomb attack at the White House, causing a temporary 143-point drop on the Dow Jones industrial average.

In an apparent effort to cause disruption and embarrassment in the West and to spread support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the SEA has so far hacked the Guardian, the BBC (including BBC weather, BBC Arabic Online and BBC Radio Ulster), France 24 TV, the National Public Radio in the United States, al-Jazeera, the government of Qatar, E!, and Sepp Blatter, the president of football's governing body Fifa, whose Twitter account was hacked.

Cybersecurity experts told the Guardian that the SEA attacks are designed to disrupt and embarrass the West and pro-Israeli lobbies, states and entities.

But this last cyberattack is certainly a boost in the platform of SEA operations as it required much more sophisticated knowledge and capabilities compared with the previous hackings; giving the Syrian Electronic Army the opportunity to rise to a different level of fame.

SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) is a type of industrial control system (ICS). Industrial control systems are computer controlled systems that monitor and control industrial processes that exist in the physical world. SCADA systems historically distinguish themselves from other ICS systems by being large scale processes that can include multiple sites, and large distances. These processes include industrial, infrastructure, and facility-based processes.

Industrial processes include those of manufacturing, production, power generation, fabrication, and refining, and may run in continuous, batch, repetitive, or discrete modes.

Infrastructure processes may be public or private, and include water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, oil and gas pipelines, electrical power transmission and distribution, wind farms, civil defense siren systems, and large communication systems.

Facility processes occur both in public facilities and private ones, including buildings, airports, ships, and space stations. They monitor and control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems

Syrian Electronic Army hacks the British newspaper website, Financial Times

Source : شبكة عاجل الإخبارية

Syrian Electronic Army has hacked today the website of the British newspaper, Financial Times, in addition to 17 accounts on the Twitter site of the newspaper.

As the Syrian Electronic Army published two videotapes on the penetrated site, the first shows one of the "Free Army" militia’s elements as eating the heart of one of the Syrians in city Abel of Homs, while the second shows the masked members affiliated with al-Nusra Front executing 12 civilians in Deir Ezzor.

Those two videotapes have spread a few days ago on the social networking sites and raised angry reactions on these brutal crimes carried out by militia and elements of al-Nusra against civilians in areas under their control.

Syrian Electronic Army Hacks Israel's Main Infrastructure (SCADA)

Source : Fars News Agency

The SEA said it has hacked into the Haifa infrastructural system at around 22:00 (local time) Monday night, underlining that the hacking was done in retaliation for the recent Israeli strike on a research center in suburban Damascus.

"We would like to announce that in response to the unfair and illegal attacks of Israel on DATE, the SEA has penetrated one of the main infrastructural systems (SCADA) in Haifa and managed to gain access to some sensitive data," SEA said in a message left for the Israeli operators of Haifa SCADA system.

"Also, the SEA is now able to cause irrecoverable damage to the Israelis' infrastructural systems," it added.

Israel staged an airstrike on Syria on Sunday, hitting the Jamraya research center in the vicinity of the Syrian capital, Damascus. Syria said the Israeli regime had carried out the airstrike - the third in the last few months - after heavy losses were inflicted on al-Qaeda-affiliated groups by the Syrian army.

The SEA warned that it could cause a major blast by continuing the attack on the servers of the Haifa infrastructural systems, but avoided further move due to inescapable human casualties as it did not want a story like the recent accident in Texas which claimed the lives of dozens of the people.

"This message carries a serious warning to the Israeli statesmen. They should know that not receiving a quick reaction to such childish ventures does not show the Syrian inability in doing so, but it is based on wisdom and humanity considerations. We do not approve of killing civilians and innocent people as this is an Israeli type of solution," added the message.

"Also an advice to those who left their homelands for many years, dreaming a happy and safe life, deceived by politicians whose deed is much far from their slogans; Do the best to express your objection to Israeli policies, since we do not like to see innocent people getting killed like in Texas, US, but this time in Haifa."

The SEA has recently gathered a name for itself in the hacking market by successful attacks on a wide range of the western media, most notably the hacking of AP Twitter accounts and sending of bogus messages which wreaked havoc on stock exchanges. The hackers tweeted that President Obama had been injured in a bomb attack at the White House, causing a temporary 143-point drop on the Dow Jones industrial average.

In an apparent effort to cause disruption and embarrassment in the West and to spread support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the SEA has so far hacked the Guardian, the BBC (including BBC weather, BBC Arabic Online and BBC Radio Ulster), France 24 TV, the National Public Radio in the United States, al-Jazeera, the government of Qatar, E!, and Sepp Blatter, the president of football's governing body Fifa, whose Twitter account was hacked.

Cybersecurity experts told the Guardian that the SEA attacks are designed to disrupt and embarrass the West and pro-Israeli lobbies, states and entities.

In the BBC case, the SEA, which emerged two years ago, hacked into the Twitter accounts of the British broadcaster and sent nine bogus tweets in an hour, including some with anti-Israeli sentiments, and others saying "Long Live Syria", and the "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here".

Guardian itself believes that the SEA attack was a reprisal for a number of leaked emails from the Assads and their inner circle that it had published.

Hours after the cyber-attack began, the SEA said it has targeted the Guardian for spreading "lies and slander about Syria" and said it was in a "state of war with the security team of Twitter".

But this last cyberattack is certainly a boost in the platform of SEA operations as it required much more sophisticated knowledge and capabilities compared with the previous hackings; giving the Syrian Electronic Army the opportunity to rise to a different level of fame.

SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) is a type of industrial control system (ICS). Industrial control systems are computer controlled systems that monitor and control industrial processes that exist in the physical world. SCADA systems historically distinguish themselves from other ICS systems by being large scale processes that can include multiple sites, and large distances. These processes include industrial, infrastructure, and facility-based processes.

Industrial processes include those of manufacturing, production, power generation, fabrication, and refining, and may run in continuous, batch, repetitive, or discrete modes.

Infrastructure processes may be public or private, and include water treatment and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, oil and gas pipelines, electrical power transmission and distribution, wind farms, civil defense siren systems, and large communication systems.

Facility processes occur both in public facilities and private ones, including buildings, airports, ships, and space stations. They monitor and control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC), access, and energy consumption.

Hackers usually leave a couple of files for their colleagues to prove that their allegations are true. The SEA has left the following files on its website to show others in the hacking industry that it has had a successful security breach and hacking into the Haifa SCADA system.